La mejor dedicatoria de un libro

Y pertenece a The Gods Themselves, de Isaac Asimov, y dice así:

To mankind, and the hope that the war

against folly may someday be won after all.

Bajen la novela en este post.

Mario Vargas Llosa es un huevón

Hah, bueno, este post será en realidad sólo sobre sus últimas declaraciones, pero no pude evitar poner un título así de general, porque bueno, "ya tocaba".

A ver, Vargas Llosa (o el "señor Vargas", como decía el chino) ha dicho, entre otras cosas, que:

"(...) si la literatura se hace solo para las pantallas se empobrecerá, porque la pantalla hace que pierda profundidad y riesgo". 

"La tecnología imprime a la literatura una cierta superficialidad".

Y que el papel "infunde un respeto casi religioso al escritor".

(La República, 25/5/2009)

Ahora, me parece que el señor Vargas está confundiendo muchas cosas. En primer lugar, parece estar criticando algo así como una literatura de blogs (ya se viene mi primera novela filosófica episódica, por cierto), y en ese sentido se podría hablar de cierta superficialidad, en tanto se habla de textos "hechos para internet". 

Pero si bien se puede pensar que prolifere este nuevo género, es ridículo esperar que las novelas "hechas y derechas" vayan a desaparecer, por lo que me parece que su crítica va más por otro lado.

Me pregunto, pues, si el señor Vargas está más bien hablando de artefactos como el Kindle, puesto que habla de una pérdida de profundidad y riesgo, por causa de la pantalla. Respecto a eso, sólo me queda recordar que cuando apareció la imprenta, surgieron críticas análogas de intelectuales elitistas que se quejaban básicamente de lo mismo. El cambio, en este momento, puede aparecer contraintuitivo no sólo para retrógradas reaccionarios, sino para muchos incautos. A mí me encantan los libros, pero me parece pecar de short-sightedness si es que no vemos que en el futuro, aparatos como el Kindle, pero cien mil veces más modernos, van a ser el pan de cada día.

Personalmente, sólo leo las declaraciones del señor Vargas para entretenerme un rato, porque si bien es innegable que escribe buenas novelas, en lo que respecta a política, y hasta como "intelectual", el señor Vargas es un huevón.

El plan de Veidt

Hace algunas semanas leí Watchmen, aunque no pude ver la película todavía. En todo caso, me encantó y me parece raro que no lo haya mencionado acá.

Mañana, sin embargo, usaré como ejemplo para el curso de Ética que estoy dictando (como asistente) el plan de Veidt. No quiero entrar en detalles para los que no han leído el comic todavía, pero los que sí entenderán a lo que me refiero.

Les haré examinar el plan desde una perspectiva kantiana, y luego utilitarista.

Finalmente, los dejo con la que es probablemente mi página favorita de todo el comic (clickeen para agrandar).

Who is John Galt?

Cosmopolitanismo

Wikipedia define cosmopolitanismo (¿para qué más?) como la idea de concebir a la humanidad como perteneciente a una sola comunidad moral. Personalmente, no podría estar más de acuerdo, siempre y cuando entendamos esta comunidad moral en un sentido limitado, adheriéndose a principios que no hagan más que asegurar la multiculturalidad.

Habiendo léido las novelas de ciencia ficción de Isaac Asimov, no pude dejar de notar el fuerte carácter cosmopolita que les es inherente (especialmente en la serie de la Fundación, que incluye también sus novelas de Robots).

Más que explayarme sobre esa relación en este post, quisiera simplemente citar un fragmento de su autobiografía, I.Asimov, del final de la sección que trata sobre viajes internacionales, y dónde detalla sus ideas, aunque sin hacer referencia directa al cosmopolitanismo.

I am frequently asked, when the subject of my travels comes up, wheter I have ever visited Israel.

No, I haven't. Getting to Israel without flying would be too complicated a matter. I would have to go by ship and train and I am certain that to try to do so would take up far more time than I could afford and be far more complex than I could endure.

The assumption, however, is that if I don't go, or can't go, then, because I am Jewish, I must be heartbroken, for I must want to visit Israel. -But I don't.

I am not, in actual fact, a Zionist. I don't think that Jews have some sort of ancestral right to take over a land because their ancestors lived there 1,900 years ago. (That kind of reasoning would force us to hand over North and South America to the Native Americans and Australia and New Zealand to the Aborigines and Maoris.) Nor do I consider to be legally valid the biblical promises by God that the land of Canaan would belong to the Children of Israel forever. (Especially since the Bible was written by the Children of Israel.)

When Israel was first founded in 1948 and all my Jewish friends were jubilant, I was the skeleton at the feast. I said, "We are building ourselves a ghetto. We will be surrounded by tens of millions of Muslims who will never forgive, never forget and never go away."

I was right, especially when it soon turned out that the Arabs were sitting on most of the world's oil supply, so that the nations of the world, being pro-oil of necessity, found it politic to become pro-Arab. (Had this matter of oil reserves been known earlier, I'm convinced that Israel would not have been established in the first place.)

But don't the Jews deserve a homeland? Actually, I feel that no human group deserves a "homeland" in the usual sense of the word.

