From io9 re: Lost, BSG

[volterator]

"Meanwhile, on BSG, the "head" Baltar and Caprica Six show up in New York a squillion years after the show's events are over, and inform the audience that God really did arrange the big Cylon/human struggle. As Head Six says, "Let a complex system repeat itself long enough, eventually something surprising might occur. That, too, is in God's plan."

In other words, even if things go in cycles, eventually something new will emerge. That's not too different from this conversation between Jacob and his evil brother, in "The Incident":

The Man In Black: They come. They fight. They destroy. They corrupt. It always ends the same.

Jacob: It only ends once. Anything that happens before that is just progress.

The difference is, Lost sets up that dialectic a year before the show ends, and has spent the past year exploring it."

It only ends once.

Comments

Oh dear

[autopope.livejournal.com]

As a counterpoint, see Greg Egan's argument about the immorality of trying to develop AI using iterative genetic algorithms.

Re: Oh dear

[vertigoranger.livejournal.com]

I was kinda riffing off a quip i made the other day about how most choices lose their power once they've been made. As for the immorality of relying on letting feeling beings fuck up until they change see: my life.

You're so right though, it's really a horrifying message.

Re: Oh dear

[vertigoranger.livejournal.com]

Part of the problem with researching Egan though is that when I search for what you describe I get you in the search results instead.

Thinking of a particular book?

[vertigoranger.livejournal.com]

so, to clarify - I'm saying keep a little optimism here, you can usually sort your life out, but choose good. On a personal level, the ends have to justify the means because it's not like you've got a choice, short of spontaneously self immolating out of embarrassment.