![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Louise learns this language and comes also to see time in this way. ![]() The aliens act, knowing fully well what their actions will do. They see the past, present, and future as a block, and they see also their small role within that. Like would it reconstruct you if be had to this sentence.Īs the plot progresses, we find out that the aliens not only communicate like this but are somehow able (and we must suspend disbelief here - although not by much) to see time from above, as a whole. It is only when you read the sentences as a whole that sense can be made of them. Rather, the verbs, nouns, adjectives, subjects, objects and so on are all jumbled up. We learn as the story moves on that these aliens do not write in a linear manner. A linguist, Louise Banks, is called in to decipher their strange language. An alien way of seeing thingsĬhiang’s story introduces an alien species that arrives on Earth with no obvious or discernible reason. This is one of the many philosophical questions raised in the movie Arrival and the incredible short story by Ted Chiang it is based on, “The Story of Your Life.” It concerns the role of foreknowledge in our actions. What if you knew your best friend would betray you in three years’ time? Or that your boss is going to fire you tomorrow? What if you knew the day of your death? Now, imagine how different things would be if you knew, with perfect accuracy, everything that would happen in your life. The result is that when we choose any action or decide on any path, we usually do not give much meaningful thought to the possible future outcomes or implications of that choice. Humans are experts at either utterly ignoring what might happen in the future or being embarrassingly bad at basic probability. How would you behave if you had a flashing statistic saying, “ One percent of the population will die in a car crash,” every time you turned on the ignition? Or how would you feel if, as you got married, someone piped up from the back, “There’s a high chance this won’t last!”? And would you stop playing the lottery if you knew that you had a greater chance of being killed by a tornado, struck by lightning, or even hit by a meteorite than winning? Imagine what life would be like if you spent the entire time dwelling on the probabilities of how things might turn out. Ignorance is not only bliss it is necessary. ![]()
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