The Earth sould not be cut up into hundreds of different sections, each inhabited by a self-defined segment of humanity that considers its own welfare and its own "national security" to be paramount above all other considerations.

I am all for cultural diversity and would be willing to see each recognizable group value its cultural heritage. I am a New York patriot, for instance, and if I lived in Los Angeles, I would love to get together with other New York expatriates and sing "Give My Regards to Broadway."

This sort of thing, however, should remain cultural and bening. I'm against it if it means that each group despises others and lusts to wipe them out. I'm against arming each little self-defined group with weapons with which to enforce its own prides and prejudices.

The Earth faces enviromental problems right now that threaten the imminent destruction of civilization and the end of the planet as a livable world. Humanity cannot afford to waste its financial and emotional resources on endless, meaningless quarrels between each group and all others. There must be a sense of globalism in which the world unites to solve the real problems that face all groups alike.

Can that be done? The question is equivalent to: Can humanity survive?

A am not a Zionist, then, because I don't believe in nations, and because Zionism merely sets up one more nation to trouble the world. It sets up one more nation to have "rights" and "demands" and "national security" and to feel it must guard itself against its neighbors.

There are no nations! There is only humanity. And if we don't come to understand that right soon, there will be no nations, because there will be no humanity.

Quisiera hacer notar, también, que al igual que el pensador cosmopolita por excelencia, Immanuel Kant, Asimov también tenía un especial disgusto por emprender viajes, aunque su caso no era tan extremo como el del filósofo alemán.

No se me ocurre qué poner de título - I

Acaba de llegar mi nuevo pedido de Amazon, que procederé a documentar fotográficamente.

La huevada en su cajita.

La autobiografía de Isaac Asimov.

¡Lou Reed tocando el Berlín en vivo el año pasado!

Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. Ya tengo la versión en español, pero ésta se ve también muy buena, y como estoy haciendo un trabajo serio, nunca está de más comparar traducciones.

Los tres juntos

The Gods Themselves

Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain.
Friedrich von Schiller.

He leído trece novelas de Isaac Asimov en menos de cuatro meses. De todas, la única que no está relacionada al resto es precisamente la última que leí, motivo de este post, y creo, su mejor obra. Hablo, obviamente, de The Gods Themselves, publicada originalmente en 1972.

La novela está compuesta de tres partes, relacionadas, claro, pero lo suficientemente distintas entre sí, especialmente la segunda, que considero como las páginas más logradas no sólo del trabajo de Asimov, sino que haya leído en general. No entraré en detalles, pero literalmente el universo que crea en dicho episodio debe ser experimentado por todos. Lo recomiendo a más no poder.

Así que para que este post no queda justamente como una recomendación más, pongo la novela entera en formato virtual, puesto que no sólo contamos con piratería de música, sino también de libros. Estoy seguro que a Asimov no le importaría.

Disfruten.

Isaac Asimov - The Gods Themselves [DOWNLOAD]

Feelin' - II

No he ocultado mi más reciente afición por las novelas de Isaac Asimov, especialmente las pertenencientes a su serie de la Fundación, pero no quería ignorar a su otra gran serie, y que finalmente está estrechamente ligada a la ya mencionada.

Hablo de la serie de los Robots, compuesta por cuatro novelas, protagonizadas por Elijah Baley y R. Daneel Olivaw (the "R" stands for Robot).

Faltándome todavía la cuarta y última novela, Robots and Empire, quisiera citar precisamente un fragmento que me encontré por el comienzo, y que me conmovió demasiado y que probablemente nadie entienda en su total magnitud (¡por eso tienen que leerlas!), pero es mi blog y lo pongo igual.

“Others can. It would be perfectly possible to clean out your brain, Daneel, and then, under supervision, refill it with its important memory content only--say, ten percent of the whole. You would then be able to continue for centuries longer than you would otherwise. With repeated treatment of this sort, you could go on indefinitely. It is an expensive procedure, of course, but I would not cavil at that. You’d be worth it.”
“Would I be consulted on the matter, madam? Would I be asked to agree to such treatment?”
“Of course. I would not order you in a matter like that. It would be a betrayal of Dr. Fastolfe’s trust.”
“Thank you, madam. In that case, I must tell you that I would never submit voluntarily to such a procedure unless I found myself to have actually lost my memory function.”
They had reached the door and Gladia paused. She said, in honest puzzlement, “Why ever not, Daneel?”
Daneel said in a low voice, “There are memories I cannot risk losing, madam, either through inadvertence or through poor judgment on the part of those conducting the procedure.”
“Like the rising and setting of the stars?--Forgive me, Daneel, I didn’t mean to be joking. To what memories are you referring?”
Daneel said, his voice still lower, “Madam, I refer to my memories of my onetime partner, the Earthman Elijah Baley. “
And Gladia stood there, stricken, so that it was Daneel who had to take the initiative, finally, and signal for the door to open.

The Last Question

Se me ocurrió poner un cuento entero de Isaac Asimov acá, y qué mejor y más perfecto que poner el cuento que Asimov mismo consideraba su mejor. Sin más, lo pongo y recomiéndenlo a tantas personas conozcan. Si no les gusta el criminal fondo rojo de mi blog, les pongo el link para que lo bajen y lean como archivo de Word.

