"Mastery is often simply staying on the path"

--- Richard Strozzi-Heckler, In Search of the Warrior Spirit: Teaching Awareness Disciplines to the Green Berets

Context (for more see Google Books, p. 75 )

"It looks easy, so why can't I do it?" When Andrews asks me this question he's reflecting the idealism and certainly [sic] of post-Second World War America, that any obstacle can be overcome by the step-by-step application of will, reason, sweat, and if necessary, massed force. As they struggle to learn this powerful but subtle martial art [aikido] they're having face a fundamental tenet of the warrior's path. They're learning that the path of the warrior is lifelong, and that mastery is often simply staying on the path.

"Doing econometrics is like trying to learn the laws of electricity by playing the radio"

--- Economist Guy Orcutt, cited by Edward Leamer in “Let’s take the con out of econometrics” (PDF), American Economic Review 73(1), March 1983

Dictators ... rarely fall because they have too many enemies. They fall because they have too few friends left.

--- Banyan opinion column, The Economist, August 15th 2009, a paraphrase of the conclusions of Marcus Mietzner's conclusions in Military Politics, Islam and the State in Indonesia: From Turbulent Transition to Democratic Consolidation (2008)

In full: "In the end, dictators, however unpopular, despotic and incompetent, rarely fall because they have too many enemies. They fall because they have too few friends left."

Like elaborately plumed birds…we preen and strut and display our t-values

--- UCLA economist Edward Leamer, 1983, quoted in an excellent review of instrumental variables in The Economist,"Cause and defect", Aug 13th 2009.

The quote is from “Let’s take the con out of econometrics” (PDF), American Economic Review 73(1), March 1983. In full:

"This is a sad and decidedly unscientific state of affairs we find ourselves in. Hardly anyone takes data analyses seriously. Or perhaps more accurately, hardly anyone takes anyone else's data analyses seriously. Like elaborately plumed birds who have long since lost the ability to procreate but not the desire, we preen and strut and display our t-values."

The Economist article describes how "instrumental variables" have been used to address these problems, and reviews two recent articles criticixing these techniques. Angus Deaton of Princeton contends that using such instruments to estimate causal parameters is like choosing to let light “fall where it may, and then proclaim[ing] that whatever it illuminates is what we were looking for all along.”

The Economist's conclusion:

"This is too harsh. It is no doubt possible to use instrumental variables to estimate effects on uninteresting subgroups of the population. But the quarter-of-birth study, for example, shone light on something that was both interesting and significant... Proponents of instrumental variables also argue that accurate answers to narrower questions are more useful than unreliable answers to wider questions... A more legitimate fear is that important questions for which no good instrumental variables can be found are getting short shrift because of economists’ obsession with solving statistical problems."

Leamer is quite the wit. Here's another quip from about half-way through the paper: "This rhetoric is understandably tiring. Methodology, like sex, is better demonstrated than discussed, though often better anticipated than experienced. Accordingly, let me give you an example..."

Whatever purpose a piece of information may have been created and shared for, it will eventually be used for something else

--- Steven Rambam, quoted in leader article on "The perils of sharing" by Andreas Kluth in The Economist's The World in 2008, p. 28

Kluth's conclusion:

"So there we are, a Google search away, for all to see in places and company we should not have been in, the unwitting backdrop of other people’s documentaries.

"The only remaining choice is whether or not to inject our own perspective, with our own media, into this never-ending stream of narratives, to preserve whatever control remains in presenting our own image. The wise will still share things about themselves in 2009. But they will become hyper-sensitive about sharing collateral information about others, in the hope that reciprocity and a new etiquette will eventually limit everybody's vulnerability, including their own. "

Trying to work out which banks are the world’s best is a bit like awarding the prize for prettiest war-torn village

--- The Economist, "A short list", survey of the world's best banks, May 23rd 2009

Extended quote:

TRYING to work out which banks are the world’s best is a bit like awarding the prize for prettiest war-torn village. It is a title that carries little kudos. It is also likely to prompt further shelling. Winners of industry awards in the past three years include Ken Lewis, the chief executive of Bank of America, for banker of the year (2008); Société Générale for its risk management; and Angelo Mozilo of Countrywide, a failed mortgage lender, for a “lifetime of achievement”.

