actions and deeds are accompanied by reflections upon them, in the form of histories, myths, and song

--- John von Heyking, in Churchill on Friendship as Statecraft, The Montréal Review, May 2021.

In context

As statesman, Churchill understood the role of friendship for his craft. But his statecraft was more than actions and deeds. Recall he won the Nobel Prize not for peace but for literature. At Harrow he won a prize for reciting Macaulay’s “Lays of Ancient Rome” from memory (to show that his poor performance in Greek and Latin meant he was not, in his words, a complete “dunce”) and in My Early Life he recommends a Greek-style paideia of “poetry, songs, dancing, drill and gymnastics” for the young. His speeches, correspondence, and writings attest to his view that actions and deeds are accompanied by reflections upon them, in the form of histories, myths, and song. After the war is won, the peace must be won with songs and stories that win over hearts and minds. John F. Kennedy said “he mobilized the English language and sent it into battle. The incandescent quality of his words illuminated the courage of his countrymen.” As I previously mentioned, Churchill chose the hymns and even arranged the deck chairs for the worship service he held with Roosevelt on board the H.M.S. Prince of Wales at Placentia Bay. He composed his speeches in the same format as Biblical psalms. One reviewer of a collection of his speeches proclaimed, “He not only makes laws for his people but writes their songs as well, in the sense that his speeches are battle cries, dirges for the fallen and hymns of victory.” Indeed, his Cabinet colleagues complained of his voluminous correspondence and memos that he was fighting the war simply to write the history.

history is made up of truths that eventually become lies, while mythology is made up of lies that eventually become truths

 --- Jean Cocteau, 1962, film "Jean Cocteau s'addresse a l'an 2000", at time code 7:14, h/t Matt Nesselrodt

“I have always preferred mythology to history because history is made up of truths that eventually become lies, while mythology is made up of lies that eventually become truths.”

modern western man ... no longer believes that he can know what is good and bad

 --- Leo Strauss, "The Three Waves of Modernity," Political Philosophy: Six Essays, ed. Hilail Gildin, Pegasus-Bobbs-Merrill, 1975, p. 81-82

Excerpt from https://contemporarythinkers.org/leo-strauss/essay/the-three-waves-of-modernity/:

The crisis of modernity reveals itself in the fact, or consists in the fact, that modern western man no longer knows what he wants–that he no longer believes that he can know what is good and bad, what is right and wrong.  Until a few generations ago, it was generally taken for granted that man can know what is right and wrong, what is the just or the good or the best order of society–in a word that political philosophy is possible and necessary.  In our time this faith has lost its power.  According to the pre-dominant view, political philosophy is impossible: it was a dream, perhaps a noble dream, but at any rate a dream.  While there is broad agreement on this point, opinions differ as to why political philosophy was based on a fundamental error.  According to a very widespread view, all knowledge which deserves the name is scientific knowledge; but scientific knowledge cannot validate value judgments; it is limited to factual judgments; yet political philosophy presupposes that value judgments can be rationally validated.  According to a less widespread but more sophisticated view, the predominant separation of facts from values is not tenable.: the categories of theoretical understanding imply, somehow, principles of evaluation; but those principles of evaluation together with the categories of understanding are historically variable; they change from epoch to epoch; hence it is impossible to answer the question of right and wrong or of the best social order in a universally valid manner, in a manner valid for all historical epochs, as political philosophy requires.

Google Books

If you’re less than five minutes early, you’re late

 --- Saying in the military, quoted by Bear Grylls in ‘The Best Advice a Boss Ever Gave Me’, WSJ Sep 2023

From the article:

“When I first joined the military, a sergeant major told me: ‘If you’re less than five minutes early, you’re late.’ I’ve never forgotten those words and have always tried to make it a mantra when filming or working. I really notice it too in others, on expeditions for example. It speaks to diligence and dedication.”

Bear Grylls is the host of ‘Running Wild with Bear Grylls: The Challenge,’ on National Geographic

The saying reminds me of a "twenty before twenty" an ex-military person told me about: The colonel says that everyone should muster at 0800, the captain makes it 0740, the sergeant major makes it 0720, and the corporal makes it 0700.

There's a StackExchange thread on the origin. Variations include "Early is on time; on time is late" and "Five minutes early is on time."

