Today I: smoke/am overweight/have a shitty attitude/am depressed because: my mom died of cancer/my uncle put his thumb up my butt/my dad hit me with a razor strop" seems kind of overly deterministic to Randy; it seems to reflect a kind of lazy or half-witted surrender to bald teleology. Basically, if everyone has a vested interest in believing that they understand everything, or even that people are capable in principle of understanding it {either because believing this dampens their insecurities about the unpredictable world, or makes them feel more intelligent than others, or both} then you have an environment in which dopey, reductionist, simple-minded, pat, glib-thinking can circulate, like wheelbarrows filled with inflated currency in the marketplaces of Jakarta.
( Neal Stephenson )
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