Quotes
This book has one recommendation that, if you follow it, could radically improve your life. It’s a concrete, actionable recommendation, not something like “Seek harmony through becoming one with Creation.” But the recommendation is so shocking, so seemingly absurd, that if I tell you now without giving you sufficient background, you might stop reading.
James Miller, Singularity rising: surviving and thriving in a smarter, richer, and more dangerous world, Dallas, 2012, p. xix
Philosophy is still young, and the human capacity for reasoning is strong. In a scrutable world, truth may be within reach.
David J. Chalmers, Constructing the world, Oxford, 2012, p. xxiii
To a survival machine, another survival machine (which is not its own child or another close relative) is part of its environment, like a rock or a river or a lump of food. It is something that gets in the way, or something that can be exploited. It differs from a rock or a river in one important respect: it is inclined to hit back. This is because it too is a machine that holds its immortal genes in trust for the future, and it too will stop at nothing to preserve them. Natural selection favours genes that control their survival machines in such a way that they make the best use of their environment. This includes making the best use of other survival machines, both of the same and of different species.
Richard Dawkins, The selfish gene, Oxford, 2009, p. 67
The logic of the Leviathan can be summed up in a triangle. In every act of violence, there are three interested parties: the aggressor, the victim, and a bystander. Each has a motive for violence: the aggressor to prey upon the victim, the victim to retaliate, the bystander to minimize collateral damage from their fight. Violence between the combatants may be called war; violence by the bystander against the combatants may be called law. The Leviathan theory, in a nutshell, is that law is better than war.
Steven Pinker, The better angels of our nature: Why violence has declined, New York, 2011, p. 35
In sports, […] arguments are not particularly damaging—in fact, they can be fun. The problem is that these same biased processes can influence how we experience other aspects of our world. These biased processes are in fact a major source of escalation in almost every conflict, whether Israeli-Palestinian, American-Iraqi, Serbian-Croatian, or Indian-Pakistani.
In all these conflicts, individuals from both sides can read similar history books and even have the same facts taught to them, yet it is very unusual to find individuals who would agree about who started the conflict, who is to blame, who should make the next concession, etc. In such matters, our investment in our beliefs is much stronger than any affiliation to sport teams, and so we hold on to these beliefs tenaciously. Thus the likelihood of agreement about “the facts” becomes smaller and smaller as personal investment in the problem grows. This is clearly disturbing. We like to think that sitting at the same table together will help us hammer out our differences and that concessions will soon follow. But history has shown us that this is an unlikely outcome; and now we know the reason for this catastrophic failure.
But there’s reason for hope. In our experiments, tasting beer without knowing about the vinegar, or learning about the vinegar after the beer was tasted, allowed the true flavor to come out. The same approach should be used to settle arguments: The perspective of each side is presented without the affiliation—the facts are revealed, but not which party took which actions. This type of “blind” condition might help us better recognize the truth.
Dan Ariely, Predictably irrational: The hidden forces that shape our decisions, New York, 2008, pp. 171-172
Ownership is not limited to material things. It can also apply to points of view. Once we take ownership of an idea—whether it’s about politics or sports—what do we do? We love it perhaps more than we should. We prize it more than it is worth. And most frequently, we have trouble letting go of it because we can’t stand the idea of its loss. What are we left with then? An ideology—rigid and unyielding.
Dan Ariely, Predictably irrational: The hidden forces that shape our decisions, New York, 2008, pp. 138-139
I have only met a couple of people in my life who really understand how to ’think’; not fantasize or free-associate unconsciously, but volitionally initiate a process that solves a problem.
Sydney Pollack, Preface, in Anthony Minghella and Timothy Bricknell (eds.) Minghella on Minghella, London, 2005, p. ix
Suppose you are at a bar, enjoying a conversation with some friends. With one brand you get a calorie-free beer, and with another you get a three-calorie beer. Which brand will make you feel that you are drinking a really light beer? Even though the difference between the two beers is negligible, the zero-calorie beer will increase the feeling that you’re doing the right thing, healthwise. You might even feel so good that you go ahead and order a plate of fries.