You can’t put [the universe] in a box on a table and run controlled experiments on it

--- physicists Adam Frank and Marcelo Gleiser in The Story of Our Universe May Be Starting to Unravel, NY Times guest essay, 2 Sep 2023, via SN First Up, 6 Sep 2023

Cosmology is not like other sciences. It’s not like studying mice in a maze or watching chemicals boil in a beaker in a lab. The universe is everything there is; there’s only one and we can’t look at it from the outside. You can’t put it in a box on a table and run controlled experiments on it. Because it is all-encompassing, cosmology forces scientists to tackle questions about the very environment in which science operates: the nature of time, the nature of space, the nature of lawlike regularity, the role of the observers doing the observations.

The story behind the essay title: "But one of the Webb’s first major findings was exciting in an uncomfortable sense: It discovered the existence of fully formed galaxies far earlier than should have been possible according to the so-called standard model of cosmology." 

There are no solutions, only trade-offs

 --- Economist Thomas Sowell, quoted passim e.g. by Anna Reynolds at InspireVirtue.com 

we absolutely are going to turn our systems into agents with goals

 --- Zvi Mowshowitz  on the EconTalk podcast, Aug 7, 2023

In context, from the transcript

What we do know is that humans love achieving goals, and that when you give an AI system goals, it helps you achieve your goals. Right? At least on the margin, at least to starting out, people think this. And so, we see Baby GPT and Auto GPT and all these other systems that turns out for 100 lines of code. You can create the scaffolding around GPT-4 that makes an attempt to act like it has goals. Right? To take actions as if it had goals and to act as a goal-motivated system.

And, it's not great because the underlying technologies aren't there, and we haven't gone through the iterations of building the right scaffolding, and we don't know a lot of the tricks, and it's still very, very early days.

But, we absolutely are going to turn our systems into agents with goals that are trying to achieve goals, that then create sub-goals, that then plan but then ask themselves, 'What do we need to do in order to accomplish this thing?' And, that will include like, 'Oh, I don't have this information. I need to go get this information.' 'I don't have this capability. I don't have access to this tool. I need to get this tool.' And, it's a very small leap from there to, 'I'm going to need more money.' Right? Or something like that. And from there, the sky's the limit. So, we can rule out, through experimentation in a way that we couldn't two years ago--right?--this particular theory of Marc's that the systems in the future won't have goals in a meaningful sense unless we take action to stop it.

Host Russ Roberts then went on to talk about aspiration which to me is a subset of having goals - it's the felt experience of having goals. Not surprisingly, he then connected goals to sentience and consciousness.

And, I think part of the reason that the skeptics--the optimists--are more optimistic. And, part of the reason I think we are in some sense just telling different narratives and some are more convincing than others, and it's mainly stories, is that we don't have any vivid examples today of my vacuum cleaner wanting to be a driverless car--an example I've used before. It doesn't aspire. Now, we might see some aspiration or at least perceived aspiration in ChatGPT at some point, but I think part of the problem getting people convinced about its dangers is that that leap--a sentience leap, the consciousness leap, which is where goals come in--doesn't seem credible. At least today. Maybe it will be, and I think that's where you and others who are worried about AI need to help me and others who are less worried to see.

Bennu is like an old friend at this point, even though it's a trickster

 --- Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission, discussing at a briefing what it has been like studying the asteroid Bennu, samples of which OSIRIS-REx is returning to Earth later this month, quoted in SN FirstUp, Friday, September 1, 2023

Full quote

Bennu is like an old friend at this point, even though it's a trickster. It likes to play jokes on us. It likes to challenge us. We thrive on that. I really feel a connection to this asteroid. It's holding these clues, and I think it wants us to study it, it wants us to unravel this mystery.

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics

--- popularized by Mark Twain (cf. Wikipedia)

From Twain's Chapters from My Autobiography, published in the North American Review in 1907 (per Wikipedia)

Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: 'There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.'

absurd paintings, door panels, stage sets, backdrops for acrobats, sign boards, . . . outdated literature, Church Latin, misspelled erotic books, novels of grandmothers

 --- Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell (1873), cited in the Wikipedia article on Blaise Cendrars and Arthur Krystal's "The Joy of Lists," The New York Times (2010)

From Krystal's "The Joy of Lists" (the last paragraph in the essay)

