Notes on Exhalation by Ted Chiang

A good while ago I read Stories of Your Life and Others. I can't say I remember the topics, but I remember the feeling: calm, philosophical, with a touch of science fiction. I should probably re-read it sometime.

Exhalation has the same feeling. The running theme is the passage of time and the hard fact that you can't change the past. The outlook is hopeful: each choice you make shapes who you become.

The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate is the opening story and a clear example of the theme. Knowing more about the past changes the main character, even if they cannot change the past itself:

Past and future are the same, and we cannot change either, only know them more fully.

Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom comes at the same idea from the other side. A device called a prism lets you talk to a version of yourself in the branch where you made the opposite choice. If every option is exercised somewhere, does choosing still matter? Chiang says yes:

Every decision you make contributes to your character and shapes the kind of person you are. The more often you make compassionate choices, the less likely it is that you'll make selfish choices in the future.

Your choice here and now affects all possible future branches, narrowing or widening certain paths.

None of us are saints, but we can all try to be better. Each time you do something generous, you're shaping yourself into someone who's more likely to be generous next time, and that matters.

The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling looks at the past through memory. Our memories are fallible, and they shape how we see what happened. But a perfect memory isn't better. First, it lacks the feeling attached to a real memory (e.g. a treasured childhood memory). Second, its clinical precision can break relationships in the present. The narrator can't undo the fight with his daughter, but he can choose how to make amends. Forgetting is part of forgiving:

When we no longer experience the pain as fresh, the insult is easier to forgive, which in turn makes it less memorable, and so on. It's this psychological feedback loop that makes initially infuriating offenses seem pardonable in the mirror of hindsight.

"The mirror of hindsight": such a beautiful way of putting it.

And one more quote, from Omphalos:

But for me, science is the true modern cathedral, an edifice of knowledge every bit as majestic as anything made of stone.

I'd trade a longer Omphalos for a shorter The Lifecycle of Software Objects, which I found a bit predictable.