David Brin
David Brin
Glen David Brinis an American scientist and award-winning author of science fiction. He has received the Hugo, Locus, Campbell and Nebula Awards. His Campbell Award-winning novel The Postman was adapted as a feature film and starred Kevin Costner in 1997. Brin's nonfiction book The Transparent Society won the Freedom of Speech Award of the American Library Association and the McGannon Communication Award...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth6 October 1950
CountryUnited States of America
Indeed, the maligned American pastime of baseball may be by-far the greatest and best sport by one criterion, when it comes to emulating and training for genuinely useful Neolithic skills! Think about it. The game consists of lots of patient waiting and watching (stalking), throwing with incredible accuracy and speed, sprinting, dodging... and hitting moving objects real hard with clubs! And arguing. Hey, what else could you possibly need? Now, tell me, how do soccer or basketball prepare you to survive in the wild, hm?
In historical fact, all of history's despots, combined, never managed to get things done as well as this rambunctious, self-critical civilization of free and sovereign citizens, who have finally broken free of worshipping a ruling class and begun thinking for themselves. Democracy can seem frustrating and messy at times, but it delivers.
Why must conversions always come so late? Why do people always apologize to corpses?
It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.
In all of history, we have found just one cure for error—a partial antidote against making and repeating grand, foolish mistakes, a remedy against self-deception. That antidote is criticism.
For all its beauty, honesty, and effectiveness at improving the human condition, science demands a terrible price - that we accept what experiments tell us about the universe, whether we like it or not. It's about consensus and teamwork and respectful critical argument, working with, and through, natural law. It requires that we utter, frequently, those hateful words - 'I might be wrong.'