Erasmus as a Sline is not particularly intelligent, yet he succeeds.

Random newborns enter the Mathic world and succeed. It's all in the culture: the Avout have the patience to study and learn, and that enables them to create technologies far beyond what the Saeculars can, even when they're limited to chalk and quill pens. I suppose that the technology in the Saecular world could be a holdover from the earlier technically sophisticated periods referenced in the novel, but for a couple of thousand years? It doesn't seem likely.Īfter the second or third pass through the book, this started becoming a real sticking point for me - what do the Avout have that the technical Saeculars don't, except perhaps a willingness to investigate questions beyond pure practical concerns and a lifestyle conducive to learning? - Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.192.170.250 ( talk) 22:32, 14 September 2011 (UTC) Reply

Further, the Saeculars all seem to be carrying technology ('jeejahs' (e.g., smartphones) and 'cartablas' (GPS devices)) design and construction of which require knowledge of fairly significant physics or other science - knowledge which should be very limited in the Saecular world. Nominally, they were placed in concents to prevent repeats of a set of horrors which Stephenson calls 'The Terrible Events,' presumably to avoid their involvement in the development of new and more terrible technology.īut it appears that the Saecular Powers which control the non-mathic world continue to use all of the technology - including the bad bits, like nuclear weapons, etc - which the avout or their ancestors developed. One of the things worth discussing is the actual reason for segregation of the avout.

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