>>593260“Well, man, I’ve been lying here thinking deep thoughts. Tell me something, Pulat. Why is it that when people do evil things, they get psychoanalyzed forever? There’s always some lame explanation out of their background, or their genetics, or their impoverished upbringing, or their mood disorders, or some such crap. Whereas, if you do amazing, freakish good things, nobody ever CAT-scans you.”
“It’s good to see you turning to philosophy again. In suffering is the beginning of wisdom.”
“Check this out, man, I’ve got a theory. A good person can subsume the narrative of a bad person. Because it’s easy for a good person to imagine being bad. But a bad person can’t subsume the narrative of a good person. Because they have no understanding what that’s like. It’s just beyond them, it’s beyond their language.”
“I like that theory,” said Khoklov. “It’s mathematical. It’s about surface areas, basically. It’s a kind of moral topology.”
Starlitz nodded silently. Pilots were good at math. Russians were very good at math. Russian pilots really had it on the ball, mathwise.
- Bruce Sterling, "Zeitgeist"
