Books·
Exhalation
A collection of breathtaking thought experiments about consciousness, time, memory, and free will.
Metadata
| Author | Ted Chiang |
| Year | 2019 |
The Book in 3 Sentences
- Loved every single short story in this book. My favorite one probably was Exhalation — beautiful tale of robots seeking to uncover the source of his consciousness within his own mechanism. But in succeeding, he also discovers the inescapable law of increasing entropy that points to the inevitable doom of the robot-civilisation. The allusion to our current concerns about global warming is unmistakeable. Thus the robot’s conclusion: “Some find irony in the fact that a study of our brains revealed to us not the secrets of the past but what ultimately awaits us”
- From exploring AI rights to religion, Chiang takes an idea and expanded upon it with such a crisp and flawless prose to build a world.
- I noticed how much Chiang loves to mess with our understanding of our basic reality. What a talent.