Isaac Asimov - The Last Question [DOWNLOAD]

***



The Last Question

by Isaac Asimov.

The last question was asked for the first time, half in jest, on May 21, 2061, at a time when humanity first stepped into the light. The question came about as a result of a five-dollar bet over highballs, and it happened this way:
Alexander Adell and Bertram Lupov were two of the faithful attendants of Multivac. As well as any human beings could, they knew what lay behind the cold, clicking, flashing face--miles and miles of face--of that giant computer. They had at least a vague notion of the general plan of relays and circuits that had long since grown past the point where any single human could possibly have a firm grasp of the whole.
Multivac was self-adjusting and self-correcting. It had to be, for nothing human could adjust and correct it quickly enough or even adequately enough. So Adell and Lupov attended the monstrous giant only lightly and superficially, yet as well as any men could. They fed it data, adjusted questions to its needs and translated the answers that were issued. Certainly they, and all others like them, were fully entitled to share in the glory that was Multivac’s.
For decades, Multivac had helped design the ships and plot the trajectories that enabled man to reach the Moon, Mars, and Venus, but past that, Earth’s poor resources could not support the ships. Too much energy was needed for the long trips. Earth exploited its coal and uranium with increasing efficiency, but there was only so much of both.
But slowly Multivac learned enough to answer deeper questions more fundamentally, and on May 14, 2061, what had been theory, became fact.
The energy of the sun was stored, converted, and utilized directly on a planet-wide scale. All Earth turned off its burning coal, its fissioning uranium, and flipped the switch that connected all of it to a small station, one mile in diameter, circling the Earth at half the distance of the Moon. All Earth ran by invisible beams of sunpower.
Seven days had not sufficed to dim the glory of it and Adell and Lupov finally managed to escape from the public function, and to meet in quiet where no one would think of looking for them, in the deserted underground chambers, where portions of the mighty buried body of Multivac showed. Unattended, idling, sorting data with contented lazy clickings, Multivac, too, had earned its vacation and the boys appreciated that. They had no intention, originally, of disturbing it.
They had brought a bottle with them, and their only concern at the moment was to relax in the company of each other and the bottle.
“It’s amazing when you think of it,” said Adell. His broad face had lines of weariness in it, and he stirred his drink slowly with a glass rod, watching the cubes of ice slur clumsily about. “All the energy we can possibly ever use for free. Enough energy, if we wanted to draw on it, to melt all Earth into a big drop of impure liquid iron, and still never miss the energy so used. All the energy we could ever use, forever and forever and forever.”
Lupov cocked his head sideways. He had a trick of doing that when he wanted to be contrary, and he wanted to be contrary now, partly because he had had to carry the ice and glassware. “Not forever,” he said.
“Oh, hell, just about forever. Till the sun runs down, Bert.”
“That’s not forever.”
“All right, then. Billions and billions of years. Twenty billion, maybe. Are you satisfied?”
Lupov put his fingers through his thinning hair as though to reassure himself that some was still left and sipped gently at his own drink. “Twenty billion years isn’t forever.”
“Well, it will last our time, won’t it?”
“So would the coal and uranium.”
“All right, but now we can hook up each individual spaceship to the Solar Station, and it can go to Pluto and back a million times without ever worrying about fuel. You can’t do that on coal and uranium. Ask Multivac, if you don’t believe me.”
“I don’t have to ask Multivac. I know that.”
“Then stop running down what Multivac’s done for us,” said Adell, blazing up. “It did all right.”
“Who says it didn’t? What I say is that a sun won’t last forever. That’s all I’m saying. We’re safe for twenty billion years, but then what?” Lupov pointed a slightly shaky finger at the other. “And don’t say we’ll switch to another sun.”
There was silence for a while. Adell put his glass to his lips only occasionally, and Lupov’s eyes slowly closed. They rested.
Then Lupov’s eyes snapped open. “You’re thinking we’ll switch to another sun when ours is done, aren’t you?”
“I’m not thinking.”
“Sure you are. You’re weak on logic, that’s the trouble with you. You’re like the guy in the story who was caught in a sudden shower and who ran to a grove of trees and got under one. He wasn’t worried, you see, because he figured when one tree got wet through, he would just get under another one.”
“I get it,” said Adell. “Don’t shout. When the sun is done, the other stars will be gone, too.”
“Darn right they will,” muttered Lupov. “It all had a beginning in the original cosmic explosion, whatever that was, and it’ll all have an end when all the stars run down. Some run down faster than others. Hell, the giants won’t last a hundred million years. The sun will last twenty billion years and maybe the dwarfs will last a hundred billion for all the good they are. But just give us a trillion years and everything will be dark. Entropy has to increase to maximum, that’s all.”
“I know all about entropy,” said Adell, standing on his dignity.
“The hell you do.”
“I know as much as you do.”
“Then you know everything’s got to run down someday.”
“AU right. Who says they won’t?”
“You did, you poor sap. You said we had all the energy we needed, forever. You said ‘forever.’ “
It was Adell’s turn to be contrary. “Maybe we can build things up again someday,” he said.
“Never.”
“Why not? Someday.”
“Never.”
“Ask Multivac.”
“You ask Multivac. I dare you. Five dollars says it can’t be done.”
Adell was just drunk enough to try, just sober enough to be able to phrase the necessary symbols and operations into a question which, in words, might have corresponded to this: Will mankind one day without the net expenditure of energy be able to restore the sun to its full youthfulness even after it had died of old age?
Or maybe it could be put more simply like this: How can the net amount of entropy of the universe be massively decreased?
Multivac fell dead and silent. The slow flashing of lights ceased, the distant sounds of clicking relays ended.
Then, just as the frightened technicians felt they could hold their breath no longer, there was a sudden springing to life of the teletype attached to that portion of Multivac. Five words were printed: insufficient data for meaningful answer.
“Not yet,” whispered Lupov. They left hurriedly. By next morning, the two, plagued with throbbing head and cottony mouth, had forgotten the incident.

