It’s that time again! Read through your classmates’ reading response blogs on “The Last Question” and choose your favorite post. You can choose a post for any reason, but you always must clearly articulate your rationale for choosing it (e.g., why did you find it interesting, compelling, likeable, provocative, etc.?). This rationale can refer to content, style, creativity, etc. If, after reading everyone’s posts, you strongly feel that your post is your “favorite,” you can always vote for yourself, but you need to provide a rationale for doing so.
In order to register your vote for this week’s “People’s Choice,” “leave a reply” to this post, and in your comment, provide your chosen post, an excerpt from it + rationale for choosing it. Provide the title and author of the chosen post, along with a link to the post you are citing (please provide the link in the same comment: don’t make a separate one with just the link). Citing is really important (in this case, citing your classmate!), and this is a way of giving credit to other sources and putting yourself in dialogue with them.
Comments/votes are mandatory, should be made no later than Su 10/4. The person with the most votes will earn the coveted “People’s Choice” honor for this round of posts! I’m looking forward to seeing what you choose, and why.
I like Shamach’s reading response because we pointed out similar things like the repetition in the short story, “INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER.” I also agree with some parts of the reading response. For example, “What I found interesting about it was how much humanity evolved as a species but could not solve the question until after they passed.” It is definitely interesting to see that, but I feel like sometimes humans found an answer that they just don’t want to accept or believe. Shamach also states “This story really makes you seem small n the grand scale of the universe.” I feel that too, the story gives you a bigger perspective.
I choose Ronalds post because like past weeks Ronald gives a clear analysis of the text. He is well organized and has clear thoughts that are easy to understand. I really enjoyed when Ronald said “However, despite the machine constantly advancing, it’ll only ever be as smart and as capable as the people who contributed to its creation.” I feel that is a perfect example of how technology and AI is so hard to understand and with the technology that exists in modern times, it does make me wonder how far we are from full reliance on artificial intelligence. I also enjoyed Ronalds discussion of chaos and how the story really emulated that chaos can’t be measured or fully understood. Overall I think that Ronald has excellent structure and analysis of this short story.
I really enjoyed reading Ronald’s response. It was very straight to the point and he had his own opinions.
He simplified the whole story and explained the dialogues that were important towards the story. Overall it was a great reading response.
For this one I chose Shamach’s response as his was one of the more in-depth responses to the Last Question prompt that we read about a week ago. He starts off with saying what the story goes into and tackles all sorts of subjects, such as “progress, entropy, the meaning of finite vs infinite” etc. He then starts talking about how the entropy keeps responding with the answer “INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINIGFUL ANSWER.” As said before this that they might have power for billions of years, it is not infinite and it will soon reach its peak as explained here. Even with Shamach saying that it gets better, it never comes with a full response until humanity and ended and the entropy has reached its limit and explains that it solved the problem by creating a new universe. He find it interesting that even with humanity evolving to make these sort of things, but can’t answer question until all life is over. His end quote being “This story really makes you seem small n the grand scale of the universe.” is also pretty well said, along with the response he put.
I really liked Oscar’s response, not only did he summarized it nicely but brought a bit of introspective to the author when says “The author is content because this shows that the story made an impact with readers minds, as well as has made the question exit the short story”. The world of the story keeps expanding and expanding and despite all of that it all comes back to how something like the question or this book made you think or feel about something can stretch beyond our lifetime.
I think Edward’s mention of ouroboros at the end of his analysis encapsulated the potential cyclical nature of the universe, which a controversial theory in modern cosmology, as well as properly identified an important theme in The Last Question.
The Big CrunchÂą hypothesis suggests a cycle of expansion and contraction of the universe; expanding until an entropic limit is reached, whereupon it collapses into an infinitesimal point — only to begin a new expansion cycle with another Big Bang, ad infinitum.
In The Last Question, with expansion and entropy clearly at the forefront of the story, the reveal at the end is the creation of a new Big Bang-like scenario. It can be assumed humanity and the AC will rise again, only to repeat the cycle over and over, much like ouroboros forever swallowing its own tail.
Âą https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Crunch
This week we have a tie for People’s Choice … congrats to Shamach and Ronald!