The first modern list could very well be Arthur Rimbaud’s recitation of favorite things in “A Season in Hell” (1873): “absurd paintings, door panels, stage sets, backdrops for acrobats, sign boards, . . . outdated literature, Church Latin, misspelled erotic books, novels of grandmothers. ” No underlying order here or columnar progression. What we get instead is Rimbaud’s oddly stocked mind, in which disparate elements jostle one another collage-like on the page. The great contemporary list maker, of course, is Borges, who, in his fabulous story “The Aleph,” attempted the ultimate list, the universe seen simultaneously and in its entirety: “the heavy-laden sea; . . . the multitudes of America; . . . a silver-plated cobweb at the centers of a black pyramid; . . . all the mirrors in the planet; . . . a copy of the first English version of Pliny; . . . tigers, emboli, bison, ground swells and armies; . . . the earth in the Aleph and in the earth the Aleph once more and the earth in the Aleph.” This list is Borges, and it suggests — does it not? — the continuing incalculable exchange between the self and the world. So we catalog as we go, itemizing things seen and unseen, as we move inexorably forward, listing toward oblivion.

The blood of a zaibatsu is information, not people. The structure is independent of the individual lives that comprise it. Corporation as life form.

 --- William Gibson, from New Rose Hotel (1984), collected in Burning Chrome (1986)

Excerpt

Imagine an alien, Fox once said, who’s come here to identify the planet’s dominant form of intelligence. The alien has a look, then chooses. What do you think he picks? I probably shrugged.

The zaibatsus, Fox said, the multinationals. The blood of a zaibatsu is information, not people. The structure is independent of the individual lives that comprise it. Corporation as life form.

That which is above is from that which is below, and that which is below is from that which is above, working the miracles of one

 --- from the Emerald Tablet of Hermes, via Mark Stavish's Egregores

Holmyard (1923) translation from Jabir ibn Hayyan.

0) Balinas mentions the engraving on the table in the hand of Hermes, which says:

1) Truth! Certainty! That in which there is no doubt!

2) That which is above is from that which is below, and that which is below is from that which is above, working the miracles of one.

3) As all things were from one.

4) Its father is the Sun and its mother the Moon.

5) The Earth carried it in her belly, and the Wind nourished it in her belly,

7) as Earth which shall become Fire.

7a) Feed the Earth from that which is subtle, with the greatest power.

8) It ascends from the earth to the heaven and becomes ruler over that which is above and that which is below.

14) And I have already explained the meaning of the whole of this in two of these books of mine.

Psychology isn’t so much science as it is engineering – applying ideas and evidence to a purpose

 --- Simon Ings, in a review of The Age of Guilt by Mark Edmundson, New Scientist, 8 Jul 2023

In context

In his Freudian analysis of what we might loosely term “cancel culture”, Mark Edmundson wisely chooses not to get into simplistic debates about which of the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud’s ideas have or haven’t been “proved right”. What would that even mean? Psychology isn’t so much science as it is engineering – applying ideas and evidence to a purpose. In The Age of Guilt: The super-ego in the online world, Edmundson, a literary scholar, simply wants to suggest that Freud might help us better understand our cultural moment.

Another neat excerpt

Arguments from intuition need a hefty health warning, but I defy you not to agree with more than a few of Edmundson’s denunciations: for instance, how the internet has become our culture’s chief manifestation of the superego, its loudest users “immune to irony, void of humour, unforgiving, prone to demand harsh punishments”.

In aesthetics, “Huh? Wow!” is preferable to “Wow! Huh?”

 ---Jackson Arn, quoting Ed Ruscha, in God’s-Eye Views: Aerial Photography in the Southwest, Art in America, Nov 2022

In context

To put it succinctly: In aesthetics, “Huh? Wow!” is preferable to “Wow! Huh?” This rule, courtesy of Ed Ruscha, goes some way toward explaining why SAP [Southwestern aerial photography] has been a source of inspiration for artists as different as Trevor Paglen, Robert Smithson, Ansel Adams, Emmet Gowin, David Maisel, and—if we’re counting his shots of Los Angeles parking lots—Ruscha himself. 

what matters more: our enmity with China or our desire to decarbonize quickly

 --- Aniket Shah, head of ESG strategy Jefferies, quoted in The Biggest Winners in America’s Climate Law: Foreign Companies, Wall Street Journal, July 20, 2023

In context

The large investments by overseas businesses have generally been welcomed by U.S. communities, many of which have benefited for decades from spending and jobs created by foreign automakers and other companies. But some investments from Chinese companies have fueled a backlash as tensions between the two countries escalate. 

...

“What we’re seeing is foreign policy conflict with climate policy and trade policy,” Shah said. “We’re going to have to decide as a country what matters more: our enmity with China or our desire to decarbonize quickly.”

