It can melt ordinary plastic IV tubes

"That year Richer launched a counter offensive, hoping to fight back the parasite at least in Tambura county. For people who were still in the early stages of the disease *, ten days of injections in the buttocks with the drug pentamidine was enough. For those like Justin who had the parasites in their brains, a harsher course was necessary. They needed stronger stuff that could kill the parasite outright in their brain— a brutal potion known as melarsoprol. Melarsoprol is made of 20 percent arsenic. It can melt ordinary plastic IV tubes, so Richer had to have tubes flown in that were as tough as Teflon. If melarsoprol seeps out of a vein, it can turn the surrounding flesh into a swollen, painful mass; then, at the very least the drugs have to be stopped for a few days, and at worst the arm may have to be amputated."

* sleeping sickness

"You mean ex-wives?"

"I had come here to Tambura for its parasites, the way some people go to Tanzania for its lions or Komodo for its dragons. In New York, where I live, the word parasite doesn't mean much, or at least not much in particular. When I'd tell people there I was studying parasites, some would say, "You mean tapeworms?" and some would say, "You mean ex-wives?" The word is slippery."

Hume is read by the person mentioning his work

"Hume wrote with such clarity that he puts to shame almost all current thinkers, and certainly the entire German graduate curriculum. Unlike Kant , Fichte, Schopenhauer, and Hegel , Hume is the kind of thinker who is sometimes read by the person mentioning his work ."

I have never been in any accident

"But in all my experience, I have never been in any accident… of any sort worth speaking about. I have seen but one vessel in distress in all my years at sea. I never saw a wreck and never have been wrecked nor was I ever in any predicament that threatened to end in disaster of any sort.”

~ E. J . Smith, 1907 , Captain , RMS Titanic

By imitating, we get closer to others

"The success of movies depends severely on contagions. Such contagions do not just apply to the movies: they seem to affect a wide range of cultural products. It is hard for us to accept that people do not fall in love with works of art only for their own sake, but also in order to feel that they belong to a community. By imitating, we get closer to others—that is, other imitators. It fights solitude."

Death is often a good career move for an author

"Furthermore, I believe that the big transition in social life came not with the gramophone, but when someone had the great but unjust idea to invent the alphabet , thus allowing us to store information and reproduce it . It accelerated further when another inventor had the even more dangerous and iniquitous notion of starting a printing press, thus promoting texts across boundaries and triggering what ultimately grew into a winner-take-all ecology. Now, what was so unjust about the spread of books? The alphabet allowed stories and ideas to be replicated with high fidelity and without limit , without any additional expenditure of energy on the author’s part for the subsequent performances. He didn’t even have to be alive for them—death is often a good career move for an author. This implies that those who, for some reason, start getting some attention can quickly reach more minds than others and displace the competitors from the bookshelves. In the days of bards and troubadours, everyone had an audience. A storyteller, like a baker or a coppersmith, had a market , and the assurance that none from far away could dislodge him from his territory. Today, a few take almost everything; the rest, next to nothing."

Being elected to Congress is regarded as…

Being elected to Congress is regarded as being sent on a looting raid for one's friends.

- George F. Will, Newsweek

You find the same sort of hierarchy and discipline in an office…

"The liberals and conservatives and Libertarians who lament totalitarianism are phoneys and hypocrites. . . You find the same sort of hierarchy and discipline in an office or factory as you do in a prison or a monastery. . . A worker is a part-time slave. The boss says when to show up, when to leave, and what to do in the meantime. He tells you how much work to do and how fast. He is free to carry his control to humiliating extremes, regulating, if he feels like it, the clothes you wear or how often you go to the bathroom. With a few exceptions he can fire you for any reason, or no reason. He has you spied on by snitches and supervisors, he amasses a dossier on every employee. Talking back is called 'insubordination,' just as if a worker is a naughty child, and it not only gets you fired, it disqualifies you for unemployment compensation. . .The demeaning system of domination I've described rules over half the waking hours of a majority of women and the vast majority of men for decades, for most of their lifespans. For certain purposes it's not too misleading to call our system democracy or capitalism or -- better still -- industrialism, but its real names are factory fascism and office oligarchy. Anybody who says these people are 'free' is lying or stupid."

[The Abolition of Work and other essays, p. 21] Bob Black

Wage slavery or starvation?

“Wage slavery or starvation?

That’s not a choice;

it’s a threat!”

But couldn't everyone's life become a work of art?

“What strikes me is the fact that in our society, art has become something which is related only to objects and not to individuals, or to life. That art is something which is specialized or which is done by experts who are artists. But couldn't everyone's life become a work of art? Why should the lamp or the house be an art object, but not our life?”

--Michel Foucault

The meeting of two personalities

The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.

C.G. Jung

You can hate a place with all your heart

...you can hate a place with all your heart and soul and still be homesick for it.

Joseph Mitchell

In government, the scum rises to the top

Powerful government tends to draw into it people with bloated egos, people who think they know more than everyone else and have little hesitance in coercing their fellow man. Or as Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek said, "in government, the scum rises to the top". - Walter E. Williams

The culture and the culture

The societal culture is a robber of individuality. It tries to enforce one-size-fits-all, mass produced, values and activities. It wants blind-followers and compliance.

There is another culture, an individualistic culture, where the individual exposes himself to a wide variety of cultures and picks and chooses cultural bits and pieces, as suit him and matches his temperament. He adopts them, mixes them, changes them, add some individual touches and the culture becomes him and he the culture; his very own culture; that flows and evolves with the individual. He molds the adopted culture bits and the individualized culture molds him. He owns it and it owns him. It's like an advanced sort of pet-owner relationship; at a certain point in relationship, the distinction between the owner and the pet disappears, and it becomes hard to say whether the owner owns the pet or is it the pet which owns the owner.

But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort

Political tags--such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and. so forth--are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.

-- Robert A. Heinlein

And the love of woman?

Adso of Melk: Master? Have you ever been in love?

William of Baskerville: In love? Yeah, many times.

Adso of Melk: You were?

William of Baskerville: Yes, of course. Aristotle, Ovid, Vergil...

Adso of Melk: No, no, no. I meant with a...

William of Baskerville: Oh. Ah. Are you not confusing love with lust?

Adso of Melk: Am I? I don't know. I want only her own good. I want her to be happy. I want to save her from her poverty.

William of Baskerville: Oh, dear.

Adso of Melk: Why "oh dear"?

William of Baskerville: You *are* in love.

Adso of Melk: Is that bad?

William of Baskerville: For a monk, it does present certain problems.

Adso of Melk: But doesn't St. Thomas Aquinas praise love above all other virtues?

William of Baskerville: Yes, the love of God, Adso. The love of God.

Adso of Melk: Oh... And the love of woman?

William of Baskerville: Of woman? Thomas Aquinas knew precious little, but the scriptures are very clear. Proverbs warns us, "Woman takes possession of a man's precious soul", while Ecclesiastes tells us, "More bitter than death is woman".

Adso of Melk: Yes, but what do you think, Master?

William of Baskerville: Well, of course I don't have the benefit of your experience, but I find it difficult to convince myself that God would have introduced such a foul being into creation without endowing her with *some* virtures. Hmm? How peaceful life would be without love, Adso, how safe, how tranquil, and how dull.

Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty

Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty.

Ronald Reagan

What are light quanta?

"In 1951, just four years before his death, he wrote:
‘All these fifty years of pondering have not brought me any closer to answering the question, what are light quanta?’"

