provocations
provocative ideas, musings, and statements to mull on
sari and
provocations
“If you can see a thing whole,” he said, “it seems that it’s always beautiful. Planets, lives … But close up, a world’s all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life’s a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. You need distance, interval. The way to see how beautiful earth is, is to see it from the moon. The way to see how beautiful life is, is... See more
andrea and
The “drowning child” thought experiment involves seeing a child drowning in a pond on your way to work. Most people would jump in the pond to save the child, not thinking twice about the laundry bill from getting their clothes dirty. And yet, the amount of dollars spent on the dry cleaning bill could be spent on saving a child from starvation in a... See more
Erik Hoel • EconTalk on Apple Podcasts
People worry that computers will get too smart and take over the world, but the real worry is that they’re too stupid and they’ve already taken over the world. -Pedro Domingos
sari azout • Tweet
“i should build up the technical skills so that I can use them creatively” is very precisely backward
River Dakinitwitter.com
“It matters what matters we use to think other matters with; it matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with; it matters what knots knot knots, what thoughts think thoughts, what descriptions describe descriptions, what ties tie ties. It matters what stories make worlds, what worlds make stories.“ - Donna J. Haraway, Staying with the
... See more“Man is the most insane species. He worships an invisible God and destroys a visible Nature. Unaware that this Nature he’s destroying is this God he’s worshiping.”
― Hubert Reeves
Be an IDIOT! Though he doesn’t mean it like you should just be stupid. In fact the pejorative use of the word idiot is actually a fairly new thing in human history. Back in Ancient Greece for example the equivalent of the word we now use as idiot… really just meant someone who was a common person who didn’t really participate in public affairs or
... See moreIn New York, people speak fast. In the American South, they speak slowly. Both of them are a form of politeness, understood in a different way. In New York, you speak quickly because you respect the value of the other person’s time and you don’t want to take up too much of it. In the South, you speak slowly because you want to respect the person by... See more
Adam Grant • Are We Too Impatient to Be Intelligent?
the opposite of a good idea is also a good idea