“It’s sometimes called avoiding acquiescence,” Badim said. “Acquiescence means accepting the framing of a problem, and working on it from within the terms of the frame. It’s a kind of mental economy, but also a kind of sloth. And Devi does not have that kind of sloth, as you know. She is always interrogating the framing of the problem. Acquiescence is definitely not her mode.” “No. Definitely not.” “But don’t ever call that thinking outside the box,” he warned Freya. “She hates that phrase, she snaps people’s heads off for saying it.” “Because we’re always inside the box,” Freya supposed. “Yes, exactly.” Badim laughed. — 71: 1031-1036
You hope, the stayers replied. You will have to trust in the kindness of strangers. They did not recognize this as a quotation. In general they were not aware that much of what they said had been said before, and was even in the public record as such. It was as if there were only so many things humans could say, and over the course of history, people had therefore said them already, and would say them again, but not often remember this fact. We will trust in our fellow human beings, the backers said. It’s a risk, but it beats trusting that the laws of physics and probability will bend for you just because you want them to. — 237: 3505-3510