That he may sometimes have missed the target in his speculations…

 

"The idea that light is made from particles – that is to say that ‘the electromagnetic field is quantized’ – was deeply controversial and not accepted for decades after Einstein first proposed it. The reluctance of Einstein’s peers to embrace the idea of the photon can be seen in the proposal, co-written by Planck himself, for Einstein’s membership of the prestigious Prussian Academy in 1913, a full eight years after Einstein’s introduction of the photon:

'In sum, one can say that there is hardly one among the great problems in which modern physics is so rich to which Einstein has not made a remarkable contribution. That he may sometimes have missed the target in his speculations, as, for example, in his hypothesis of light quanta, cannot really be held too much against him, for it is not possible to introduce really new ideas even in the most exact sciences without sometimes taking a risk.'

In other words, nobody really believed that photons were real. The widely held belief was that Planck was on safe ground because his proposal was more to do with the properties of matter – the little oscillators that emitted the light – rather than the light itself. It was simply too strange to believe that Maxwell’s beautiful wave equations needed replacing with a theory of particles."

The quantum of action

"We know the date and time of Planck’s revelation so well because he and his family had spent the afternoon of Sunday 7 October 1900 with his colleague Heinrich Rubens. Over lunch, they discussed the failure of the theoretical models of the day to explain the details of black body radiation. By the evening, Planck had scribbled a formula on to a postcard and sent it to Rubens. It turned out to be the correct formula, but it was very strange indeed. Planck later described it as ‘an act of desperation’, having tried everything else he could think of. It is genuinely unclear how Planck came up with his formula. In his superb biography of Albert Einstein, Subtle is the Lord …, Abraham Pais writes: ‘His reasoning was mad, but his madness has that divine quality that only the greatest transitional figures can bring to science.’ Planck’s proposal was both inexplicable and revolutionary. He found that he could explain the black body spectrum, but only if he assumed that the energy of the emitted light was made up of a large number of smaller ‘packets’ of energy. In other words the total energy is quantized in units of a new fundamental constant of Nature, which Planck called ‘the quantum of action’. Today, we call it Planck’s constant."

A doorway for charlatans and purveyors of tripe

"Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle is one of the most misunderstood parts of quantum theory, a doorway through which all sorts of charlatans and purveyors of tripe can force their philosophical musings."

When Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. – Tom Lehrer

A cornerstone of modern biology

The Nobel-Prize-winning French biologist Jacques Monod defined a cornerstone of modern biology as

 

‘the systematic or axiomatic denial that scientific knowledge can be obtained on the basis of theories that involve, explicitly or not, a teleological principle’.

A reflection of our lack of knowledge

"If we toss the coin 100 times, we expect, on average, that fifty times it will land heads and fifty times tails. Pre-quantum theory, we were obliged to say that, if we knew everything there is to know about the coin – the precise way we tossed it into the air, the pull of gravity, the details of little air currents that swish through the room, the temperature of the air, etc. – then we could, in principle, work out whether the coin would land heads or tails. The emergence of probabilities in this context is therefore a reflection of our lack of knowledge about the system, rather than something intrinsic to the system itself."

Political elections do not choose leaders of society

Political elections do not choose leaders of society. Rather, they are an exercise in which groups of people choose individuals who will assist them in looting other groups of individuals, those folks who were unfortunate enough not to be able to elect their own political strongman. The process can be downright blatant, as is the case in African and Asian countries, or it can be relatively subtle as it is in the United States, where the trappings of "constitutionality" and "rule of law" hide many of the more nefarious goings on. – William Anderson, Are Politicians Leaders?

Democracy is a con game

“Democracy is a con game. It’s a word invented to placate people to make them accept a given institution. All institutions sing, ‘We are free.’ The minute you hear ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’, watch out… because in a truly free nation, no one has to tell you you’re free.”

- Jacque Fresco

Today academics depend on one another’s opinion

"Thus I rail against the exceedingly theoretical language problems that have made much of modern philosophy largely irrelevant to what is derisively called the “general public.” (In the past , for better or worse, those rare philosophers and thinkers who were not self-standing depended on a patron’s support . Today academics in abstract disciplines depend on one another’s opinion, without external checks, with the severe occasional pathological result of turning their pursuits into insular prowess-showing contests.)"

‘Half genius, half buffoon’

"Richard Feynman, the Nobel Prize-winning, bongo-playing New Yorker described by his friend and collaborator Freeman Dyson as ‘half genius, half buffoon’. Dyson later changed his opinion: Feynman could be more accurately described as ‘all genius, all buffoon’."

The worst thing in life

 

“I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up all alone, it’s not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people that make you feel alone.”

~ Robbie William

…into killing each other

 

“War is where the young and stupid are tricked by the old and bitter into killing each other.”

~ Niko Bellic

It is impossible to travel faster than the speed of light

‘It is impossible to travel faster than the speed of light and certainly not desirable, as one’s hat keeps blowing off.’

~ Woody Allen

Quantum all the way

"Newton’s three laws provide a framework for describing the motion of things under the influence of a force. The first law describes what happens to an object when no forces act: the object either just sits still or moves in a straight line at constant speed. We shall be looking for an equivalent statement for quantum particles later on, and it’s not giving the game away too much to say that quantum particles do not just sit still – they leap around all over the place even when no forces are present. In fact, the very notion of ‘force’ is absent in the quantum theory, and so Newton’s second law is bound for the wastepaper basket too. We do mean that, by the way – Newton’s laws are heading for the bin because they have been exposed as only approximately correct. They work well in many instances but fail totally when it comes to describing quantum phenomena. The laws of quantum theory replace Newton’s laws and furnish a more accurate description of the world. Newton’s physics emerges out of the quantum description, and it is important to realize that the situation is not ‘Newton for big things and quantum for small’: it is quantum all the way."

Heisenberg’s 1925 paper was pure magic

"Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg, one of the greatest living physicists, wrote of Heisenberg’s 1925 paper:

If the reader is mystified at what Heisenberg was doing, he or she is not alone. I have tried several times to read the paper that Heisenberg wrote on returning from Heligoland, and, although I think I understand quantum mechanics, I have never understood Heisenberg’s motivations for the mathematical steps in his paper. Theoretical physicists in their most successful work tend to play one of two roles: they are either sages or magicians . . . It is usually not difficult to understand the papers of sage-physicists, but the papers of magician-physicists are often incomprehensible. In that sense, Heisenberg’s 1925 paper was pure magic."

He has position without magnitude

"By all accounts, Rutherford was an engaging and no-nonsense individual: he once described a self-important official as being

‘like a Euclidean point: he has position without magnitude’."

Science’s first encounter with Nature’s dice

"In 1900, Rutherford noted the problem: ‘all atoms formed at the same time should last for a definite interval. This, however, is contrary to the observed law of transformation, in which the atoms have a life embracing all values from zero to infinity.’ This randomness in the behaviour of the microworld came as a shock because, until this point, science was resolutely deterministic. If, at some instant in time, you knew everything it is possible to know about something, then it was believed you could predict with absolute certainty what would happen to it in the future. The breakdown of this kind of predictability is a key feature of quantum theory: it deals with probabilities rather than certainties, not because we lack absolute knowledge, but because some aspects of Nature are, at their very heart, governed by the laws of chance. And so we now understand that it is simply impossible to predict when a particular atom will decay. Radioactive decay was science’s first encounter with Nature’s dice, and it confused many physicists for a long time."

To be grateful for the opportunity to do so?

 

How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?

~ Charles Bukowski - Factotum (1975)

Commitment, after all, isn’t dogmatism

"Commitment, after all, isn’t dogmatism. The universe is a big place, and it’s folly to presume that one’s own perspective maps all its corners in a perfectly adequate way."

Difference between a democracy and a dictatorship

The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting.

- Charles Bukowski

A society that has destroyed all adventure

 

In a society that has destroyed all adventure,the only adventure left is to destroy that society

Thandie Smith

Terms made for knowledge to describe its opposite

"What many people commoditize and label as “unknown,” “improbable, ” or “uncertain” is not the same thing to me; it is not a concrete and precise category of knowledge, a nerdified field, but its opposite; it is the lack (and limitations) of knowledge. It is the exact contrary of knowledge; one should learn to avoid using terms made for knowledge to describe its opposite."

