Quotes
“The model we choose to use to understand something determines what we find.”
"The best material model of a cat is another, or preferably the same, cat."
― Norbert Wiener (1894-1964)
"We have got rid of the real world: what world is left? The apparent world perhaps? … But no! Along with the real world we’ve done away with the apparent world as well."
― Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
"A theory has only the alternative of being right or wrong. A model has a third possibility: it may be right, but irrelevant."
—Manfred Eigen (1927-2019)
"…all models are approximations. Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful. However, the approximate nature of the model must always be borne in mind…"
— George E.P. Box (1919-2013)
"Statisticians, like artists, have the bad habit of falling in love with their models."
— George E.P. Box (1919-2013)
“Remember, always, that everything you know, and everything everyone knows, is only a model. Get your model out there where it can be viewed. Invite others to challenge your assumptions and add their own.”
—Donella Meadows (1941-2001)
“We do not need a computer model to tell us that:
we must not destroy the system upon which our sustenance depends.
poverty is wrong and preventable.
the exploitation of one person or nation by another degrades both the exploited and the exploiter.
it is better for individuals and nations to cooperate than to fight.
the love we have for all humankind and for future generations should be the same as our love for those close to us.
If we do not embrace these principles and live by them, our system cannot survive. Our future is in our hands and will be no better or worse than we make it.
These messages have been around for centuries.
They reemerge periodically in different forms and now in the outputs of global models. Anything that persists for so long and comes from such diverse sources as gurus and input-output matrices must be coming very close to truth.
We all know the truth at some deep level within ourselves.
We have only to look honestly and deeply to find it.
And yet we don’t live as if we knew it."
—Donella Meadows (1941-2001)
"There are no surprising facts, only models that are surprised by facts; and if a model is surprised by the facts, it is no credit to that model."
"The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda."
— Michael Crichton (1942-2008)
“An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less until he knows absolutely everything about nothing.”
― Nicholas Murray Butler (1862-1947)
"Almost everyone today is brain-damaged by our education which is designed to produce docile automatons."
― Timothy Leary (1920-1996)
“The dilemma for education is that the kinds of things that are easy to teach and test have also become easy to digitise, automate and outsource.
We need to think much harder about how human skills complement the artificial intelligence of computers, so that we end up with first-class humans rather than second-class robots.”
— Andreas Schleicher, Director for the OECD Directorate of Education and Skills
“Governments want efficient technicians, not human beings, because human beings become dangerous to governments – and to organized religions as well. That is why governments and religious organizations seek to control education.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986)
“The more I think about language, the more it amazes me that people ever understand each other at all.”
― Kurt Gödel (1906-1978)
“The secret of what anything means to us depends on how we've connected it to all the other things we know.
That's why it's almost always wrong to seek the "real meaning" of anything. A thing with just one meaning has scarcely any meaning at all.”
- Marvin Minsky (1927-2016)
“I don't think there is any truth. There are only points of view. ”
― Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997)
“You can prove anything you want by coldly logical reason—if you pick the proper postulates.”
—Isaac Asimov (1920-1992)
“Postulates are based on assumption and adhered to by faith. Nothing in the Universe can shake them.”
—Isaac Asimov (1920-1992)
“Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts... A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding...”
― William Gibson, Neuromancer
"One might wonder, what good comes from the continued insistence on modelling and forecasting, and from the constant repetition of these somehow vain exercises by media? Why do we insist on, simultaneously, downplaying and exaggerating the dangers when the only honest way is to admit the deep limits of our current understanding? It should not be so hard to admit that, at this point, we do not know much more than we do know."
“There are two kinds of forecasters: those who don’t know, and those who don’t know they don’t know.”
― John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006)
"Today, modern technologies, from mathematical stock prediction methods to medical imaging machines, compete for confidence promised by religion and authority"
― John Dewey (1859-1952)
“Experts are by definition the servants of those in power: they don't really THINK, they just apply their knowledge to problems defined by the powerful.”
"The more the media reports on health risk, the smaller is the danger for you"
“Many a committee meeting ends with “We need more data.” Everybody nods, breathing a sigh of relief, happy that the decision has been deferred. A week or so later, when the data are in, the group is no further ahead. Everyone’s time is wasted on another meeting, on waiting for even more data. The culprit is a negative error culture, in which everyone lacks the courage to make a decision for which they may be punished.”
― Gerd Gigerenzer
“bigger numbers make better headlines.”
― Gerd Gigerenzer
"Politicians, Priests, and psychiatrists often face the same problem: how to find the most rapid and permanent means of changing a man’s belief…The problem of the doctor and his nervously ill patient, and that of the religious leader who sets out to gain and hold new converts, has now become the problem of whole groups of nations, who wish not only to confirm certain political beliefs within their boundaries, but to proselytize the outside world.”
— William Sargant (1907-1988), “Battle of the Mind”
“Control the manner in which a man interprets his world, and you have gone a long way toward controlling his behavior.”
― Stanley Milgram (1933-1984)
"A substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do, irrespective of the content of the act, and without pangs of conscience, so long as they perceive that the command comes from a legitimate authority."
― Stanley Milgram (1933-1984)
"To speak of certain government and establishment institutions as 'the system' is to speak correctly . . . They are sustained by structural relationships even when they have lost all other meaning and purpose. People arrive at a factory and perform a totally meaningless task from eight to five without question because the structure demands it be that way. There's no villain, no 'mean guy' who wants them to live meaningless lives, it's just that the structure, the system demands it and no one is willing to take on the formidable task of changing the structure just because it is meaningless."
― Robert M. Pirsig (1928-2016)
"The Church of Reason, like all institutions of the System, is based not on individual strength but upon individual weakness. What's really demanded in the Church of Reason is not ability, but inability. Then you are considered teachable. A truly able person is always a threat."
― Robert M. Pirsig (1928-2016)
"Deciding under uncertainty is bad enough, but deciding under an illusion of certainty is catastrophic."
—Kenneth E. Boulding (1910-1993)