Still, the question is becoming more pertinent. After months of indiscriminate fear, widespread losses and government hand-holding, the banking industry is gradually stabilising. Money markets are steadily calming. American banks that got a clean bill of health in this month’s stress tests are queuing up to repay government money. A first wave of escapees is likely to include Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase. Those banks that emerge from this crisis with reputations and franchises strengthened will find it increasingly easy to raise funds, win clients, attract employees and buy assets.

The more you value financial stability, the more you have to sacrifice financial innovation

--- Dani Rodrik in opinion piece on regulating global finance (or not), The Economist March 14, 2009

In context:

But the most fundamental objection to global regulation lies elsewhere. Desirable forms of financial regulation differ across countries depending on their preferences and levels of development. Financial regulation entails trade-offs along many dimensions. The more you value financial stability, the more you have to sacrifice financial innovation. The more fine-tuned and complex the regulation, the more you need skilled regulators to implement it. The more widespread the financial-market failures, the larger the potential role of directed credit and state banks.

Different nations will want to sit on different points along their “efficient frontiers”. There is nothing wrong with France, say, wanting to purchase more financial stability than America—and having tighter regulations—at the price of giving up some financial innovations. Nor with Brazil giving its state-owned development bank special regulatory treatment, if the country wishes, so that it can fill in for missing long-term credit markets.

In short, global financial regulation is neither feasible, nor prudent, nor desirable. What finance needs instead are some sensible traffic rules that will allow nations (and in some cases regions) to implement their own regulations while preventing adverse spillovers. If you want an analogy, think of a General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade for world finance rather than a World Trade Organisation. The genius of the GATT regime was that it left room for governments to craft their own social and economic policies as long as they did not follow blatantly protectionist policies and did not discriminate among their trade partners.

Art jewellery is "buying a bit of the artist's brain"

--- The Economist in a review built around a show of contemporary jewellery at the Saatchi Gallery

In context:

This is jewellery offering a very different expression of identity. The wearer of such pieces challenges preconceived notions. It can include a whiff of intellectual snobbery, as the wearer can be seen as “buying a bit of the artist’s brain”.

Information and knowledge do not exist as a natural resource that merely has to be harvested. It must be constructed by someone

--- Robert G. Picard, professor of media economics at Sweden's Jonkoping University, in an opinion piece for the Christian Science Monitor, "Why journalists deserve low pay," 19 May 2009.

The quote struck me because it could just as easily be applied to radio spectrum - and it's a preoccupation of mine that spectrum is misleadingly characterized as a resource like land (see e.g. my post William James, consciousness, and the non-existence of spectrum)

The quote in context from the CSM:

Journalists are not professionals with a unique base of knowledge such as professors or electricians. Consequently, the primary economic value of journalism derives not from its own knowledge, but in distributing the knowledge of others. In this process three fundamental functions and related skills have historically created economic value: Accessing sources, determining significance of information, and conveying it effectively.

Accessing sources is crucial because information and knowledge do not exist as a natural resource that merely has to be harvested. It must be constructed by someone. The journalistic skill of identifying and reaching authorities or others who construct expertise traditionally gave journalists opportunities to report in ways that the general public could not.

Determining significance has been critical because journalists sort through an enormous amount of information to find the most significant and interesting items for consumers.

Effective presentation involves the ability to reduce information to its core to meet space and time requirements and presenting it in an interesting and attractive manner. These are built on linguistic and artistic skills and formatting techniques.

God has not gone away because people keep encountering Him, in unexplainable, intensely spiritual moments.

--- Barbara Bradley Hagerty, journalist, quoted in Gregory Lamb's review of her book, "Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality," for the Christian Science Monitor, 17 May 2009.

This quote is the closing sentence in the closing paragraph:

“Belief in God has not gone away, no matter how secular society has become or how much effort reductionist science has exerted to banish Him,” she says. “God has not gone away because people keep encountering Him, in unexplainable, intensely spiritual moments.”