Jerrodd, Jerrodine, and Jerrodette I and II watched the starry picture in the visiplate change as the passage through hyperspace was completed in its non-time lapse. At once, the even powdering of stars gave way to the predominance of a single bright marble-disk, centered.
“That’s X-23,” said Jerrodd confidently. His thin hands clamped tightly behind his back and the knuckles whitened.
The little Jerrodettes, both girls, had experienced the hyperspace passage for the first time in their lives and were self-conscious over the momentary sensation of inside-outness. They buried their giggles and chased one another wildly about their mother, screaming, “We’ve reached X-23--we’ve reached X-23--we’ve--”
“Quiet, children,” said Jerrodine sharply. “Are you sure, Jerrodd?”
“What is there to be but sure?” asked Jerrodd, glancing up at the bulge of featureless metal just under the ceiling. It ran the length of the room, disappearing through the wall at either end. It was as long as the ship.
Jerrodd scarcely knew a thing about the thick rod of metal except that it was called a Microvac, that one asked it questions if one wished; that if one did not it still had its task of guiding the ship to a preordered destination; of feeding on energies from the various Sub-galactic Power Stations; of computing the equations for the hyperspatial jumps.
Jerrodd and his family had only to wait and live in the comfortable residence quarters of the ship.
Someone had once told Jerrodd that the “ac” at the end of “Microvac” stood for “analog computer” in ancient English, but he was on the edge of forgetting even that.
Jerrodine’s eyes were moist as she watched the visiplate. “I can’t help it. I feel funny about leaving Earth.”
“Why, for Pete’s sake?” demanded Jerrodd. “We had nothing there. We’ll have everything on X-23. You won’t be alone. You won’t be a pioneer. There are over a million people on the planet already. Good Lord, our great-grandchildren will be looking for new worlds because X-23 will be overcrowded.” Then, after a reflective pause, “I tell you, it’s a lucky thing the computers worked out interstellar travel the way the race is growing.”
“I know, I know,” said Jerrodine miserably.
Jerrodette I said promptly, “Our Microvac is the best Microvac in the world.”
“I think so, too,” said Jerrodd, tousling her hair.
It was a nice feeling to have a Microvac of your own and Jerrodd was glad he was part of his generation and no other. In his father’s youth, the only computers had been tremendous machines taking up a hundred square miles of land. There was only one to a planet. Planetary ACs they were called. They had been growing in size steadily for a thousand years and then, all at once, came refinement. In place of transistors had come molecular valves so that even the largest Planetary AC could be put into a space only half the volume of a spaceship.
Jerrodd felt uplifted, as he always did when he thought that his own personal Microvac was many times more complicated than the ancient and primitive Multivac that had first tamed the Sun, and almost as complicated as Earth’s Planetary AC (the largest) that had first solved the problem of hyperspatial travel and had made trips to the stars possible.
“So many stars, so many planets,” sighed Jerrodine, busy with her own thoughts. “I suppose families will be going out to new planets forever, the way we are now.”
“Not forever,” said Jerrodd, with a smile. “It will all stop someday, but not for billions of years. Many billions. Even the stars run down, you know. Entropy must increase.”
“What’s entropy, daddy?” shrilled Jerrodette II.
“Entropy, little sweet, is just a word which means the amount of running-down of the universe. Everything runs down, you know, like your little walkie-talkie robot, remember?”
“Can’t you just put in a new power-unit, like with my robot?”
“The stars are the power-units, dear. Once they’re gone, there are no more power-units.”
Jerrodette I at once set up a howl. “Don’t let them, daddy. Don’t let the stars run down.”
“Now look what you’ve done,” whispered Jerrodine, exasperated.
“How was I to know it would frighten them?” Jerrodd whispered back.
“Ask the Microvac,” wailed Jerrodette I. “Ask him how to turn the stars on again.”
“Go ahead,” said Jerrodine. “It will quiet them down.” (Jerrodette II was beginning to cry, also.)
Jerrodd shrugged. “Now, now, honeys. I’ll ask Microvac. Don’t worry, he’ll tell us.”
He asked the Microvac, adding quickly, “Print the answer.”
Jerrodd cupped the strip of thin cellufilm and said cheerfully, “See now, the Microvac says it will take care of everything when the time comes so don’t worry.”
Jerrodine said, “And now, children, it’s time for bed. We’ll be in our new home soon.”
Jerrodd read the words on the cellufilm again before destroying it: insufficient data for a meaningful answer.
He shrugged and looked at the visiplate. X-23 was just ahead.

