Innovation was a curious thing. It never failed to amaze him. And yet this place confirmed what they’d long known: that truly disruptive innovation … - Daniel Suarez

Those heavily invested in the status quo had difficulty thinking outside of it — and were often tainted by it.

They’d had so much more luck investing in eccentric B and C students. The rationale was simple: Those heavily invested in the status quo had difficulty thinking outside of it — and were often tainted by it. Especially when success and peer approval beckoned. One did not accidentally graduate from top-tier schools. One strove to get in and to maintain grades once there, and to do that, one usually needed to be a master at conformity. To excel in all the accepted conventions.

If we want to have any future as a species, then we must learn how to build our biome — the one for which we evolved — out in the harsh vacuum of space. By learning how to create our ideal environment with our own hands and our own minds, we can even begin to understand how Earth’s ecosystem functions — and in doing so we will not only secure humanity’s future but we may learn how to fix Earth’s climate as well.

Yes, space will challenge us, have no doubt, but this is the very challenge humanity needs to cure us of our propensity for bullshit — because space is where bullshit goes to die. Out there only facts and competence keep you alive. Superstition, uneducated guesses, and comforting lies are what must go extinct. Not us.

when privacy is criminalized, only criminals will have privacy.” Durand