Second Life mania... All dressed up, somewhere to go, not enough to say or do

--- Jonathan Grudin, HCI researcher at Microsoft, 3 June 2005, personal communication (with permission)

The complete quote: “Second Life mania parallels the virtual world enthusiasm of the mid to late Nineties: All dressed up, somewhere to go, not enough to say or do”

"I thought I would die of sadness." But there are so many other things to die from here.

--- Jane Arraf, journalist, quoting and commenting on an expression of an Iraqi friend

In a fascinating and wide-ranging survey of the situation in Iraq (Christian Science Monitor, 3 May 3009), Arraf focuses on the lives of three friends. While visiting one of them, she meets someone who is still dazed by the killings in 2003. The quote's on page 5 of the web version of the story:

Visiting his old haunts now, Bassim is horrified by the sirens and the security convoys. It's a city he doesn't recognize. The trash in the historic Maidan, the wholesale antique district, almost undoes him. The last time I was there with him in 2005, we wandered through a covered market with dappled sunlight streaming through holes in the roof. Bassim stopped to talk to a cast of characters out of the pages of a novel: an old man behind a stall displaying colored stones that promised to cure everything from heart ailments to heartbreak; a retired prostitute selling local soda while her cat, Mish-Mish (Apricot), kept her company.

Five years later there's been a rare rain in Baghdad, and the markets of the Maidan are padlocked. But then, out steps Bassim's old friend, Hussein Jawad Mohammad, locking up his shop. As they greet each other, it's hard to tell where the tear running down Bassim's cheek ends and the rain begins.

"What happened here after 2003?" I ask, remembering the friends we used to drink tea with, their shops crowded with pieces of history. The thought of Al Qaeda fighters in the alleys and bodies in the streets was unimaginable.

"Shooting. People were shooting each other," Bassim says, still dazed at the killings.

I think of an expression that an Iraqi friend who left uses: "I thought I would die of sadness." But there are so many other things to die from here.

I would remind anyone who doubts the results that this is an Internet poll. Doubting the results is kind of the point.

--- Josh Tyrangiel, Time.com managing editor; via Good Morning Silicon Valley.

Tyraniel was commenting after hacking rendered the results of the Tim.com World's Most Influential Person moot (in more ways than one).

Quote in context, from the Time.com story on 27 April 2009

In a stunning result, the winner of the third annual TIME 100 poll and new owner of the title World's Most Influential Person is moot. The 21-year-old college student and founder of the online community 4chan.org, whose real name is Christopher Poole, received 16,794,368 votes and an average influence rating of 90 (out of a possible 100) to handily beat the likes of Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin and Oprah Winfrey. To put the magnitude of the upset in perspective, it's worth noting that everyone moot beat out actually has a job.

...

Undoubtedly, many people will question moot's worthiness of the title World's Most Influential Person. TIME.com managing editor Josh Tyrangiel says moot is no less deserving than previous title holders like Nintendo video-game designer Shigeru Miyamoto (2007) and Korean pop star Rain (2006). "I would remind anyone who doubts the results that this is an Internet poll," he says. "Doubting the results is kind of the point."

Just live through it

--- Sheelagh de Vries, my mother, said to me in April 2009 when I was agonizing over planning some impending situation

They took these non-linear stochastic dynamic general equilibrium models into the basement and beat them with a rubber hose until they behaved

--- Willem Buiter, a former member of the UK’s Monetary Policy Committee who blogs for the FT, complaining that macroeconomists have simply discarded the difficult stuff to make their models more elegant. Quoted in an FT opinion piece by Tim Harford, "Are those who sweat the big stuff in meltdown?", April 11 2009.

Also amusing in this piece was a recollection of P.J. O’Rourke’s explanation of the difference between micro and macro: microeconomics concerns things that economists are specifically wrong about, while macroeconomics concerns things that they are wrong about generally.

And Mark Thoma of the University of Oregon, another economics blogger, is reported as saying: “I think that the current crisis has dealt a bigger blow to macroeconomic theory and modelling than many of us realise.”