The normal is often irrelevant

"I don’t particularly care about the usual . If you want to get an idea of a friend’s temperament , ethics, and personal elegance, you need to look at him under the tests of severe circumstances, not under the regular rosy glow of daily life. Can you assess the danger a criminal poses by examining only what he does on an ordinary day? Can we understand health without considering wild diseases and epidemics? Indeed the normal is often irrelevant ."

We are a very unfair one

"Everybody knows that you need more prevention than treatment , but few reward acts of prevention. We glorify those who left their names in history books at the expense of those contributors about whom our books are silent . We humans are not just a superficial race (this may be curable to some extent); we are a very unfair one."

Half of being smart

"Half of being smart is knowing what you're dumb at." -Solomon Short

The unsung heroes

"Assume that a legislator with courage, influence, intellect , vision, and perseverance manages to enact a law that goes into universal effect and employment on September 10, 2001; it imposes the continuously locked bulletproof doors in every cockpit (at high costs to the struggling airlines)—just in case terrorists decide to use planes to attack the World Trade Center in New York City. I know this is lunacy, but it is just a thought experiment (I am aware that there may be no such thing as a legislator with intellect , courage, vision, and perseverance; this is the point of the thought experiment). The legislation is not a popular measure among the airline personnel , as it complicates their lives. But it would certainly have prevented 9/11.

The person who imposed locks on cockpit doors gets no statues in public squares, not so much as a quick mention of his contribution in his obituary. “Joe Smith, who helped avoid the disaster of 9/11, died of complications of liver disease. ” Seeing how superfluous his measure was, and how it squandered resources, the public, with great help from airline pilots, might well boot him out of office. Vox clamantis in deserto. He will retire depressed, with a great sense of failure. He will die with the impression of having done nothing useful . I wish I could go attend his funeral , but , reader, I can’t find him. And yet , recognition can be quite a pump . Believe me, even those who genuinely claim that they do not believe in recognition, and that they separate labor from the fruits of labor, actually get a serotonin kick from it . See how the silent hero is rewarded: even his own hormonal system will conspire to offer no reward."

The more they think of making a fortune

" The more they think of making a fortune the less they think of virtue, for when riches and virtue are placed together in the scales of balance, the one always rises as the other falls..." Plato

Why our obsession for the dead heroes?

Why our obsession for the dead heroes? I mean, after all, they lost it out there, with all their passions and good intentions and whatever’s. They lived with the same passions, same will to sacrifice. They weren’t heroes then, well maybe not of such suture. After death, they become the giant air balloons, lofty and visible from far. Why don’t we find the living, contributing, heroes more appealing?

What are our minds made for?

"But there is a deeper question: What are our minds made for? It looks as if we have the wrong user’s manual . Our minds do not seem made to think and introspect ; if they were, things would be easier for us today, but then we would not be here today and I would not have been here to talk about it—my counterfactual , introspective, and hard-thinking ancestor would have been eaten by a lion while his nonthinking but faster-reacting cousin would have run for cover. Consider that thinking is time-consuming and generally a great waste of energy, that our predecessors spent more than a hundred million years as nonthinking mammals and that in the blip in our history during which we have used our brain we have used it on subjects too peripheral to matter. Evidence shows that we do much less thinking than we believe we do—except , of course, when we think about it ."

We scorn it with passion

"We do not spontaneously learn that we don’t learn that we don’t learn. The problem lies in the structure of our minds: we don’t learn rules, just facts, and only facts. Metarules (such as the rule that we have a tendency to not learn rules) we don’t seem to be good at getting. We scorn the abstract ; we scorn it with passion."

On success and randomness

Success is a risk taking venture. For a huge success you have to come up with a novel idea, and fresh ideas come with a high risk of not finding general acceptance. These ideas are born, and then like Brownian motion, they get kicked all over the place. Only those that travel in the direction of visibility go viral. Success is, somewhat, a random phenomena.

What you know can be truly inconsequential

"Isn’t it strange to see an event happening precisely because it was not supposed to happen? What kind of defense do we have against that? Whatever you come to know (that New York is an easy terrorist target , for instance) may become inconsequential if your enemy knows that you know it . It may be odd that , in such a strategic game, what you know can be truly inconsequential ."

Life is the cumulative effect of a handful of significant shocks

"life is the cumulative effect of a handful of significant shocks"

All you need is one single black bird

"It illustrates a severe limitation to our learning from observations or experience and the fragility of our knowledge. One single observation can invalidate a general statement derived from millennia of confirmatory sightings of millions of white swans. All you need is one single (and, I am told, quite ugly) black bird."

The truth is not always beautiful

“The truth is not always beautiful, nor beautiful words the truth.” ~Lao Tzu Tao Te Ching

Government is a disease

 

"Government is a disease masquerading as its own cure." — Robert LeFevre

The art of politics, under democracy, is simply the art of ringing it

"The art of politics, under democracy, is simply the art of ringing it. Two branches reveal themselves. There is the art of the demagogue, and there is the art of what may be called, by a shot-gun marriage of Latin and Greek, the demaslave. They are complementary, and both of them are degrading to their practitioners. The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots. The demaslave is one who listens to what these idiots have to say and then pretends that he believes it himself."

-- H.L. Mencken

A sin of the man against himself

'Curative means or healing is only the reverse side of punishment, the theory of cure runs parallel to the theory of punishment; if the latter sees in an action a sin against right, the former takes it for a sin of the man against himself, as a decadence from his health.'

~ Stirner

The man who is called 'criminal' is simply unfortunate

"Peoples without political organization, and therefore less depraved than ourselves, have perfectly understood that the man who is called 'criminal' is simply unfortunate; that the remedy is not to flog him, to chain him up, or to kill him on the scaffold or in prison, but to help him by the most brotherly care, by treatment based on equality, but the usages of life amongst honest men."

~ Kropotkin

Under the sanction of the priest

Law thus made its appearance
'under the sanction of the priest, and the warrior's club was placed at its service'.
~ Kropotkin

Every case is a rule to itself

"Every case is a rule to itself"

By which tyrants have purchased the countenance and alliance of the inferior

Law is a

'venal compact by which superior tyrants have purchased the countenance and alliance of the inferior'

~ Godwin

Immutable reason is the true legislator

'Immutable reason is the true legislator'

~ Godwin

Anarchy demonstrates that there cannot be any good laws

'Anarchy demonstrates that there cannot be any good laws, nor good governments, nor faithful applications of the law ... all human law is arbitrary.'

~ Jean Grave

It claims a moral right to inflict physical penalties

Tolstoy observed, the characteristic feature of government is that 'it claims a moral right to inflict physical penalties, and by its decree to make murder a good action'.

'Rules, made by people who govern by means of organized violence

'Rules, made by people who govern by means of organized violence, for non-compliance with which the non­com pliant is subjected to blows, to loss of liberty, or even to being murdered'

~ Tolstoy

Busy is a drug that a lot of people are addicted to

 

Busy is a drug that a lot of people are addicted to.

~ Rob Bell

And there have been reams of drivel penned in its name

"Quantum theory does, admittedly, have something of a reputation for weirdness, and there have been reams of drivel penned in its name. Cats can be both alive and dead; particles can be in two places at once; Heisenberg says everything is uncertain. These things are all true, but the conclusion so often drawn – that since something strange is afoot in the microworld, we are steeped in mystery – is most definitely not. Extrasensory perception, mystical healing, vibrating bracelets to protect us from radiation and who-knows what-else are regularly smuggled into the pantheon of the possible under the cover of the word ‘quantum’. This is nonsense born from a lack of clarity of thought, wishful thinking, genuine or mischievous misunderstanding, or some unfortunate combination of all of the above."