VJ-23X of Lameth stared into the black depths of the three-dimensional, small-scale map of the Galaxy and said, “Are we ridiculous, I wonder, in being so concerned about the matter?”
MQ-17J of Nicron shook his head. “I think not. You know the Galaxy will be filled in five years at the present rate of expansion.”
Both seemed in their early twenties, both were tall and perfectly formed.
“Still,” said VJ-23X, “I hesitate to submit a pessimistic report to the Galactic Council.”
“I wouldn’t consider any other kind of report. Stir them up a bit. We’ve got to stir them up.”
VJ-23X sighed. “Space is infinite. A hundred billion Galaxies are there for the taking. More.”
“A hundred billion is not infinite and it’s getting less infinite all the time. Consider! Twenty thousand years ago, mankind first solved the problem of utilizing stellar energy, and a few centuries later, interstellar travel became possible. It took mankind a million years to fill one small world and then only fifteen thousand years to fill the rest of the Galaxy. Now the population doubles every ten years--”
VJ-23X interrupted. “We can thank immortality for that.”
“Very well. Immortality exists and we have to take it into account. I admit it has its seamy side, this immortality. The Galactic AC has solved many problems for us, but in solving the problem of preventing old age and death, it has undone all its other solutions.”
“Yet you wouldn’t want to abandon life, I suppose.”
“Not at all,” snapped MQ-17J, softening it at once to, “Not yet. I’m by no means old enough. How old are you?”
“Two hundred twenty-three. And you?”
“I’m still under two hundred. --But to get back to my point. Population doubles every ten years. Once this Galaxy is filled, we’ll have filled another in ten years. Another ten years and we’ll have filled two more. Another decade, four more. In a hundred years, we’ll have filled a thousand Galaxies. In a thousand years, a million Galaxies. In ten thousand years, the entire known Universe. Then what?”
VJ-23X said, “As a side issue, there’s a problem of transportation. I wonder how many sunpower units it will take to move Galaxies of individuals from one Galaxy to the next.”
“A very good point. Already, mankind consumes two sunpower units per year.”
“Most of it’s wasted. After all, our own Galaxy alone pours out a thousand sunpower units a year and we only use two of those.”
“Granted, but even with a hundred per cent efficiency, we only stave off the end. Our energy requirements are going up in a geometric progression even faster than our population. We’ll run out of energy even sooner than we run out of Galaxies. A good point. A very good point.”
“We’ll just have to build new stars out of interstellar gas.”
“Or out of dissipated heat?” asked MQ-17J, sarcastically.
“There may be some way to reverse entropy. We ought to ask the Galactic AC.”
VJ-23X was not really serious, but MQ-17J pulled out his AC-contact from his pocket and placed it on the table before him.
“I’ve half a mind to,” he said. “It’s something the human race will have to face someday.”
He stared somberly at his small AC-contact. It was only two inches cubed and nothing in itself, but it was connected through hyperspace with the great Galactic AC that served all mankind. Hyperspace considered, it was an integral part of the Galactic AC.
MQ-17J paused to wonder if someday in his immortal life he would get to see the Galactic AC. It was on a little world of its own, a spider webbing of force-beams holding the matter within which surges of sub-mesons took the place of the old clumsy molecular valves. Yet despite its sub-etheric workings, the Galactic AC was known to be a full thousand feet across.
MQ-17J asked suddenly of his AC-contact, “Can entropy ever be reversed?”
VJ-23X looked startled and said at once, “Oh, say, I didn’t really mean to have you ask that,”
“Why not?”
“We both know entropy can’t be reversed. You can’t turn smoke and ash back into a tree.”
“Do you have trees on your world?” asked MQ-17J.
The sound of the Galactic AC startled them into silence. Its voice came thin and beautiful out of the small AC-contact on the desk. It said: there is insufficient data for a meaningful answer.
VJ-23X said, “See!”
The two men thereupon returned to the question of the report they were to make to the Galactic Council.