When you start making choices, you start losing friends

--- Kent Conrad, the Democratic Senate Budget Committee chairman and a leading fiscal hawk

Quoted in The Economist, Waiting for God-only-knows-what, Jan 8th 2009; about the budget deficit

In context:

"Politically, a reform that antagonises so many constituencies is hardly appetising. “When you start making choices, you start losing friends,” says Kent Conrad, the Democratic Senate Budget Committee chairman and a leading fiscal hawk. He argues the job should be handed over to a bipartisan task force. But Thomas Kahn, the top staffer on the House Budget Committee, notes that some legislators worry that such mechanisms undermine the democratic process by limiting the opportunity for amendment and debate."

If your advertising giveth and your EULA taketh away, don’t be surprised if the FTC comes calling

--- FTC Acting Deputy Director Mary Engle, speaking at the agency's workshop on digital rights management, warns entertainment companies and others who use DRM that they better make sure consumers know exactly what limits and restrictions are attached to their products. Via Good Morning Silicon Valley 3/26/2009.

From Ars Technica:

Mary Engle, an FTC Acting Deputy Director, began her remarks by warning that those who use DRM had better get serious about disclosing it and the limits that it places on products. She referenced the Sony BMG rootkit debacle, saying that "sellers who use DRM technology to enforce the terms of bargains with consumers need to be particularly careful to disclose in advance" what those bargains are.

And just stuffing the disclosure into the fine print of an End User License Agreement (EULA) isn't good enough. "If your advertising giveth and your EULA taketh away," she said, "don't be surprised if the FTC comes calling."

Maybe you can’t quantify those numbers, but they do add up

--- Rob Reilly, co-executive creative director of Crispin Porter + Bogusky, the agency behind the A Burger King promotion to give people hamburger vouchers in exchange for dumping Facebook friends, reported in "The Value of a Facebook Friend? About 37 Cents", Jenna Wortham for the New York Times BITS section, January 9, 2009

Context from the story:

To earn their free burger, users download the Whopper Sacrifice Facebook application and dump 10 unlucky friends deemed to be unworthy of their weight in beef. After completing the purge, users are prompted to enter their addresses and the coupons are sent out via snail mail.

. . . .

“Choosing 10 people can take a lot of time,” said Mr. Reilly. “There’s at least an hour’s worth of people’s eyes on your brand. Maybe you can’t quantify those numbers, but they do add up.”

Besides, he added, “we aren’t giving the burgers away -– you have to sacrifice. You are paying for it but the currency is different.”

What price is Burger King placing on a Facebook friendship? At a suggested retail price of $3.69 for the Angry Whopper sandwich, customers are trading each deleted friend for about 37 cents’ worth of bun and beef.

There is almost no limit to the ability of investors to ignore the lessons of the past

--- Vanguard founder John Bogle, opening line of a Wall Street Journal op-ed "Six Lessons for Investors: Be diversified and don't assume past performance will continue", January 8, 2009.

Aristotle will always have thought of it before you. But by creating a novel out of that idea you can make it original.

--- Umberto Eco, interviewed in The Paris Review, The Art of Fiction No. 197, Issue 185, Summer 2008, p. 91 (this excerpt not on the web page)

Quote in context:

An idea you have might not be original - Aristotle will always have thought of it before you. But by creating a novel out of that idea you can make it original. Men love women. It's not an original idea. But if you somehow write a terrific novel about it, then by a literary sleight of hand it becomes absolutely original. I simply believe that at the end of the day a story is always richer - it is an idea reshaped into an event, informed by a character, and sparked by crafted language. So naturally, when an idea is transformed into a living organism, it turns into something completely different and, likely, far more expressive.

art never improves, but ... the material of art is never quite the same

--- T S Eliot, in "Tradition and the Individual Talent, suggested by Bret Battey a propos the previous Basho quote

"[The artist] must be quite aware of the obvious fact that art never improves, but that the material of art is never quite the same. He must be aware that the mind of Europe - the mind of his own country - a mind which he learns in time to be much more important than his own private mind - is a mind which changes... That this development, refinement perhaps, complication certainly, is not, from the point of view of the artist, any improvement. Perhaps not even an improvement from the point of view of the psychologist or not to the extent which we imagine; perhaps only in the end based upon a complication in economics and machinery. But the different between the present and the past is that the conscious present is an awareness of the past in a way and to an extent which the past's awareness of itself cannot show."

