Sublime

“Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are … part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.” — Max Planck (1858–1947), physicist

we cannot assume that everything interesting is at the same scale as ourselves.

the universal wave function weaves them all together.[6]

There is no Newtonian law of markets; they are all ephemeral relationships in a sea of noise and the only way you can do that and capture non-linearity and complexity is with a system that is rich enough to be able to contain all the models, so a universal approximator—that’s what neural nets are—and allows you to do that.

While scientific progress, then, proceeds by curiously exploring adjacent possibilities, preference is given to work closely tied to existing science and conducted by a privileged subset of scientists.

Third, we are fearful creatures and go to great lengths to preserve a sense of certainty, even when we know it to be false.

This paradox of comprehension was articulated explicitly by a great physicist of an earlier age: “Sir Isaac Newton, when asked what he thought of the infatuations of the people, answered that he could calculate the motions of erratic bodies, but not the madness of a multitude” (quoted from The Church of England Quarterly Review, 1850).