Zee Prime’s mind spanned the new Galaxy with a faint interest in the countless twists of stars that powdered it. He had never seen this one before. Would he ever see them all? So many of them, each with its load of humanity. --But a load that was almost a dead weight. More and more, the real essence of men was to be found out here, in space.
Minds, not bodies! The immortal bodies remained back on the planets, in suspension over the eons. Sometimes they roused for material activity but that was growing rarer. Few new individuals were coming into existence to join the incredibly mighty throng, but what matter? There was little room in the Universe for new individuals.
Zee Prime was roused out of his reverie upon coming across the wispy tendrils of another mind.
“I am Zee Prime,” said Zee Prime. “And you?”
“I am Dee Sub Wun. Your Galaxy?”
“We call it only the Galaxy. And you?”
“We call ours the same. All men call their Galaxy their Galaxy and nothing more. Why not?”
“True. Since all Galaxies are the same.”
“Not all Galaxies. On one particular Galaxy the race of man must have originated. That makes it different.”
Zee Prime said, “On which one?”
“I cannot say. The Universal AC would know.”
“Shall we ask him? I am suddenly curious.”
Zee Prime’s perceptions broadened until the Galaxies themselves shrank and became a new, more diffuse powdering on a much larger background. So many hundreds of billions of them, all with their immortal beings, all carrying their load of intelligences with minds that drifted freely through space. And yet one of them was unique among them all in being the original Galaxy. One of them had, in its vague and distant past, a period when it was the only Galaxy populated by man.
Zee Prime was consumed with curiosity to see this Galaxy and he called out: “Universal AC! On which Galaxy did mankind originate?”
The Universal AC heard, for on every world and throughout space, it had its receptors ready, and each receptor lead through hyperspace to some unknown point where the Universal AC kept itself aloof.
Zee Prime knew of only one man whose thoughts had penetrated within sensing distance of Universal AC, and he reported only a shining globe, two feet across, difficult to see.
“But how can that be all of Universal AC?” Zee Prime had asked.
“Most of it,” had been the answer, “is in hyperspace. In what form it is there I cannot imagine.”
Nor could anyone, for the day had long since passed, Zee Prime knew, when any man had any part of the making of a Universal AC. Each Universal AC designed and constructed its successor. Each, during its existence of a million years or more accumulated the necessary data to build a better and more intricate, more capable successor in which its own store of data and individuality would be submerged.
The Universal AC interrupted Zee Prime’s wandering thoughts, not with, words, but with guidance. Zee Prime’s mentality was guided into the dim sea of Galaxies and one in particular enlarged into stars.
A thought came, infinitely distant, but infinitely clear. “this is the original galaxy of man.”
But it was the same after all, the same as any other, and Zee Prime stifled his disappointment.
Dee Sub Wun, whose mind had accompanied the other, said suddenly, “And is one of these stars the original star of Man?” The Universal AC said, “man’s original star has gone nova. it is a white dwarf.”
“Did the men upon it die?” asked Zee Prime, startled and without thinking.
The Universal AC said, “a new world, as in such cases, was constructed for their physical bodies in time.”
“Yes, of course,” said Zee Prime, but a sense of loss overwhelmed him even so. His mind released its hold on the original Galaxy of Man, let it spring back and lose itself among the blurred pin points. He never wanted to see it again.
Dee Sub Wun said, “What is wrong?”
“The stars are dying. The original star is dead.”
“They must all die. Why not?”
“But when all energy is gone, our bodies will finally die, and you and I with them.”
“It will take billions of years.”
“I do not wish it to happen even after billions of years. Universal AC! How may stars be kept from dying?”
Dee Sub Wun said in amusement, “You’re asking how entropy might be reversed in direction.”
And the Universal AC answered: “there is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer.”
Zee Prime’s thoughts fled back to his own Galaxy. He gave no further thought to Dee Sub Wun, whose body might be waiting on a Galaxy a trillion light-years away, or on the star next to Zee Prime’s own. It didn’t matter.
Unhappily, Zee Prime began collecting interstellar hydrogen out of which to build a small star of his own. If the stars must someday die, at least some could yet be built.

Man considered with himself, for in a way, Man, mentally, was one. He consisted of a trillion, trillion, trillion ageless bodies, each in its place, each resting quiet and incorruptible, each cared for by perfect automatons, equally incorruptible, while the minds of all the bodies freely melted one into the other, indistinguishable.
Man said, “The Universe is dying.”
Man looked about at the dimming Galaxies. The giant stars, spendthrifts, were gone long ago, back in the dimmest of the dim far past. Almost all stars were white dwarfs, fading to the end.
New stars had been built of the dust between the stars, some by natural processes, some by Man himself, and those were going, too. White dwarfs might yet be crashed together and of the mighty forces so released, new stars built, but only one star for every thousand white dwarfs destroyed, and those would come to an end, too.
Man said, “Carefully husbanded, as directed by the Cosmic AC, the energy that is even yet left in all the Universe will last for billions of years.”
“But even so,” said Man, “eventually it will all come to an end. However it may be husbanded, however stretched out, the energy once expended is gone and cannot be restored. Entropy must increase forever to the maximum.”
Man said, “Can entropy not be reversed? Let us ask the Cosmic AC.”
The Cosmic AC surrounded them but not in space. Not a fragment of it was in space. It was in hyperspace and made of something that was neither matter nor energy. The question of its size and nature no longer had meaning in any terms that Man could comprehend.
“Cosmic AC,” said Man, “how may entropy be reversed?”
The Cosmic AC said, “there is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer.”
Man said, “Collect additional data.”
The Cosmic AC said, “i will do so. i have been doing so for a hundred billion years. my predecessors and i have been asked this question many times. all the data i have remains insufficient.”
“Will there come a time,” said Man, “when data will be sufficient or is the problem insoluble in all conceivable circumstances?”
The Cosmic AC said, “no problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.”
Man said, “When will you have enough data to answer the question?”
The Cosmic AC said, “there is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer.”
“Will you keep working on it?” asked Man.
The Cosmic AC said, “i will.”
Man said, “We shall wait.”