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought.

--- Matsuo Basho. Cited by Miller & Page, Complex Adaptive Systems (2007), p. 227. Quoted on the web passim, but I couldn't find a citation.

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things

--- Henry David Thoreau

Cited by http://quotationsbook.com/quote/44734/ to be from Walden (1854), ch. 1, p. 67 .

"Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate."

I found it via Miller & Page, Complex Adaptive Systems (2007), p. 215

Unlike Soviet propagandists, who told people what to think, Russian propagandists tell people what they want to hear

--- Georgy Satarov, formerly aide to President Boris Yeltsin, now runs the INDEM think-tank; quoted by The Economist in "Enigma variations", first article in a special report on Russia, Nov 27th 2008

Quote in context:

So far the state has not interfered in people’s personal lives. It gives them freedom to make money, consume, travel abroad, drive foreign cars and listen to any music they like. They are even free to criticise the Kremlin on radio, in print and on the internet, though not on television. And although Russia’s elections are stage-managed, the support for Mr Putin is genuine. During the war in Georgia it hit almost 90% in opinion polls. The biased television coverage plays its part, but unlike Soviet propagandists, who told people what to think, Russian propagandists tell people what they want to hear, says Georgy Satarov, who used to be an aide to a former president, Boris Yeltsin, and now runs INDEM, a think-tank. What people want to hear, especially as they are getting richer, is that their country is “rising from its knees”, sticking its flag in the Arctic Circle, winning football games and chasing the Americans out of Georgia.

Science: testable and partially tested fantasies about the real world

--- attributed to Kenneth Boulding by JohnH Miller & Scott E Page, Complex Adaptive Systems (2007) p. 8

Science advances funeral by funeral

--- Unknown; many attributions

Miller & Page in their Complex Adaptive Systems (2007) p. 6 cite Paul Samuelson using it to describe economics, citing Samuelson's foreword in Michael Salzberg, Passion and Craft: Economists at work, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press (1999)

Paul H. Smith in Reading the Enemy's Mind (2005) mentions Max Planck, Niels Bohr and Max Born (without attribution).

There are two ways to make a man richer: give him more money or curb his desires

--- Ascribed to Jean Jacques Rousseau passim, but may be a paraphrase from Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety (p. 43):

“There are two ways to make a man richer, reasoned Rousseau: give him more money or curb his desires. Modern societies have done the former spectacularly well, but by continuously whetting appetites they have at the same time managed to negate a share of their success”

the same shit you get in any other book—a little bit mystical, but really about going to work every day and keeping your head down

--- Entrepreneur, financier Russell "Rush" Simmons, describing his bestselling book “Do You! 12 Laws to Access the Power in You to Achieve Happiness and Success,” as reported in a profile in The Economist, 18 Oct 2008

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it

--- Author and journalist Upton Sinclair, quoted by Dan Ariely in Predictably Irrational, Harper 2008 (hardcover), p. 227. Cited passim on the web, but I didn't find a reference to the source.

cheating is a lot easier when it’s a step removed from money

--- Dan Ariely, professor of behavioral economics at MIT, in Predictably Irrational, Harper 2008 (hardcover), p. 219

... the exuberant wreckage of August

--- Poet Reg Saner, lines ending "The Fifth Season" (1983), collected in Fifty Years of American Poetry, Harry N Abrams 1984, p. 235

From the poem

... ... ... ... - or common starling
dead in mid-flight,
flashing dark color off preen oil
in wings barely stirring, whispering
ever so lightly as its slow turn falls
perfectly aimed
through air's open doors
toward the exuberant wreckage of August.

Great voices rising like smoke from time’s wreckage

--- Poet Gjertrud Schnackenberg, lines from "The Living Room" (1982), collected in Fifty Years of American Poetry, Harry N Abrams 1984, p. 210

The full text of the poem is posted in the article Art into poetry by Peter Steele, Eureka Street, Jul/Aug 2005. Here's a fragment

... ... ... ... ... She enjoys
Bach in Heaven, his sacred Fantasies
For her alone spin like fabulous toys.
Lines shift and break, she finds it rich and right,
Such music out of black dots on the page,
Symbols, the world a symbol from her height,
Great voices rising like smoke from time’s wreckage.
...

