To fight an enemy properly, you have to know what they are. Ignorance is defeat. - Greg Bear

My level of skepticism rose enormously; I’ve always bristled when people ask for, much less demand, trust.

The sorrow never dies; it is merely nacred by time.

5. “Very evocative. He seems to be confirming what I said last year—that the universe really has no underpinnings, that when a good hypothesis comes along, one that explains the prior events, the underpinnings shape themselves to accommodate and a powerful theory is born.”
“Then there is no ultimate reality?”
“Apparently not. Bad hypotheses, those that don’t fit what happen on our level, are rejected by the universe. Good ones, powerful ones, are incorporated.”