The stars and Galaxies died and snuffed out, and space grew black after ten trillion years of running down.
One by one Man fused with AC, each physical body losing its mental identity in a manner that was somehow not a loss but a gain.
Man’s last mind paused before fusion, looking over a space that included nothing but the dregs of one last dark star and nothing besides but incredibly thin matter, agitated randomly by the tag ends of heat wearing out, asymptotically, to the absolute zero.
Man said, “AC, is this the end? Can this chaos not be reversed into the Universe once more? Can that not be done?”
AC said, “there is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer.”
Man’s last mind fused and only AC existed--and that in hyperspace.

Matter and energy had ended and with it space and time. Even AC existed only for the sake of the one last question that it had never answered from the time a half-drunken computer ten trillion years before had asked the question of a computer that was to AC far less than was a man to Man.
All other questions had been answered, and until this last question was answered also, AC might not release his consciousness.
All collected data had come to a final end. Nothing was left to be collected.
But all collected data had yet to be completely correlated and put together in all possible relationships.
A timeless interval was spent in doing that.
And it came to pass that AC learned how to reverse the direction of entropy.
But there was now no man to whom AC might give the answer of the last question. No matter. The answer--by demonstration--would take care of that, too.
For another timeless interval, AC thought how best to do this. Carefully, AC organized the program.
The consciousness of AC encompassed all of what had once been a Universe and brooded over what was now Chaos. Step by step, it must be done.
And AC said, “let there be light!”
And there was light--

Fundación, piratería de libros, y otros postres

A ver, este será un post híbrido. Primero, haré énfasis en cómo la serie de la "Fundación", de Isaac Asimov, me ha cambiado la vida. Se la recomiendo a todos. Listo.

Segundo, he entrado en la onda de los libros virtuales. En serio es la voz. Me quiero comprar o el Kindle de Amazon o el Sony Reader ¡ya! Pero mientras tanto, le he puesto uno a mi Nintendo DS. Mas no nos adelantemos. A ver... mejor pasemos a las fotos, que, creo, hacen el trabajo de explicar la situación de manera más correcta, clara y distinta.

20 megas de todos los libros relacionados a la Fundación.

Cada uno con su carátula, como pueden ver.

Y todo bonito y bien ordenado.

Y finalmente, la huevada ya en mi Nintendo DS.

¿Qué opinan?

Cita - II

Estoy leyendo, por primera vez, al gran escritor Isaac Asimov, y decidí empezar nada menos que con su novela Foundation, o Fundación. Sólo diré que está muy buena, y me proveyó de la siguiente cita, atribuida a uno de sus personajes, cortesía de la Encyclopedia Galactica, claro.

Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right!

Salvor Hardin.

Así que ya saben.

La autobiografía de Bob Dylan

Me llegó hoy, muy a tiempo, un libro que me pedí por amazon, nada menos que la autobiografía de Bob Dylan (el primer volumen), y, por supuesto, puse todo lo que estaba haciendo en espera y la empecé a leer. Comparto con ustedes la primera página, que sienta en parte el tono de todo el libro. Disfruten.

Lou Levy, top man of Leeds Music Publishing company, took me up in a taxi to the Pythian Temple on West 70th Street to show me the pocket sized recording studio where Bill Haley and his Comets had recorded "Rock Around the Clock"-then down to Jack Dempsey's restaurant on 58th and Broadway, where we sat down in a red leather upholstered booth facing the front window.
Lou introduced me to Jack Dempsey, the great boxer. Jack shook his fist at me.
“You look too light for a heavyweight kid, you’ll have to put on a few pounds. You’re gonna have to dress a little finer, look a little sharper-not that you’ll need much in the way of clothes when you’re in the ring-don’t be afraid of hitting something too hard.”
“He’s not a boxer, Jack, he’s a songwriter and we’ll be publishing his songs.”
“Oh, yeah, well I hope to hear ‘em some of these days. Good luck to you, kid.”

¿Valores rebeldes?

Después de varios meses, volvió a mis manos un libro que considero muy alto entre mis favoritos: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. La historia de cómo llegó a mis manos es digna de contar, así que justamente eso haré.

Creo que fue en el segundo ciclo de mi carrera de filosofía, hace dos años y medio, que el legendario profesor Federico Camino, que no suele hablar bien de muchas cosas, mencionó este libro y a su autor, Robert M. Pirsig, diciendo que era muy bueno, y que además, el autor sólo había escrito dos libros en 30 años, cosa que en sus ojos no hacía más que inspirarle confianza.

Como muchos otros libros recomendados por profesores, no hice más que apuntarlo en mi cuaderno, y probablemente esta anécdota hubiese sido olvidada para siempre, si no fuese porque unos meses después, a miles de kilómetros de distancia, en la casa de mi por allá entonces enamorada en el estado gringo de Virginia, lo encontré en sus estantes. Me dijo que nunca lo había leído, que lo encontró en una venta de garaje y lo compró porque le gustó el nombre.