All models are wrong, but some are useful

--- Statistician George E P Box, in "Science and statistics", Journal of the
American Statistical Association 71:791-799, quoted in Holling, C S, Stephen R Carpenter, William A Brock, and Lance H Gunderson, “Discoveries for Sustainable Futures”, Ch. 15 in Gunderson, Lance H and C S Holling, Panarchy: Understanding transformations in human and natural systems, Island Press (2002), p. 409

Wikiquote provides some alternative citations and variations:

"Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful."

--- Box, George E. P.; Norman R. Draper (1987). Empirical Model-Building and Response Surfaces, p. 424, Wiley. ISBN 0471810339.

"Remember that all models are wrong; the practical question is how wrong do they have to be to not be useful."

--- Box and Draper, Empirical Model-Building, p. 74

"All models are false but some models are useful."

You can control risk. You can't control return.

--- Vanguard founder Jack Bogle, in a BusinessWeek interview with Christopher Farrell, 27 October 2008

Context:

Christopher Farrell: On Wall Street the talk is about return, but both of you emphasize risk.

Bogle: You can control risk. You can't control return. That's up to the beneficence that stock and bond markets are generous enough to bestow on us. That's why we talk about diversification.

If you can't say it clearly, you don't understand it yourself

--- philosopher John Searle, via the virtual philosopher blog

According to brainyquote, the fuller version is

"Where questions of style and exposition are concerned I try to follow a simple maxim: if you can't say it clearly you don't understand it yourself. "

the direct use of force is so poor a solution . . .

... the direct use of force is so poor a solution to the problem of limited resources and diverse ends that it is rarely employed save by small children and great nations.

--- David M. Friedman, Law’s Order, Princeton University Press (2000), Epilogue, p. 309

Quote in context:

The world has limited space and resources and is occupied by people with differing beliefs and objectives. From those simple facts comes the potential for conflict. I want to hunt a deer across the field where you are trying to grow wheat. You want to go swimming in the stream where I am trying to catch fish.

The simple and obvious solution is the direct use of physical force. You plant a thorn hedge around your wheat field to persuade me to hunt deer somewhere else. I hit you over the head with a tree branch to convince you to swim somewhere else.

This is not a very satisfactory solution to the problem; it is expensive in time, effort, scratches and bruises, and frequently fails of its objective. Indeed, the direct use of force is so poor a solution to the problem of limited resources and diverse ends that it is rarely employed save by small children and great nations.

Our society has a very large industry in the business of transferring money from one future to another: the insurance industry

--- David M. Friedman, Law’s Order, Princeton University Press (2000), p. 99, Chapter 9: As Much as Your Life is Worth, discussing optimal deterrence vs optimal insurance

Quote in a little context:

Our society has a very large industry in the business of transferring money from one future to another: the insurance industry. When you buy fire insurance you are giving up money in a future in which your house does not burn down in order to collect money in a future in which it does, transferring wealth from one future to another.

This is a most wonderful book: a marvelous introduction to the field of law & economics.

We are not rational enough to be exposed to the press

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, mathematician and risk analyst, quoted in "How to keep your head in scary situations", New Scientist, 27 August 2008.

Context from the article:

Some argue that the media's focus on shocking or traumatic news stimulates the intuitive, non-thinking side of our decision-making and is at the root of many misjudgements. "We are not rational enough to be exposed to the press," says Nassim Nicholas Taleb, co-director of the Decision Research Laboratory at the London Business School. For an illustration of this, look no further than the vastly different perceptions of the risks from terrorism and lightning strikes, each of which has killed roughly the same number of Americans since records began.

A good example of how graphic media coverage can distort our perceptions of real events is the finding by James Ost at the University of Portsmouth, UK, and colleagues that people who were highly exposed to news reports of the terrorist bombings in London on 7 July 2005 were more likely to recall things about the attacks that they could never have witnessed, such as whether or not the bus that was blown up in Tavistock Square was moving at the time (Memory, vol 16, p 76).

. . .

