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Literary notes about latency (AI summary)

In literature, the term "latency" often conveys a state of hidden or dormant potential, yet it can also carry a negative connotation of passiveness. For instance, Mark Twain uses the word to describe a kind of inertness, referring to it as the "negative quality of passiveness"—a quality that exists in forms ranging from "recoverable latency" to "insipient latescence" [1]. This usage highlights an ambivalence in the term, suggesting that while latent qualities might be revived or transformed, they can also denote an early, undeveloped condition that contributes to inaction.
  1. In other words it is the negative quality of passiveness either in recoverable latency or insipient latescence.
    — from What Is Man? and Other Essays by Mark Twain

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