The molecular biologist Sidney Brenner recently invented a delicious play on Occam’s Razor, introducing the new term Occam’s Broom, to describe the process in which inconvenient facts are whisked under the rug by intellectually dishonest champions of one theory or another. This is our first boom crutch, an anti-thinking tool, and you should keep yo

Sturgeon’s Law is usually put a little less decorously: Ninety percent of everything is crap. Ninety percent of experiments in molecular biology, 90 percent of poetry, 90 percent of philosophy books, 90 percent of peer-reviewed articles in mathematics—and so forth—is crap.

What is all this noise for? It’s not for anything; it’s just there so that every other process has that noise as a potential source of signal, as something that it might turn, by the alchemy of the creative algorithm, into function, into art, into meaning.

How to compose a successful critical commentary: 1. You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.” 2. You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement). 3. You should ment

Imagine you’ve written a chess program, and you feed its source code to two different compilers. Then play the two compiled versions against each other on the same computer. Even though the two versions “think all the same thoughts in the same order” (they have to—they have exactly the same source code), one may always beat the other simply because

By working with scientists I get a rich diet of fascinating and problematic facts to think about, but by staying a philosopher without a lab or a research grant, I get to think about all the theories and experiments and never have to do the dishes.

with recursive self-representation

you should actively seek out opportunities to make grand mistakes, just so you can then recover from them.

Try to acquire the weird practice of savoring your mistakes, delighting in uncovering the strange quirks that led you astray. Then, once you have sucked out all the goodness to be gained from having made them, you can cheerfully set them behind you, and go on to the next big opportunity.