Taleb thinks teaching people the facts about risks will not help to change behaviour. He says it would be more productive to teach people to screen out the information that distorts our decision-making than to teach them to use general information better. "If it was possible to teach people to adjust their behaviour to risks, we wouldn't have smokers. But we do. Our intelligence doesn't translate into behaviour the way we think it should."

Taleb is also quoted as saying:

"Put wax in your ears. People are more afraid of flying than driving because the press does not report car accidents. I never watch the news. Only listen to news you get in a social setting, the things people talk about. Our brains cannot deal with the overload of information. Having a lot of data is not good for anyone trying to make a decision."

Most mathematicians would sell their mothers into slavery to find out whether NP is distinct from P

--- mathematician Ian Stewart in "Solving postal problem could win million-dollar prize", New Scientist, 23 June 2008

Quote in context:

All this classification has led to a rather fundamental question, and whoever cracks it will take the Clay prize: is NP really any different from P? To put it plainly, if it is easy to check the accuracy of any proposed solution to a problem, must there be an easy way to solve the problem in the first place?

The smart money says NP problems need not be P: even if it is easy to check any proposed solution to a problem, you can't solve that problem efficiently by making repeated guesses and checking them in turn, because the sheer number of possibilities is too large. Think of opening a combination lock by trying every combination in turn. A single satisfying "click" greets the correct answer, but if you are dealing with a sophisticated lock you could spend a lifetime trying successive combinations. Guessing at a computer password is another example.

Even without the Clay prize as motivation, most mathematicians would sell their mothers into slavery to find out whether NP is distinct from P because it is such a baffling and fundamental problem. The truly tantalising thing about this conundrum is that it is an example of an "NP-complete" problem. NP-complete problems are a subset of NP problems and are special in that if an efficient solution to any of them can be found, then that same solution can be used to solve any NP problem efficiently. In other words, finding an efficient way to solve any NP-complete problem means we have shown that all NP problems are effectively P.

An adventure is just misfortune properly reconsidered

--- Michael Lindell, director of the Hazard Reducation and Recovery Center in College Station, Texas, quoted in "Gustav holdouts' tales give evacuees pause" by Patrik Jonsson, The Christian Science Monitor, 4 September 2008

what's in the public interest is not what the public is interested in

--- Terry Pratchett, through a character referring to journalist William de Worde, in The Truth (2001) p. 188

"The young man is also an idealist. He has yet to find out that what's in the public interest is not what the public is interested in."

Words are wise men’s counters, they do but reckon by them; but they are the money of fools

--- Thomas Hobbes, (1651), Leviathan (1651) Pt. I, Ch. 4, quoted by Steven Pinker in The Stuff of Thought (2007), p. 151

A little more of the Hobbes quote:

Words are wise men’s counters, they do but reckon by them; but they are the money of fools, that value them by the authority of an Aristotle, a Cicero, or a Thomas, or any other doctor whatsoever, if but a man.

The context in Pinker leading up to this quote:

The theory of conceptual semantics, which proposes that word senses are mentally represented as expressions in a richer and more abstract language of thought, stands at the center of this circle, compatible with all of the complications. Word meanings can vary across languages because children assemble and fine-tune them from more elementary concepts. They can be precise because the concepts zero in on some aspects of reality and slough off the rest. And they can support our reasoning because they represent lawful aspects of reality – space, time, causality, objects, intentions, and logic – rather than the system of noises that developed in a community to allow them to communicate. Conceptual semantics fits, too, with our commonsense notion that words are not the same as thoughts, and indeed, that much of human wisdom consists of not mistaking one for the other.

It's supposed to be a cloud, not a wall

--- Pam Heath, responding to difficulties we were having sharing a file on Windows Live SkyDrive, personal email, 7 Sep 2008 (the same day I was failing to get tech support on a failure of Outlook to sync with Hotmail)

Words are fools / Who follow blindly, once they get a lead / But thoughts are kingfishers . . .

--- Siegfried Sassoon, in Limitations, quoted by Steven Pinker in The Stuff of Thought (2007), p. 151

Excerpt from the poem:

Limitations

If you could crowd them into forty lines!
Yes; you can do it, once you get a start;
All that you want is waiting in your head,
For long-ago you’ve learnt it off by heart.

