logoalt Hacker News

ninetynineninelast Saturday at 2:32 AM2 repliesview on HN

>Creation is not birth; it is murder. The murder of the impossible in service of the possible.

What a stupid quote. You know why it's stupid. Because murder is creation. It is the creation of death while destroying life.

Just use the word the way it's meant to be used. Don't come up with quotes that sound clever and trick the mind into thinking a statement is profound when really it's just more word trickery.


Replies

jiriroyesterday at 1:03 PM

> Just use the word the way it's meant to be used.

Ha ha, you are funny:-)

This is the whole point of a (natural) language – the meaning of words is inevitably floating.

Do not nail down a meaning of a word, it’s impossible. Instead, try to imagine there is no word;-)

the_aflast Saturday at 3:07 AM

I thought the phrase was a whimsical/poetic way of saying something that rings true to me: that all the possibilities in your mind get narrowed down to a single imperfect one when actually materializing/putting them into practice -- in a way getting "destroyed" and replaced with an imperfect but existing version -- and that we sometimes get anxious about this.

It's not the only way of looking at it, but it is one way, and it's not wrong.