There are only two methods available, to administrate any society

However, in principle and in reality, there are only two methods available, to administrate any society — the voluntary and the involuntary. -- Norman Imberman

Voting creates an inherent "lifeboat scenario"

Voting creates an inherent "lifeboat scenario" for us all, being constantly at peril of our lives, liberty and property from the ever-present threat of the state. Therefore voting can, at best, be presumed to be the act of an individual using one of an array of available options for self-defense. Furthermore, voting can not be construed as consent to the overall condition of subjection to the state because ballots do not contain a referendum on that situation. They merely represent a choice among various referenda and candidates regarding the implementation of that coercion.

-- Spencer Morgan

The losers are other instances of oneself

"It is a bit like winning a lottery : the winner cannot properly explain what has just happened without invoking the existence of many losers. In the multiverse, the losers are other instances of oneself ."

If one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country

If one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policemen, the lawyers, the judges, or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected – those, precisely, who need the law's protection most! – and listens to their testimony.

– James Baldwin, African-American Author, "No Name in the Street"

A typical electron is an irreducibly multiversal object

"Thanks to the strong internal interference that it is continuously undergoing, a typical electron is an irreducibly multiversal object , and not a collection of parallel -universe or parallel -histories objects. That is to say , it has multiple positions and multiple speeds without being divisible into autonomous sub-entities each of which has one speed and one position . Even different electrons do not have completely separate identities. So the reality is an electron field through out the whole of space, and disturbances spread through this field as waves, at the speed of light or below. This is what gave rise to the often quoted misconception among the pioneers of quantum theory that electrons (and likewise all other particles) are ‘ particles and waves at the same time’ . There is a field (or ‘ waves’ ) in the multiverse for every individual particle that we observe in a particular universe."

Uncertainty principle is not a ‘principle’

"Nor, by the way , is the uncertainty principle a ‘ principle’ , for that suggests an independent postulate that could logically be dropped or replaced to obtain a different theory . In fact one could no more drop it from quantum theory than one could omit eclipses from astronomy . There is no ‘ principle of eclipses’ : their existence can be deduced from theories of much greater generality , such as those of the solar system’s geometry and dynamics. Similarly , the uncertainty principle is deduced from the principles of quantum theory ."

It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law

“Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.”

~Henry David Thoreau, Essays on Civil Disobedience

No country was ever ruined by trade

No country was ever ruined by trade. -- Benjamin Franklin

People who are not fighting

All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.
---George Orwell

To believe everything or to doubt everything

"There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking."

~ Alfred Korzybski

Society performs for itself almost everything which is ascribed to government

"Great part of that order which reigns among mankind is not the effect of government. It has its origin in the principles of society and the natural constitution of man. It existed prior to government, and would exist if the formality of government was abolished. The mutual dependence and reciprocal interest which man has upon man, and all the parts of civilised community upon each other, create that great chain of connection which holds it together. The landholder, the farmer, the manufacturer, the merchant, the tradesman, and every occupation, prospers by the aid which each receives from the other, and from the whole. Common interest regulates their concerns, and forms their law; and the laws which common usage ordains, have a greater influence than the laws of government. In fine, society performs for itself almost everything which is ascribed to government."
-Thomas Paine, "The Rights of Man" (1792)

We Marxists are opposed to all and every kind of State

'We Marxists are opposed to all and every kind of State'

~ Lenin

Into the museum of antiquities

"Society, which will reorganise production on the basis of a free and equal association of the producers, will put the whole machinery of the state where it will then belong: into the museum of antiquities, by the side of the spinning-wheel and the bronze axe."

~ Engels

There have been societies that did without it

'The state, then, has not existed from all eternity. There have been societies that did without it, that had no idea of the state and state power.'

~ Engels

A lonely crowd buttressed by the social worker and policeman

"Anarchists reject the claim made by democratic socialists that the State is the best means of redistributing wealth and providing welfare. In practice, the socialist State tends to spawn a vast bureaucracy which stifles the life of the community. It creates a new elite of bureaucrats who often administer in their own interest rather than in the interest of those they are meant to serve. It encourages dependency and conformity by threatening to withdraw its aid or by rewarding those it favours. By undermining voluntary associations and the practice of mutual aid, it eventually turns society into a lonely crowd buttressed by the social worker and policeman. Only if social democrats adopt a libertarian and decentralized form of socialism can anarchists join them in their endeavours and encourage them to adopt the principles of voluntary federation and association."

I have therefore only pretended to pretend

To pretend, I actually do the thing: I have therefore only pretended to pretend.

Jacques Derrida

Where poverty is enforced

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is in an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.
Frederick Douglass, Speech, April 1886

Our own resolute efforts to improve things

"It is one of the sublimest aspects of Popper's philosophy that, austerely rigorous though it is in its invocation of logical principles, it nonetheless exudes a deep sense of understanding of human imperfection. By insisting that the answer to our ignorance and to our fallibility lies not in pretending to know more than we do, or to know it more surely, but only in our own resolute efforts to improve things, Popper succeeds in restoring to human beings some of the dignity and the self-respect of which modern philosophy has sometimes seemed all too disposed to dispossess them."

How much will you indulge in your flaws?

 

Dr. Wick: Quis hic locus?, quae regio?, quae mundi plaga? What world is this?... What kingdom?... What shores of what worlds? It's a very big question you're faced with, Susanna. The *choice* of your *life*. How much will you indulge in your flaws? What are your flaws? Are they flaws?... If you embrace them, will you commit yourself to hospital?... for life? Big questions, big decisions! Not surprising you profess carelessness about them.

Exclude from serious consideration proposals that we cannot criticize

"What ought to disturb us are not mistakes in general, but only those of them that we are powerless to correct. Indeed, we are plainly entitled to exclude from serious consideration proposals that we cannot criticize and therefore cannot put right. For once we embark on the venture of investigating the world and our involvement in it, we cannot shrink from scrutinizing every move we make and abandoning those that turn out to be mistaken. And if this is to work, we must from the start disallow ideas that cannot, if mistaken, be corrected. We can be indulgent towards the occurrence of errors; indeed, we must be, for whatever we do we shall not dodge them all. But incorrigible, irrevocable, or uncontrollable errors we cannot afford to commit. It is the perpetuation of errors that interferes with our understanding; and it is this, rather than their perpetration, that we must exert ourselves determinedly to avert."

Maybe we are all cabinets of wonders

Maybe we are all cabinets of wonders.

Brian Selznick

We must be fully prepared to commit mistakes first

"We all make mistakes; to err is not distinctively human. But although many other living things, animals and even plants, do have a partial ability to anticipate some of their mistakes, to recognize them and even to learn from them, only human beings, it seems, actively assert themselves in this direction. Rather than wait for errors to reveal themselves, perhaps with disastrous consequences, we consciously and deliberately seek them out: we put our ideas and inventions to the test, we probe critically, we scrap what we find to be wrong and try again. Mingled with this critical attitude there is admittedly a distinctive human weakness : the feeling that we should be ashamed of our mistakes, and should regret making them, since they must be the result of our incompetence or our lack of mature insight. Yet such qualms are out of place and need to be firmly quashed, for there is no way known of systematically avoiding error; no way known, in particular, of avoiding it in our exploration of the unknown. Thus a reluctance to make mistakes typically degenerates into a wariness of new ideas, into a distaste for any kind of bold initiative. If we are in earnest to discover what the world is like, we must be fully prepared to correct mistakes; but if we are to correct them, we must be fully prepared to commit them first."

The world is ours

 

“The world is yours ....

Remove the "Y" that asks "Why not mine alone ?" .

What do you get ? The world is ours !

Bonding creates progress if there is cooperation .”

