Excerpts From Jurassic Park and Lost World.

Excerpts From Jurassic Park and Lost World.

"A day is like a whole life. You start out doing one thing,
but end up doing something else, plan to run an errand,
but never get there. . . . And at the end of your life, your
whole existence has the same haphazard quality, too.
Your whole life has the same shape as a single day."
— Jurrassic Park by Michael Crichton


"And that's how things are. A day is like a whole life. You start
out doing one thing, but end up doing something else, plan to run
an errand, but never get there....And at the end of your life, your
whole existence has that same haphazard quality, too. Your whole
life has the same shape as a single day."

"I guess that's one way to look at things," Grant said.

"No," Malcolm said. "It's the only way to look at things. At least,
the only way that is true to reality. You see, the fractal idea of
sameness carries within it an aspect of recursion, a kind of
doubling back on itself, means that events are unpredictable.
That they can change suddenly, and without warning."

"Okay..."

"But we have soothed ourselves into imagining sudden change
as something that happens outside the normal order of things.
An accident, like a car crash. Or beyond our control, like a fatal
illness. We do not conceive of sudden, radical, irrational change
as built into the very fabric of existence. Yet it is. And chaos
theory teaches us," Malcolm said, "that straight linearity, which
we have come to take for granted in everything from physics to
fiction, simply does not exist. Linearity is an artificial way of
viewing the world. Real life isn't a series of interconnected events
occurring one after another like beads strung on a necklace. Life
is actually a series of encounters in which one event may change
those that follow in a wholly unpredictable, even devastating way.
That's a deep truth about the structure of our universe. But, for
some reason, we insist on behaving as if it were not true."

Here is another passage which complements those ideas, this
time from The Lost World,also by Michael Crichton.

"But even more important," he said, "is the way complex systems
seem to strike a balance between the need for order and the
imperative to change.Complex systems tend to locate themselves
at a place we call 'the edge of chaos.' We imagine the edge of chaos
as a place where there is enough innovation to keep a living
system vibrant, and enough stability to keep it from collapsing
into anarchy. It is a zone of conflict and upheaval, where the old
and the new are constantly at war. Finding the balance point
must be a delicate matter-if a living system drifts too close,
it risks falling over into incoherence and dissolution; but if the
system moves too far away from the edge, it becomes rigid,
frozen, totalitarian. Both conditions lead to extinction. Too
much change is as destructive as too little. Only at the edge
of chaos can complex systems flourish."

He paused. "And, by implication, extinction is the inevitable
result of one or the other strategy-too much change, or too
little."

Here's another passage from the same book which seems
to accurately describe humanity as a whole.

"What makes you think human beings are sentient and aware?
There's no evidence for it. Human beings never think for
themselves, they find it too uncomfortable. For the most part,
members of our species simply repeat what they are told-and
become upset if they are exposed to any different view.The
characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity,
and the characteristic result is religious warfare. Other
animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the
animal kingdom, human beings fight for their 'beliefs.'
The reason is that beliefs guide behavior, which has
evolutionary importance among human beings. But
at a time when our behavior may well lead us to
extinction, I see no reason to assume we have any
awareness at all. We are stubborn, self-destructive
conformists. Any other view of our species is just
a self-congratulatory delusion.Next question."