(This question could be shibboleth to distinguish between Republicans and Democrats.)

If I have to go through any more character development my character is gonna develop into a villain

 --- Neemo (@ne3m0) on Twitter, https://twitter.com/ne3m0/status/1470747802888454150 

Much of the greatest art, ..., seeks to remind us of the obvious

--- Richard Bringley, in  All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me (2023), ch. II, p. 22

In context

Much of the greatest art, I find, seeks to remind us of the obvious. This is real, is all it says. Take the time to stop and imagine more fully the thing you already know. Today my apprehension of the awesome reality of suffering might be as crisp and clear as daddy's great painting. But we forget these things they become less vivid we have to return as we do to paintings, and face them again.

The Crucifiction, ca. 1325-1330, Bernardo Daddi,  Met Museum Accession Number https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/438423

“Any Russian leader must be able to do three things to keep the confidence of the elites—protect them from external enemies, protect them from the Russian people, and protect them from each other

 --- Thomas Graham, distinguished fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former national security adviser on Russia to the Bush White House, quoted in After Wagner Revolt, Questions of Blame in Vladimir Putin’s Inner Circle, WSJ, 28 Jun 2023

In context

For now, the power brokers whom Putin installed in the Kremlin are rallying around him, closing fissures opened by the debacle. But long-simmering resentment about the war in Ukraine, along with rounds of finger-pointing and recriminations inside the Kremlin, could open a power vacuum that disgruntled advisers could exploit, Russia experts say.

“Any Russian leader must be able to do three things to keep the confidence of the elites—protect them from external enemies, protect them from the Russian people, and protect them from each other,” said Thomas Graham, a distinguished fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former national security adviser on Russia to the Bush White House.

“He’s not performing two of these tasks well—they’re not doing well against the external enemy of Ukraine, and he’s not handling competition in the elites,” Graham said. “He’s not forcefully resolving things.”

One person's salvage is another nation's piracy unless you get the regulations right and the agreements in place

 --- Ray Fielding, head of sustainability and active debris removal mission for the U.K. Space Agency, discussing regulatory issues for active debris removal activities during a session at the Summit for Space Sustainability Wednesday 6/14/2023, quoted in SN First Up, a SpaceNews daily newsletter, Thursday, June 15, 2023.

Technology bubbles create a lot of emotional energy – both excitement and fear – but they are bad information environments

 --- Lee Vinsel, historian of technology at Virginia Tech, quoted in Jeremy Hsu, "How this moment for AI will change society forever (and how it won't)" (paywall), New Scientist, 18 April 2023

Context

But the powerful AIs released by large technology companies tend to be closed systems that restrict access for the public or outside developers. Closed systems can help control for the potential risks and harms of letting anyone download and use the AIs, but they also concentrate power in the hands of the organisations that developed them without allowing any input from the many people whose lives the AIs could affect.

“The most pressing concern in closedness trends is how few models will be available outside a handful of developer organisations,” says Irene Solaiman, policy director at Hugging Face, a company that develops tools for sharing AI code and data sets.

Such trends can be seen in how OpenAI has moved towards a proprietary and closed stance on its technology, despite starting as a non-profit organisation dedicated to open development of AI. When OpenAI upgraded ChatGPT’s underlying AI technology to GPT-4, the company cited “the competitive landscape and safety implications of large-scale models like GPT-4” as the reason for not disclosing how this model works.

This type of stance makes it hard for outsiders to assess the capabilities and limitations of generative AIs, potentially fuelling hype. “Technology bubbles create a lot of emotional energy – both excitement and fear – but they are bad information environments,” says Lee Vinsel, a historian of technology at Virginia Tech.

Many tech bubbles involve both hype and what Vinsel describes as “criti-hype” – criticism that amplifies technology hype by taking the most sensational claims of companies at face value and flipping them to talk about the hypothetical risks.

Pieces of String Too Short to Save

 --- via Susan Tonkin, who made a reference to "a box for pieces of string too short to save."

I found a couple of references in US usage (Donald Lipski's show, Bob Chancellor's memoir, Dull Men's Club) but I assume it occurs in the UK, too.

What gods do is not different from what they are. They know little hesitation and less regret.

 --- Michael Kinnucan, in "The Gods Show Up," Hypocrite Reader, Issue 29, "Faces and Masks," June 2013

Excerpts

The Greeks celebrated the rites of Dionysos before a pillar wrapped in ivy on which hung a mask. The mask was the god. Why a mask?