Understanding of the social reality and committed work to change it

"The record of anarchist ideas, and even more, of the inspiring struggles of people who have sought to liberate themselves from oppression and domination must be treasured and preserved, not as a means of freezing thought and conception in some new mold but as a basis for understanding of the social reality and committed work to change it. There is no reason to suppose that history is at an end, that the current structures of authority and domination are graven in stone. It would also be a great error to underestimate the power of social forces that will fight to main­tain power and privilege."

~ Chomsky

As oppressive as the most totalitarian state

"The "democratic state," once it was challenged, would become as oppressive as the most totalitarian state."

Chomsky's anarchism

"So here are some key components of Chomsky's anarchism: an awareness of anarchist history and how it still retains a freshness and urgency in the light of today's challenges; a broad and generous definition of anarchism that links left and council communists in its critique of capitalism and sees them as nat­ural allies; the central importance of class in any critique of capitalism and in creating anarchy; and a belief in people's innate goodness, which is reflected in actions and structures that contribute to what Rocker, in Anarcho-Syndicalism, calls "a definite trend in (he historic development of mankind, which ... strives for the free, unhindered unfolding of all the individual and social forces in life." All of this is allied to a flexible methodology through which to accom­plish this unfolding, a willingness to change tactics, to consider a variety of strategies, and a reluctance to speak with too much certainty or rigidness."

Liberalism's pretense to humane ends

 

"As Chomsky amply and admirably demonstrates, when the major issues of an era are settled in blood, liberalism's pretense to humane ends or means crumbles under the demands of an implacable state."

~ Peter Werbe

It is to liberating the great network of human co-operation

 

"It is to liberating the great network of human co-operation that even now spreads through all the levels of our lives than to creating or even imagining brave new worlds that they have bent their efforts."

~ Woodcock

An anarchist society

"An anarchist society, a society that organizes itself without authority, is always in existence ... buried under the weight of the state and its bureaucracy, capitalism and its waste, privilege, reli­gious differences, nationalism and its suicidal loyalties, religious differences and their superstitious separatism."

~ Colin Ward - Anarchy in Action (I973)

A society to be approached by lifestyle rebellion

"Anarchism appeals to

"those people of all classes who seek a society where the potentialities of existence are varied and liberated, a society to be approached by lifestyle rebellion as well as economic struggle."

A sad historical footnote

"A world where every person participates directly in  the  decisions that affect their daily lives and illegitimate authority is consigned to  its proper place: a sad historical footnote about the days before we got our act  together and set things right."

Critique without an underlying vision is mere complaint

"Critique without an underlying vision is mere complaint"

He wrote his first pro-anarchist essay at the age of ten

"While "anarchy" was proclaimed loudly from the stages of some punk rock shows I attended. I felt isolated in my belief that there was something profound, and profoundly serious, about the doctrine I had adopted-something beyond easy exhortations to "smash the state," without any suggestion of how, or what to replace it with. I'd read the classics-Proudhon. Bakunin, Kropotkin-but they were hard to find, (to mention dead). Chomsky was not only alive, he was a widely-read, well-respected intellectual, who wrote his first pro-anarchist essay at the age of ten, hung our at anarchist newsstands and bookshops on 4th Avenue in Manhattan as a teenager (not far from my punk stomping grounds), and still maintained his anti-authoritarian beliefs as an adult."

Stupidity lasts forever

“Youth ages, immaturity is outgrown, ignorance can be educated, and drunkenness sobered, but stupidity lasts forever.” ~Aristophanes

Life is not a problem to be solved

“Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.” ~Søren Kierkegaard

Loving someone deeply gives you courage

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” ~Lao Tzu

Our ignorance is sobering and boundless

"Our ignorance is sobering and boundless. Indeed, it is precisely the staggering progress of the natural sciences which constantly opens our eyes anew to our ignorance, even in the field of the natural sciences themselves. This gives a new twist to the Socratic idea of ignorance. With each step forward, with each problem which we solve, we not only discover new and unsolved problems, but we also discover that where we believed that we were standing on firm and safe ground, all things are, in truth, insecure and in a state of flux."

And may truly be said not to exist

"When I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I can never catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception. When my perceptions are removed for any time, as by sound sleep, so long am I insensible of myself, and may truly be said not to exist. (A Treatise of Human Nature, Book One)"

At moments in time which start to recede into the past

"The idea that we should seize the day does not tell us what matters in life. We need first to identify that, or else what we seize may be empty or worthless. The wisdom of carpe diem is that time is short, this is the only life we have and we should not squander it. This wisdom is turned to folly if we assume this means that only pleasure counts, and thus spend our days forever grasping at moments in time which start to recede into the past even as we reach for them."

The cult of pleasure

"It’s a message that we need to counter the cult of pleasure which now dominates advertisements and lifestyle magazines. They seem to offer the promise that, if we can fill our lives with enough restaurant meals, mini-breaks, holidays and gourmet dinner parties we will get enough pleasure to have full and satisfied lives. They also promote a kind of hedonistic angst, the fear that there are great pleasures others are enjoying which we are not. To have to answer negatively the question in the title of William Sutcliffe’s satire on backpacking culture, Are You Experienced?, is to admit we haven’t lived.'"

The government always gets in

 

“Whoever you vote for, the government always gets in”

The Constitution is no contract

"The American individualist Lysander Spooner exploded the contractual theory of the State by analysing the US Constitution. He could find no evidence of anyone ever making a contract to set up a government, and argued that it was absurd to look to the practice of voting or paying taxes as evidence of tacit consent. 'It is plain', he concluded, 'that on the general principles of law and reason ... the Constitution is no contract; that it binds nobody, and never did anybody; and that all those who pretend to act by its authority . . . are mere usurpers, and that every body not only has the right, but is morally bound, to treat them as such.'"

No one can truly represent anyone else

"Although anarchists feel that representative democracy is preferable to monarchy, aristocracy or despotism, they still consider it to be essentially oppressive. They rebut the twin pillars of the democratic theory of the State - representation and majority rule. In the first place, no one can truly represent anyone else and it is impossible to delegate one's authority. Secondly, the majority has no more right to dictate to the minority, even a minority of one, than the minority to the majority, To decide upon 'truth by the casting up of votes, Godwin wrote, is a 'flagrant insult to all reason and justice'. The idea that the government can control the individual and his property simply because it reflects the will of the majority is therefore plainly unjust."

An instrument in the hands of the ruling classes to maintain power over the people

"Anarchists argue, on the other hand, that even the most minimal 'night­ watchman' State advocated by modern libertarians would be controlled by the rich and powerful and be used to defend their interests and privileges. However much it claims to protect individual rights, the government will always become 'an instrument in the hands of the ruling classes to maintain power over the people' . Rather than providing healthy stability, it prevents positive change; instead of imposing order, it creates conflict; where it tries to foster enterprise, it destroys initiative. It claims to bring about security, but it only increases anxiety."

Class with 'administrative needs'

 

'the State is a hybridization of political with social institutions, of coercive with distributive functions, of highly punitive with regulatory procedures, and finally of class with 'administrative needs'

~ Murray Bookchin

State

State

"the sum total of political, legislative, judiciary, military and financial institutions through which the management of their affairs, the control over their personal behaviour, the responsibility for their personal safety, are taken away from the people and entrusted to others who, by usurpation or delegation, are vested with the powers to make the laws for everything and everybody, and to oblige the people to observe them, if need be, by the use of collective force."

Malatesta - In his pamphlet Anarchy (1891)

Science evolves from funeral to funeral

"I conclude with the following saddening remark about scientists in the soft sciences. People confuse science and scientists. Science is great, but individual scientists are dangerous. They are human; they are marred by the biases humans have. Perhaps even more. For most scientists are hard headed, otherwise they would not derive the patience and energy to perform the Herculean tasks asked of them, like spending 18 hours a day perfecting their doctoral thesis.

