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Notes -
I too dabble in necromancy.
That is not my recollection at all. Everything in the story converges on the scientist's exploration of his own brain, and that exploration terminates at the idea of a manufactured mechanical system that is nonetheless entirely intractable from within a given material frame.
But the point isn't just that a destroyed brain is lost, but rather that an intact brain is nonetheless intractable. The scientist figures that his mind is a machine, and thus that he should be able to interact with it in machine-like ways; gears can be assembled, valves can be opened and closed. But in fact his mind is not the machine, it is the air moving through the machine, and the exponential complexity is intractable. RAM/disks and microscopic air currents are both intuition pumps, but the latter leads in a very different direction than the former.
Entropy as a theme circles back to the same idea: our control over ourselves and the world around us is limited, and almost certainly always will be, in ways that we are very bad at recognizing for reasons similar to those related in the story. This is, in my view, a really good message to communicate.
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