. . .

You’ve got your limitations; let them sing,
And all your life will waken with a cry:
Why should you halt when rapture’s on the wing
And you’ve no limit but the cloud-flocked sky?...

. . .

I told you it was easy! ... Words are fools
Who follow blindly, once they get a lead.
But thoughts are kingfishers that haunt the pools
Of quiet; seldom-seen: and all you need
Is just that flash of joy above your dream.
So, when those forty platitudes are done,
You’ll hear a bird-note calling from the stream
That wandered through your childhood; and the sun
Will strike the old flaming wonder from the waters....
And there’ll be forty lines not yet begun.

Harvard Business School is a factory for unhappy people

--- "Cedric", a former HBS classmate, quoted by Philip Delves Broughton in Ahead of the Curve: Two Years at Harvard Business School, Penguin: 2008, p. 268

Quote in context:

I met Cedric for lunch in a noodle bar close to his office in Manhattan. He had gotten the job he wanted, at the investment bank . . . We began talking about everyone in our class and how they were getting along. Several had already left the jobs they had taken upon graduating, while others were seriously considering doing so. Why, I asked Cedric, had they taken these jobs in the first place? It's not as though we didn't know what they would involve.

"HBS," he said, hoisting a ball of noodles to his mouth, "is a factory for unhappy people. We have so many choices, and yet so few people seem happy about that. It just makes them anxious. And more anxious. And then they make terrible decisions about their lives. But," he added, "these are mostly very good people. People from good families with good values. I can't figure out what happens. I think they just get desperate."

Before the garden maker designs the garden he must thoroughly design the owner

"Before the garden maker designs the garden he must thoroughly design the owner. Unless the garden maker can keep the owner in check, the garden design will fail from the beginning. A garden maker who can't design an owner can't design a garden either."

--- Mirei Shigemori, master of the modern Japanese dry landscape garden, "Shinsakuteiki" in Shigemori Mirei Sakuhinshū: Niwa-Kamigami e no Apurōchi, cited in Christian Tschumi, Mirei Shigemori: Modernizing the Japanese Garden, Stone Bridge Press: 2005, p. 116, footnote 63.

Politely persistent people persuade politicians

Tip #8 from "10 Strategies for Using Congressional Town Hall Meetings to Advance Your Legislative Agenda"

Second Life mania parallels the virtual world enthusiasm of the mid to late Nineties: All dressed up, somewhere to go, not enough to say or do

--- Jonathan Grudin, researcher, 3 June 2005, personal communication

When you first come, you realize immediately why they left

--- Water Laumb, a herdsman from Minnesota, describing a visit to his Mexican employees' home village. The punchline to an excellent story in the Christian Science Monitor, "U.S. farmers see how their employees live back in Mexico," 19 Aug 2008:

"When you first come, you realize immediately why they left," says Mr. Laumb. "And then 10 minutes later you realize why they all want to come home."

Fiction is a simulation that runs on the software of our minds

Keith Oatley, professor emeritus of cognitive psychology at the University of Toronto, Canada, in a New Scientist article "The science of fiction", issue 2662, 25 June 2008, page 42-43

Oakley reports on various studies done with his collaborators. From the article:

We found that fiction readers had substantially greater empathy as measured by the mind-in-the-eyes test, and also performed somewhat better on the interpersonal perception test than people who read predominantly non-fiction.

It's not just reading preferences of different personality types; they controlled for this. The effect is pretty immediate:

We found that people who read the Chekhov story underwent larger changes in personality than those who read the control text - although the types of changes varied from person to person. Results from the emotions questionnaire indicated that the personality changes were mediated by the emotions experienced while reading: a person's emotional state is known to influence their scores on personality tests.

...

This is why I liken fiction to a simulation that runs on the software of our minds. And it is a particularly useful simulation because negotiating the social world effectively is extremely tricky, requiring us to weigh up myriad interacting instances of cause and effect. Just as computer simulations can help us get to grips with complex problems such as flying a plane or forecasting the weather, so novels, stories and dramas can help us understand the complexities of social life.