A scientist may be forced to act like a cheap defense lawyer rather than a pure seeker of the truth. A doctoral thesis is "defended" by the applicant; it would be a rare situation to see the student change his mind upon being supplied with a convincing argument. But science is better than scientists. It was said that science evolves from funeral to funeral."

The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism

The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.

Wole Soyinka

Chance events coupled with positive feedback

"Brian Arthur, an economist concerned with nonlinearities at the Santa Fe Institute, wrote that chance events coupled with positive feedback rather than technological superiority will determine economic superiority - not some abstrusely defined edge in a given area of expertise. While early economic models excluded randomness, Arthur explained how "unexpected orders, chance meetings with lawyers, managerial whims . . . would help determine which ones achieved early sales and, over time, which firms dominated"."

Those who win capture almost all the customers

"It is obvious that the information age, by homogenizing our tastes, is causing the unfairness to be even more acute - those who win capture almost all the customers. The example that strikes most as the most spectacular lucky success is that of the software maker Microsoft and its moody founder Bill Gates. While it is hard to deny that Gates is a man of high personal standards, work ethics, and above average intelligence, is he the best? Does he deserve it? Clearly not. Most people are equipped with his software (like myself) because other people are equipped with his software, a purely circular effect (economists call that "network externalities"). Nobody ever claimed that it was the best software product. Most of Gates's rivals have an obsessive jealousy of his success. There are maddened by the fact that he managed to win so big while many of them are struggling to make their companies survive."

A path dependent outcome

"Researchers frequently use the example of QWERTY to describe the vicious dynamics of winning and losing in an economy, and to illustrate how the final outcome is more than frequently the undeserved one. The arrangement of the letters on a typewriter is an example of the success of the least deserving method. For our typewriters have the orders of the letters on their keyboard arranged in a non-optimal manner, as a matter of fact in such a non-optimal manner as to slow down the typing rather than make the job easy, in order to avoid jamming the ribbons as they were designed for less electronic days. Therefore, as we started building better typewriters and computerized word processors, several attempts were made to rationalize the computer keyboard, to no avail. People were trained on a QWERTY keyboard and their habits were too sticky for change. Just like the helical propulsion of an actor into stardom, people patronize what other people like to do. Forcing a rational dynamic on the process would be superfluous, nay, impossible. This is called a path dependent outcome, and has thwarted many mathematical attempts at modeling behavior."

Good people disobey bad laws

 

“Good people disobey bad laws”

You need power, only when you want to do something harmful

Perfect anarchism moto (just replace word you with state);

“You need power, only when you want to do something harmful, otherwise love is enough to get everything done.”

~ Charlie Chaplin

When is it truly not luck?

"I am frequently asked the question: when is it truly not luck? To be honest, I am unable to answer it. I can tell that person A seems less lucky than person B, but the confidence in such knowledge can be so weak as to be meaningless. I prefer to remain a skeptic. People frequently misinterpret my opinion. I never said that every rich man is an idiot and every unsuccessful person unlucky, only that in absence of much additional information I prefer to reserve my judgment. It is safer."

A finding of absence and an absence of findings

"Science is marred by a pernicious survivorship bias, affecting the way research gets published. In a way that is similar to journalism, research that yields no result does not make it to print. That may seem sensible, as newspapers do not have to have a screaming headline saying that nothing new is taking place (though the Bible was smart enough to declare ein cbadash tacht hashemesb - "nothing new under the sun", providing the information that things just do recur). The problem is that a finding of absence and an absence of findings get mixed together. There may be great information in the fact that nothing took place. As Sherlock Holmes noted in the Silver Blaze case - the curious thing was that the dog did not bark. More problematically, there are plenty of scientific results that are left out of publications because they are not statistically significant, but nevertheless provide information."

Spontaneous remission

"Many of these claims have been harmless outside of the financial profits for these charlatans - but many cancer patients may have replaced the more scientifically investigated therapies, in favor of these methods and died as a result of their neglecting more orthodox cures (again, the nonscientific methods are gathered under what is called "alternative medicine", that is, unproven therapies and the medical community has difficulties convincing the press that there is only one medicine and that alternative medicine is not medicine). The reader might wonder about my claims that the user of these products could be sincere, without it meaning that he was cured by the illusory treatment. The reason is something called "spontaneous remission", in which a very small minority of cancer patients, for reasons that remain entirely speculative, wipe out cancer cells and recover "miraculously". Some switch causes the patient's immune system to eradicate all cancer cells from the body. These people would have been equally cured by drinking a glass of Vermont spring water or chewing on dried beef as they were by taking these beautifully wrapped pills. Finally, these spontaneous remissions might not be so spontaneous; they might, at the bottom, have a cause that we are not yet sophisticated enough to detect."

The truth about alternative medicine

"When I return home from an Asian or European trip, my jet lag often causes me to rise at a very early hour. Occasionally, though very rarely, I switch on the TV set searching for market information. What strikes me in these morning explorations is the abundance of claims by the alternative medicine vendors of the curing power of their products. These no doubt are caused by the lower advertising rates at that time. To prove their claim, they present the convincing testimonial of someone who was cured thanks to their methods. For instance, I once saw a former throat cancer patient explaining how he was saved by a combination of vitamins for sale for the exceptionally low price of $14.95 - in all likelihood he was sincere (although of course compensated for his account, perhaps with a lifetime supply of such medicine). In spite of our advances, people still believe in the existence of links between disease and cure based on such information, and there is no scientific evidence that can convince them more potently than a sincere and emotional testimonial. Such testimonial does not always come from the regular guy; statements by Nobel Prize winners (in the wrong discipline) could easily suffice. Linus Pauling, a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, was said to believe in vitamin C's medicinal properties, himself ingesting massive daily doses. With his bully pulpit, he contributed to the common belief in vitamin C's curative properties. Many medical studies, unable to replicate Pauling's claims, fell on deaf ears as it was difficult to undo the testimonial by a "Nobel Prize winner", even if he was not qualified to discuss matters related to medicine."

Any idea of Utopia is necessarily closed

"Popper believed that any idea of Utopia is necessarily closed in the fact that it chokes its own refutations. The simple notion of a good model for society that cannot be left open for falsification is totalitarian."

I think I’m greedy

I think I’m greedy, but I’m not greedy for money - I think that can be a burden - I’m greedy for an exciting life.

David Hockney

The father of all pseudothinkers

"It is hard to resist discussion of artificial history without a comment on the father of all pseudothinkers, Hegel. Hegel writes a jargon that is meaningless outside of a chic Left-Bank Parisian cafe or the humanities department of some university extremely well insulated from the real world. I suggest this passage from the German "philosopher" (this passage was detected, translated and reviled by Karl Popper):

“Sound is the change in the specific condition of segregation of the material parts, and in the negation of this condition ; merely an abstract or an ideal ideality, as it were, of that specification. But this change, accordingly, is itself immediately the negation of the material specific subsistence; which is, therefore, real ideality of specific gravity and cohesion, i.e. - heat. The heating up of sounding bodies, just as of beaten and or rubbed ones, is the appearance of heat, originating conceptually together with sound.”

Even a Monte Carlo engine could not sound as random as the great philosophical master thinker (it would take plenty of sample runs to get the mixture of heat and sound). People call that philosophy and frequently finance it with taxpayer subsidies! Now consider that Hegelian thinking is generally linked to a "scientific" approach to history; it has produced such results as Marxist regimes and even a branch called "neo-Hegelian" thinking. These "thinkers" should be given an undergraduate-level class on statistical sampling theory prior to their release in the open world."