Dan Ariely, Predictably irrational: The hidden forces that shape our decisions, New York, 2008, p. 63
Je vois ordinairement, que les hommes, aux faicts qu’on leur propose, s’amusent plus volontiers à en chercher la raison, qu’à en chercher la verité : Ils passent par dessus les presuppositions, mais ils examinent curieusement les consequences. Ils laissent les choses, et courent aux causes. Plaisans causeurs. La cognoissance des causes touche seulement celuy, qui a la conduitte des choses : non à nous, qui n’en avons que la souffrance. Et qui en avons l’usage parfaictement plein et accompli, selon nostre besoing, sans en penetrer l’origine et l’essence. Ny le vin n’en est plus plaisant à celuy qui en sçait les facultez premieres. Au contraire : et le corps et l’ame, interrompent et alterent le droit qu’ils ont de l’usage du monde, et de soy-mesmes, y meslant l’opinion de science. Les effectz nous touchent, mais les moyens, nullement. Le determiner et le distribuer, appartient à la maistrise, et à la regence : comme à la subjection et apprentissage, l’accepter. Reprenons nostre coustume. Ils commencent ordinairement ainsi : Comment est-ce que cela se fait ? mais, se fait-il ? faudroit il dire.
Michel de Montaigne, Essais, Menston, 1969
Benjamin Franklin wrote about the need for hard work in The Way to Wealth, over 150 before Wallace Wattles’ The Science of Getting Rich, the book that inspired The Secret. Even if you adopt the premise that magical thinking works, it is traditionally thought to operate contrary to the way professed by The Secret. Magnets actually attract their counter; that is, positive attracts negative. Consequently, boasting about or predicting a positive result means it is less likely to come true; we jinx the outcome by tempting fate. It is why we knock on or touch woof after reporting good luck or health, in an effort to avoid the curse and allow the good luck to continue.
Piers Steel, The procrastination equation: how to stop putting things off and start getting stuff done, New York, NY, 2012, p. 150
All writers who have any practical and permanent contribution to make to the guidance of human conduct, perceive and proclaim some aspect or other of the philosophy of utility. They may not explicitly recognize happiness as the end of life,–indeed they may explicitly repudiate it,–but their instinct enables them to identify means, even if the end eludes them.
James MacKaye, Thoreau: Philosopher of Freedom, New York, 1930, p. ix
One of the notable things about discussing the interpretation of quantum mechanics with physicists and with philosophers is that it is the physicists who propose philosophically radical ways of interpreting a theory, and the philosophers who propose changing the physics. One might reasonably doubt that the advocates or either strategy are always fully aware of its true difficulty.
David Wallace, The emergent multiverse: quantum theory according to the Everett Interpretation, Oxford, U.K, 2012, p. 35
[T]here can be no way of justifying the substantive assumption that all forms of altruism, solidarity and sacrifice really are ultra-subtle forms of self-interest, except by the trivializing gambit of arguing that people have concern for others because they want to avoid being distressed by their distress. And even this gambit […] is open to the objection that rational distress-minimizers could often use more efficient means than helping others.
Jon Elster, Sour grapes: studies in the subversion of rationality, Cambridge, 2001, p. 10
Intense focusing on a task can make people effectively blind, even to stimuli that normally attract attention. The most dramatic demonstration was offered by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons in their book The Invisible Gorilla. They constructed a short film of two teams passing basketballs, one team wearing white shirts, the other wearing black. The viewers of the film are instructed to count the number of passes made by the white team, ignoring the black players. This task is difficult and completely absorbing. Halfway through the video, a woman wearing a gorilla suit appears, crosses the court, thumps her chest, and moves on. The gorilla is in view for 9 seconds. Many thousands of people have seen the video, and about half of them do not notice anything unusual. It is the counting task—and especially the instruction to ignore one of the teams—that causes the blindness. No one who watches the video without that task would miss the gorilla. Seeing and orienting are automatic functions of System 1, but they depend on the allocation of some attention to the relevant stimulus. The authors note that the most remarkable observation of their study is that people find its results very surprising. Indeed, the viewers who fail to see the gorilla are initially sure that it was not there—they cannot imagine missing such a striking event. The gorilla study illustrates two important facts about our minds: we can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness.
Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, fast and slow, New York, 2011, pp. 23-24
What a book a Devil’s chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering low & horridly cruel works of nature!
The ways in which creatures in nature die are typically violent: predation, starvation, disease, parasitism, cold. The dying animal in the wild does not understand the vast ocean of misery into which it and billions of other animals are born only to drown. If the wild animal understood the conditions into which it is born, what would it think? It might reasonably prefer to be raised on a farm, where the chances of survival for a year or more would be good, and to escape from the wild, where they are negligible. Either way, the animal will be eaten: few die of old age. The path from birth to slaughter, however, is often longer and less painful in the barnyard than in the woods. Comparisons, sad as they are, must be made to recognize where a great opportunity lies to prevent or mitigate suffering. The misery of animals in nature - which humans can do much to relieve - makes every other form of suffering pale in comparison. Mother Nature is so cruel to her children she makes Frank Perdue look like a saint.
Mark Sagoff, Animal Liberation and Environmental Ethics: Bad Marriage, Quick Divorce, Osgoode Hall Law Journal, vol. 22, no. 2, 1984, pp. 297–307, p. 303
The future is not the realization of our hopes and dreams, a warning to mend our ways, an adventure to inspire us, nor a romance to touch our hearts. The future is just another place in spacetime.
Robin Hanson, The rapacious hardscrapple frontier, in Damien Broderick (ed.) Year Million: Science at the Far Edge of Knowledge, New York, 2008, pp. 168–189, p. 168
If you turn on your television and tune it between stations, about 10 percent of that black-and-white speckled static you see is caused by photons left over from the birth of the universe. What grater proof of the reality of the Big Bang–you can watch it on TV.
Jim Holt, Why Does the World Exist? An Existential Detective Story, New York, 2012, p. 26
The author Timothy Ferris, who coined the term “lifestyle design,” is a fantastic example of the good things this approach to life can generate (Ferris has more than enough career capital to back up his adventurous existence). But if you spend time browsing the blogs of lesser-known lifestyle designers, you’ll begin to notice the same red flags again and again: A distresingly large fraction of these contrarians […] skipped over the part where they build a stable means to support their unconvetional lifestyle. They assume that generating the courage to pursue control is what matters, while everything else is just a detail that is easily worked out.
One such blogger I found, to give another example from among many, quit his job at the age of twenty-five, explaining, “I was fed up with living a ’normal’ conventional life, working 9-5 for the man [and] having no time and little money to pursue my true passions… so I’ve embarked on a crusade to show you and the rest of the world how an average Joe… can build a business from scratch to support a life devoted to living ‘The Dream.’” The “business” he referenced, as is the case with many lifestyle designers, was his blog about being a lifestyle designer. In other words, his only product was his enthusiasm about no having a “normal” life. It doesn’t take an economist to point out there’s not much real value lurking there.
Cal Newport, So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love, New York, 2012, pp. 119-120
All species reproduce in excess, way past the carrying capacity of their niche. In her lifetime a lioness might have 20 cubs; a pigeon, 150 chicks; a mouse, 1,000 kits; a trout, 20,000 fry, a tuna or cod, a million fry or more; an elm tree, several million seeds; and an oyster, perhaps a hundred million spat. If one assumes that the population of each of these species is, from generation to generation, roughly equal, then on the average only one offspring will survive to replace each parent. All the other thousands and millions will die, one way or another.
Fred Hapgood, Why males exist: An inquiry into the evolution of sex, New York, 1979, pp. 44-45