Ken Liu: The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species

[petronius]

There is no definitive census of all the intelligent species in the universe. Not only are there perennial arguments about what qualifies as intelligence, but each moment and everywhere, civilizations rise and fall, much as the stars are born and die.

Time devours all.

Yet every species has its unique way of passing on its wisdom through the ages, its way of making thoughts visible, tangible, frozen for a moment like a bulwark against the irresistible tide of time.

Everyone makes books.

--- Snip ---

http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-bookmaking-habits-of-select-species/

No action, really, but a very evocative portrait of a universe, and how species (we) engage with recorded information. What is a book?

[xtraxritical]

1. The website link is "Offline".

[petronius]

2. Odd, it still works for me - wonder if they just had a hiccup

Here's the home page for the magazine: http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/ (The story above is in the August 2012 issue...)

[eppur_se_muova]

3. Do we really care about how they bet on sports ? nt

[petronius]

4. Of course we do! Once we know that, we know all: do they bet from

the head or the heart? Do they understand statistics? When filling out fantasy roster do they let the computer pick, or take a flyer on a promising rookie, or select has-beens from their own alma mater? Does a Tebow make them tingly, or do they swoon to the bad-boy brilliance of a Moss? Will they risk the rent and baby's new shoes on the outcome of a D3 non-conference game?

Knowing these things, we own the universe...

(And yes, I've been doing a wee bit of drinking tonight.)

[tclambert]

5. Gambling is less prevalent among species who have an innate sense of statistics,

especially randomness. They still gamble, but seldom on silly things like cards, dice, roulette wheels, and never, ever powerball lotteries. They calculate the odds before investing their hard-earned credits, and if it comes out less likely to win than to get struck by lightning, they don't rush down to the local party store.

No, gambling really flourishes among those species like Earth humans whose pattern-matching mental routines got stuck on cause and effect. That's where you get people desperately looking for causes for random events that don't really have a cause, just a statistical frequency, and try to convince themselves they can control random outcomes with crazy superstitions like wearing a lucky T-shirt. You never hear of the Big Heads of Andromeda behaving like that.

But I bet you knew that already.