The media is paid to get your attention

"The problem with information is not that it is diverting and generally useless, but that it is toxic. We will examine the dubious value of the highly frequent news with a more technical discussion of signal filtering and observation frequency further down. I will say here that such respect for the time honored provides arguments to rule out any commerce with the babbling modern journalist and implies a minimal exposure to the media as a guiding principle for someone involved in decision-making under uncertainty. If there is anything better than noise in the mass of "urgent" news pounding us, it would be like a needle in a haystack. People do not realize that the media is paid to get your attention. For a journalist, silence rarely surpasses any word."

Even more "new new things"

"The argument in favor of "new things" and even more "new new things" goes as follows: look at the dramatic changes that have been brought about by the arrival of new technologies, such as the automobile, the airplane, the telephone, and the personal computer. Middlebrow inference (inference stripped of probabilistic thinking) would lead one to believe that all new technologies and inventions would likewise revolutionize our lives. But the answer is not so obvious: here we only see and count the winners, to the exclusion of the losers (it is like saying that actors and writers are rich, ignoring the fact that actors are largely waiters - and lucky to be ones for the less comely writers usually serve French fries at McDonald's). Losers? The Saturday newspaper lists dozens of new patents of such items that can revolutionize our lives. People tend to infer that because some inventions have revolutionized our lives that inventions are good to endorse and we should favor the new over the old. I hold the opposite view. The opportunity cost of missing a "new new thing" like the airplane and the automobile is minuscule compared to the toxicity of all the garbage one has to go through to get to these jewels (assuming these have brought some improvement to our lives, which I frequently doubt)."

The most wonderful thing, next to a human being

When I was about eight, I decided that the most wonderful thing, next to a human being, was a book.

Margaret Walker

Probability is an introspective field of inquiry

"Indeed, probability is an introspective field of inquiry, as it affects more than one science, particularly the mother of all sciences; that of knowledge. It is impossible to assess the quality of the knowledge we are gathering without allowing a share of randomness in the manner it is obtained and cleaning the argument from the chance coincidence that could have seeped into its construction."

Physicists, quants and mathematicians

"Another analogy would be with grammar; mathematics is often tedious and insightless grammar. There are those who are interested in grammar for grammar's sake, and those interested in avoiding solecisms while writing documents. We are called "quants" - like physicists, we have more interest in the employment of the mathematical tool than in the tool itself. Mathematicians are born, never made. Physicists and quants too. I do not care about the "elegance" and "quality" of the mathematics I use so long as I can get the point right."

The computer might not be natural to our human brain

"The computer might not be natural to our human brain; neither is mathematics."

Mathematics is principally a tool to meditate

"Mathematics is principally a tool to meditate, rather than to compute"

Sense is nothing but a collection of misconceptions acquired by age 18

"The reader can imagine my disappointment at realizing that most poetic sounding adages are plain wrong. Borrowed wisdom can be vicious. I need to make a huge effort not to be swayed by well-sounding remarks. I remind myself of Einstein's remark that common sense is nothing but a collection of misconceptions acquired by age 18. Furthermore: what sounds intelligent in a conversation or a meeting, or, particularly in the media, is suspicious."

Heroes are heroes because they are heroic in behavior

"It is impossible to read a historian's analysis without questioning the inferences: we know that Hannibal and Hitler were mad in their pursuits, as Rome is not today Phoenician speaking and Times Square in New York currently exhibits no swastikas. But what of all those generals who were equally foolish, but ended up winning the war and consequently the esteem of the historical chronicler? It is hard to think of Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar as men who won only in the visible history, but who could have suffered defeat in others. If we have heard of them, it is simply because they took considerable risks, along with thousands of others and happened to win. They were intelligent, courageous, noble (at times), had the highest possible obtainable culture in their day - but so did thousands of others who live in the musty footnotes of history. Again I am not contesting that they won their wars - only the claims concerning the quality of their strategies. (My very first impression upon a recent rereading of the Iliad, the first in my adulthood, is that the epic poet did not judge his heroes by the result: heroes won and lost battles in a manner that was totally independent of their own valor; their fate depended upon totally external forces, generally the explicit agency of the scheming gods (not devoid of nepotism). Heroes are heroes because they are heroic in behavior, not because they won or lost. Patrocles does not strike us as a hero because of his accomplishments (he was rapidly killed) but because he preferred to die than see Achilles sulking into inaction. Clearly the epic poets understood invisible histories. )"

"Yuri will have a word with you”

"When MBAs apply for trading positions, they frequently boast "advanced" chess skills on their resumes. I recall the MBA career counselor at Wharton recommending our advertising chess skills "because it sounds intelligent and strategic". MBAs, typically, can interpret their superficial knowledge of the rules of the game into "expertise". We used to verify the accuracy of claims of chess expertise (and the character of the applicant) by pulling a chess set out of a drawer and telling the student, now turning pale: "Yuri will have a word with you"."

Saying that a libertarian is a member of the Libertarian Party is like…

These are quotes about reason and people and freedom. Saying that a libertarian is a member of the Libertarian Party is like saying that a reasonable person is a member of the oxymoronic "Reason Party." -- Kilgore Forelle

and then utterly transform the destination

"The effects of a wave of differentiation usually diminish rapidly with distance – simply because physical effects in general do. The sun , from even a hundredth of a light year away , looks like a cold, bright dot in the sky . It barely affects any thing. At a thousand light years, nor does a supernova. Even the most violent of quasar jets, when viewed from a neighbouring galaxy , would be little more than an abstract painting in the sky . There is only one known phenomenon which , if it ever occurred, would have effects that did not fall off with distance, and that is the creation of a certain type of knowledge, namely a beginning of infinity . Indeed, knowledge can aim itself at a target , travel vast distances having scarcely any effect , and then utterly transform the destination ."

The urge to share

 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130705212232.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29

“"Our study suggests that people are regularly attuned to how the things they're seeing will be useful and interesting, not just to themselves but to other people," said the study's senior author, Matthew Lieberman, a UCLA professor of psychology and of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences and author of the forthcoming book "Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect." "We always seem to be on the lookout for who else will find this helpful, amusing or interesting, and our brain data are showing evidence of that. At the first encounter with information, people are already using the brain network involved in thinking about how this can be interesting to other people. We're wired to want to share information with other people. I think that is a profound statement about the social nature of our minds."

It turns out, there is. The psychologists found that the interns who were especially good at persuading the producers showed significantly more activation in a brain region known as the temporoparietal junction, or TPJ, at the time they were first exposed to the pilot ideas they would later recommend. They had more activation in this region than the interns who were less persuasive and more activation than they themselves had when exposed to pilot ideas they didn't like. The psychologists call this the "salesperson effect."

"We wanted to explore what differentiates ideas that bomb from ideas that go viral," Falk said. "We found that increased activity in the TPJ was associated with an increased ability to convince others to get on board with their favorite ideas. Nobody had looked before at which brain regions are associated with the successful spread of ideas. You might expect people to be most enthusiastic and opinionated about ideas that they themselves are excited about, but our research suggests that's not the whole story. Thinking about what appeals to others may be even more important."

The TPJ, located on the outer surface of the brain, is part of what is known as the brain's "mentalizing network," which is involved in thinking about what other people think and feel. The network also includes the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, located in the middle of the brain.

"Good ideas turn on the mentalizing system," he said. "They make us want to tell other people."

As we may like particular radio DJs who play music we enjoy, the Internet has led us to act as "information DJs" who share things that we think will be of interest to people in our networks, Lieberman said.”

Excitations of the vacuum

"The vacuum, which we perceive as empty at everyday scales and even at atomic scales, is not really emptiness, but a richly structured entity known as a ‘ quantum field’ . Elementary particles are higher-energy configurations of this entity : ‘ excitations of the vacuum’ . So, for instance, the photons in a laser are configurations of the vacuum inside its ‘ cavity ’ . When two or more such excitations with identical attributes (such as energy and spin ) are present in the cavity , there is no such thing as which one was there first , nor which one will be the next to leave. There is only such a thing as the attributes of any one of them, and how many of them there are."