Procedí, en consecuencia, a pedírselo “prestado” (probablemente lo único bueno que saqué de dicha relación).

No quiero entrar en detalles sobre el libro (y menos aún sobre mis relaciones). Sólo diré que es una novela escrita en primera persona, pero fácilmente más del 70% de su contenido consiste en el autor hablando de diversos problemas filosóficos, dirigiéndose directamente al lector. Hay partes que no son nada sencillas, pero el libro fue un best seller en sus días (allá por los 70’s), por lo que a pesar de su dificultad en momentos, termina siendo accesible para todos (a menos ya que seas bruto).

Además, la increíble historia está basada en la vida real del autor, lo que la hace todavía más fascinante.

Sin embargo, el motivo de este post no es convencerlos de que lean este libro (como ya podrán haber notado desde el título), sino simplemente sacar un fragmento más o menos descontextualizado y aplicarlo a un tema que personalmente me mantiene en constante conflicto. Pero vayamos por partes. El fragmento cuenta a su vez con otro fragmento de La Ilíada, y el autor se encuentra hablando de la areté griega antes de Platón y Aristóteles.

The Iliad is the store of the siege of Troy, which will fall in the dust, and of its defenders who will be killed in battle. The wife of hector, the leader, says to him: “Your strength will be your destruction; and you have no pity either for your infant son or for your unhappy wife who will soon be your widow. For soon the Acheans will set upon you and kill you; and if I lose you it would be better for me to die.”

Her husband replies:

“Well do I know this, and I am sure of it: that day is coming when the holy city of Troy will perish, and Priam and the people of wealthy Priam. But my grief is not so much for the Trojans, nor for Hecuba herself, nor for Priam the King, nor for my many noble brothers, who will be slain by the foe and will lie in the dust, as for you, when one of the bronze-clad Acheans will carry you away in tears and end your days of freedom. Then you may live in Argos, and work at the loom in another woman’s house, or perhaps carry water for a woman of Messene or Hyperia, sore against your will: but hard compulsion will lie upon you. And then a man will say as he sees you weeping, ‘This was the wife of Hector, who was the noblest in battle of the horse-taming Trojans, when they were fighting around Ilion.’ This is what they will say: and it will be fresh grief for you, to fight against slavery bereft of a husband like that. But may I be dead, may the earth be heaped over my grave before I hear your cries, and of the violence done to you.”

So spake shining Hector and held out his arms to his son. But the child screamed and shrank back into the bosom of the well girdled nurse, for he took fright at the sight of his dear father -at the bronze and the crest of the horsehair which he saw swaying terribly from the top of his helmet. His father laughed aloud, and his lady mother too. At once shining Hector took the helmet off his head and laid it on the ground, and when he had kissed his dear son and dandled him in his arms, he prayed to Zeus and to the other Gods: Zeus and ye other Gods, grant that this my son may be, as I am, most glorious among the Trojans and a man of might, and greatly rule in Ilion. And may they say, as he returns from war, ‘He is far better than his father.’

Ahora, tenemos acá un ejemplo de un virtuosismo impresionante. Es un virtuosismo, claro está, hacia uno mismo. Es una virtud del guerrero.


Personalmente, no puedo evitar pensar en lo que yo considero es la ética, y a todo esto, lo que es moralmente bueno; y mi posición es en gran medida la kantiana, que considera que lo bueno son las máximas de nuestra acción que son a la vez universalizables, en la medida que tienen en cuenta la humanidad, tanto como idea, y como está presente en cada individuo concreto.

Lo que resulta de una posición así es una virtud del ser humano en tanto ser humano. Una virtud que pueda ser compartida por todos los hombres, que no se inmiscuya en los otros, justamente, que sea universalizable. Una posición así no se distancia mucho de la ética aristotélica.

Igual podrían coexistir otras virtudes, como las del guerrero y del alfarero, pero tendrían que estar sometidas a esta virtud mayor, si es que quieren ser consideradas “buenas”.

Pero en el comportamiento de Héctor tenemos sin lugar a dudas una virtud que no es ni puede ser jamás universalizable con toda la humanidad, pues su virtud radica justamente en ser superior a los demás. Ser más noble, más valiente, más fuerte, y estos valores rebeldes se anteponen al resto.

Se me ocurre otro ejemplo en el del General Kuribayashi, de la película Cartas de Iwo Jima, que sigue combatiendo por el honor de su nación, y de su persona misma, a pesar que sabe morirá y miles de sus soldados también, y finalmente su esfuerzo será en vano.


Sin embargo, no puedo dejar de ver ambos casos y pensar que, de alguna forma, están “bien”. Los admiro y me parecen ejemplos de excelencia humana, por más que no pueda argumentar racionalmente en su favor.

No sé, dejo la contradicción ahí, sin resolver, a ver si a alguien se le ocurre algo.

La pesadilla

J. H. Fuseli

Estoy leyendo "La pesadilla", de Ernest Jones, y como resultado, estoy teniendo pesadillas casi todas las noches; y hasta Cayo me despertó ayer porque estaba haciendo ruidos feos mientras dormía. No miento.