Exhalation

Exhalation: Stories by Ted Chiang

Exhalation explores a number of philosophical topics in Science Fiction short stories. Each story also provides a short "why I wrote it" section. (This can be one of the best part.) The first story was an "Arabian nights" type setting that explores a door that lets you go see time in the future. People can explore the future, but can't really make any changes in their life. (As an example, one man goes to see his future self and discovers that he is a frugal miser with huge amounts of hidden wealth. He feels it would be better to spend money and takes all of that money. Alas, his life of wealth is short lived and leads to him hoarding money due to getting robbed and accused of not "earning" it.

A few stories look at different approaches of freewill. One person analyzes their own brain. In another story, people can "fork" their lives in alternate ways. 

One story looks at "virtual people". These AI beings are allowed to grow on their own and are held somewhat like pets and live in virtual worlds. They want additional freedoms and rights, but are they mature enough?

There is one story that looks at communication. It combines a thread of adding written language to an oral communications tribe with a technology that allows people to replay at will any previous event. Is the "real truth" better than the way that we remember things? We may remember a great experience from childhood. However, if we replayed it, we may see that other participants were reluctantly participating. Does this make it worse? Do we really want the "real truth"?

The stories include:

"The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" 

"Exhalation" 

"What's Expected of Us" 

"The Lifecycle of Software Objects" 

"Dacey's Patent Automatic Nanny" 

"The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling"

"The Great Silence" 

"Omphalos"

"Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom" 

A Memory Called Empire

A memory called empire is ruined by the profanity. It does not fit will with the characters' language and distracts from the narrative. The story is primarily a futuristic political intrigue with a few science fiction elements. One small community wants to prevent the larger empire from annexing them. A representative is sent to replace the previous one. However, there is a succession crisis going on with the big empire. They are all caught in it. The small group has this ability to "store" memories to give a form of endless life. There is also romance and various alliances with the various people involved in succession crisis. (It has hard to keep them straight with the "name-number" format of names.)

White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism

White Fragility is a book about race written by a liberal white woman primarily to other liberal whites. The author is in the busy of "diversity training." She encounters many "well meaning" white groups that have difficulty talking about racism. (This reminds me of the strange case in the city of Seattle where there were separate diversity classes for those identifying as white and non-white.) She does acknowledge in passing that the definition of "white" and "non-white" have been subject to change (with an example of an Italian). However, the focus is on those that are identified as "white" today.
The key takeaway is that "racism" has become demonized so badly that we have lost the real ability to make improvements. Almost nobody would go out lynching somebody merely because of their skin color. However, nearly everyone still has some internal racism. "Bad neighborhood" is often code word for "black neighborhood.". Similarly, quality of schools is often directly related to upper-income, white population. Many companies have limited minority representation. However, there exist many programs of affirmative action and equal employment. Alas, these lead to many people to complain about "reverse discrimination".
Discussions about racism often become dominated by white people. The author especially decries the "white woman's tears". The crying of a white lady has lead to lynchings of black men in the past. When somebody cries in response to a perceived racial injustice, this often leads to the focus being more on her than the injustice. In the book, the author gave a number of examples of how, even in "diversity committees", the conversation got turned to the needs of the emotional person rather than the racial issue that was being addressed. Today some of the biggest sources of racism come from the "well meaning". They try to "improve" the lives of those of a different race without fully understanding them.
Much of the advice given falls can be described as "getting along well with others." Don't use caricatures or overall generations of other people's needs. Understand where people are coming from and the differences. Acknowledge that you have ways to improve and be willing to accept criticism. The criticism part is probably the most difficult due to the hyper-sensitivity to "racism". Ironically, the diversity training industry has probably done more to foment this as everyone is afraid of being "racist". Yet, to really fight racism, we need people to admit they have some racism and be ready to make it go away. I don't think the giant "mea culpas" on social media are generally helpful, nor are the blanket "I am not racist" statements. It must be subtle acknowledgement of shortcomings and willingness to improve.