If the believers in liberty wish the principles of liberty taught…

If the believers in liberty wish the principles of liberty taught, let them never entrust that instruction to any government; for the nature of government is to become a thing apart, an institution existing for its own sake, preying upon the people, and teaching whatever will tend to keep it secure in its seat.

-- Voltairine de Cleyre

A universe is not a receptacle containing physical objects

"A universe is not a receptacle containing physical objects: it is those objects. In real physics, even space is a physical object , capable of warping and affecting matter and being affected by it ."

All of the significant battles are waged within the self

All of the significant battles are waged within the self.

Sheldon Kopp

Liking what you do is happiness

“Doing what you like is freedom.

Liking what you do is happiness.”

If the rich could hire other people to die for them

If the rich could hire other people to die for them, the poor could make a wonderful living. – Yiddish proverb

I contain multitudes

I am large, I contain multitudes

Walt Whitman

The art of knowing is knowing what to ignore

The art of knowing is knowing what to ignore.
~Rumi

Those who possess great talent modesty is hypocrisy

With people of only moderate ability modesty is mere honesty, but with those who possess great talent it is hypocrisy.
~Arthur Schopenhauer

In order to become master

"The animal wrests the whip from its master and whips itself in order to become master, not knowing that this is only a fantasy produced by a new knot in the master’s whiplash." -Franz Kafka

Our species would be exploring the stars by now

"Like every other destruction of optimism, whether in a whole civilization or in a single individual , these must have been unspeakable catastrophes for those who had dared to expect progress. But we should feel more than sympathy for those people. We should take it personally . For if any of those earlier experiments in optimism had succeeded, our species would be exploring the stars by now, and you and I would be immortal ."

Children’s conformity to the proper patterns of behaviour

"A pessimistic civilization prides itself on its children’s conformity to the proper patterns of behaviour, and bemoans every real or imagined novelty ."

Laws are like cobwebs

Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through. -- Jonathan Swift

Ability to remove bad ones that are already there

"Popper therefore applies his basic ‘ how can we detect and eliminate errors?’ to political philosophy in the form how can we rid ourselves of bad governments without violence? Just as science seeks explanations that are experimentally testable, so a rational political system makes it as easy as possible to detect , and persuade others, that a leader or policy is bad, and to remove them without violence if they are. Just as the institutions of science are structured so as to avoid entrenching theories, but instead to expose them to criticism and testing, so political institutions should not make it hard to oppose rulers and policies, non -violently , and should embody traditions of peaceful , critical discussion of them and of the institutions themselves and everything else. Thus, systems of government are to be judged not for their prophetic ability to choose and install good leaders and policies, but for their ability to remove bad ones that are already there."

Who should rule?

"Ideas have consequences, and the ‘ who should rule?’ approach to political philosophy is not just a mistake of academic analysis: it has been part of practically every bad political doctrine in history . If the political process is seen as an engine for putting the right rulers in power, then it justifies violence, for until that right system is in place, no ruler is legitimate; and once it is in place, and its designated rulers are ruling, opposition to them is opposition to rightness. The problem then becomes how to thwart any one who is working against the rulers or their policies. By the same logic, every one who thinks that existing rulers or policies are bad must infer that the ‘ who should rule?’ question has been answered wrongly , and therefore that the power of the rulers is not legitimate, and thatopposing it is legitimate, by force if necessary . Thus the very question ‘Who should rule?’ begs for violent , authoritarian answers, and has often received them. It leads those in power into tyranny , and to the entrenchment of bad rulers and bad policies; it leads their opponents to violent destructiveness and revolution ."

How can we hope to detect and eliminate error?

"The question about the sources of our knowledge . . . has always been asked in the spirit of : ‘What are the best sources of our knowledge – the most reliable ones, those which will not lead us into error, and those to which we can and must turn , in case of doubt , as the last court of appeal ?’ I propose to assume, instead, that no such ideal sources exist – no more than ideal rulers – and that all ‘ sources’ are liable to lead us into error at times. And I propose to replace, therefore, the question of the sources of our knowledge by the entirely different question : ‘ How can we hope to detect and eliminate error?’
Karl Popper - ‘ Knowledge without Authority ’ (1960)"

We do not yet know what we have not yet discovered

"Malthus had quite accurately foretold the one phenomenon , but had missed the other altogether. Why ? Because of the systematic pessimistic bias to which prophecy is prone. In 1798 the forthcoming increase in population was more predictable than the even larger increase in the food supply not because it was in any sense more probable, but simply because it depended less on the creation of knowledge. By ignoring that structural difference between the two phenomena that he was trying to compare, Malthus slipped from educated guesswork into blind prophecy . He and many of his contemporaries were misled into believing that he had discovered an objective asymmetry between what he called the ‘ power of population ’ and the ‘ power of production ’ . But that was just a parochial mistake – the same one that Michelson and Lagrange made. They all thought they were making sober predictions based on the best knowledge available to them. In reality they were all allowing themselves to be misled by the ineluctable fact of the human condition that we do not yet know what we have not yet discovered."

Danger of culture shock from contact with an advanced civilization

"Moreover, there is only one way of making progress: conjecture and criticism. And the only moral values that permit sustained progress are the objective values that the Enlightenment has begun to discover. No doubt the extraterrestrials’ morality is different from ours; but that will not be because it resembles that of the conquistadors. Nor would we be in serious danger of culture shock from contact with an advanced civilization : it will know how to educate its own children (or AIs), so it will know how to educate us – and, in particular, to teach us how to use its computers."

Universal explainers and constructors

"Hawking’s proposal also overlooks various dangers of not making our existence known to the galaxy , such as being inadvertently wiped out if benign civilizations send robots to our solar system, perhaps to mine what they consider an uninhabited system. And it rests on other misconceptions in addition to that classic flaw of blind pessimism. One is the Spaceship Earth idea on a larger scale: the assumption that progress in a hypothetical rapacious civilization is limited by raw materials rather than by knowledge. What exactly would it come to steal ? Gold? Oil ? Perhaps our planet’s water? Surely not , since any civilization capable of transporting itself here, or raw materials back across galactic distances, must already have cheap transmutation and hence does not care about the chemical composition of its raw materials. So essentially the only resource of use to it in our solar system would be the sheer mass of matter in the sun . But matter is available in every star. Perhaps it is collecting entire stars wholesale in order to make a giant black hole as part of some titanic engineering project . But in that case it would cost it virtually nothing to omit inhabited solar systems (which are presumably a small minority , otherwise it is pointless for us to hide in any case); so would it casually wipe out billions of people? Would we seem like insects to it ? This can seem plausible only if one forgets that there can be only one type of person : universal explainers and constructors. The idea that there could be beings that are to us as we are to animals is a belief in the supernatural ."

Laugh at the rest

Learn what is to be taken seriously and laugh at the rest.

Hermann Hesse

If no one had ever violated the precautionary principle

"But blind pessimism is a blindly optimistic doctrine. It assumes that unforeseen disastrous consequences can not follow from existing knowledge too (or, rather, from existing ignorance). Not all shipwrecks happen to record-breaking ships. Not all unforeseen physical disasters need be caused by physics experiments or new technology . But one thing we do know is that protecting ourselves from any disaster, foreseeable or not , or recovering from it once it has happened, requires knowledge; and knowledge has to be created. The harm that can flow from any innovation that does not destroy the growth of knowledge is always finite; the good can be unlimited. There would be no existing ship designs to stick with , nor records to stay within , if no one had ever violated the precautionary principle."

The questioners who are ultimately in question

 

"Now at the end, we come back to the beginning: to the situation of the world here and now, from which all understanding must start and to which it must return. In all existential thinking it is we ourselves, the questioners, who are ultimately in question."

- William Barrett