A mask hides a face, evidently—but it is not a disguise. After all, a disguise can’t appear as a disguise; it has to look like the real thing. But a mask announces itself quite clearly, rigid, closed, nothing like a face. A face can reveal (even betray) the mind “behind” it because faces are mutable, responsive: a face can blush or grow pale, its gaze can falter, its jaw can set. The face is legible in terms of what it discloses or fails to, what it never fully gives but constantly suggests. A mask is immutable, staring, implacable; there is “nothing” behind it to read. . . . 

The revelatory force of the mask is what makes it a worthy home for Dionysos. To understand why, we must take a moment to consider what made the Greek gods divine. After two thousand years of Christianity it’s hard to imagine divinity apart from unity, eternity, singularity, commandment; it’s hard to see why the difference between Zeus and any other adulterous husband isn’t merely a matter of degree. But the Greeks saw an absolute difference between mortals and gods, a difference which might be formulated this way: mortals are partial and complex, gods are complete and simple. A god’s desires are implacable and brook no appeal, while a human’s are changeable and often disappointed; a god’s actions always go to the absolute limit and can’t be undone, while a human’s are always in a certain sense incomplete, half-assed. Zeus ravishes Leda, who bears Helen the all-too-beautiful, and Troy falls, and almost everyone touched by Helen dies a bad death; the question “what if Zeus hadn’t ravished Leda?” is not one that can be asked of a god. What gods do is not different from what they are. They know little hesitation and less regret. According to Euripides, they are “forbidden” to cry.

The door handle is the handshake of the building

 --- attrib. to Juhani Pallasmaa, from The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses per goodreads

sometimes it takes you a long time to sound like yourself

 --- widely attributed to Miles Davis, but I haven't been able to find an authoritative attribution. Typical samples

Goodreads: “Man, sometimes it takes you a long time to sound like yourself.”

WealthyGorilla: “Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.”

The best writing is an essential truth wrapped in a beautiful lie

 --- Julian Barnes quoted by Edmund de Waal on "By Design" podcast of the the Sir John Soane's Museum in conversation with Will Gompertz, at 

The best writing is an essential truth wrapped in a beautiful lie

There seem to be many variations of this expression, including

“We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth,” Picasso, quoted in BooksAtWork

“The best lie is wrapped around a core of truth,” Michael Scott, The Magician, quoted in Goodreads

“fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth,” Albert Camus quoted by Paul Marks

All that is gold does not glitter, | Not all those who wander are lost

 --- J.R.R. Tolkein, The Fellowship of the Ring

Excerpt from goodreads:

All that is gold does not glitter,

Not all those who wander are lost;

The old that is strong does not wither,

Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,

A light from the shadows shall spring;

Renewed shall be blade that was broken,

The crownless again shall be king.

(This kind of sentiment makes me rebellious. Sure, not all those who wander are lost -- but many of us are lost. Most of the crownless die crownless.)

And the end of all our exploring | Will be to arrive where we started | And know the place for the first time.

--- T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding (No. 4 of the "Four Quartets")

V

What we call the beginning is often the end

And to make an end is to make a beginning.

The end is where we start from. . . .

. . .

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this

     Calling

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

. . . 

Quick now, here, now, always—

A condition of complete simplicity

(Costing not less than everything)

And all shall be well and

All manner of thing shall be well

When the tongues of flame are in-folded

Into the crowned knot of fire

And the fire and the rose are one.

his job was never to be the leader, it was to inspire others to lead

--- @SpacemanSR, in the YouTube essay Andor Is A Star Wars Masterpiece From 1978, time code 3:09

Cassian may seem one note to the song of others, but his job was never to be the leader. It was to inspire others to lead. And that complexity and that choice enhanced his own character's shell as an osmosis of story. One that again is an anchor for the development of others. And through their progressions the common denominator is still Cassian Andor.

Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it

 --- Richard Feynman, quoted on the internet passim, but I haven't been able to find a source. There are also some alternative wordings to "it may give some practical results," like "it has consequences" and "sometimes something useful comes out"

a seething debating society in which the debate never stops, in which people never give up

 --- George Schultz, decribing the Washington foreign-policy establishment, quoted by Richard Sokolsky & Gordon Adams in Don’t Let the DC ‘Blob’ Guide Trump’s Foreign Policy, Nov 2016, 

Excerpt

Nearly thirty years ago, in testimony before Congress, then secretary of state George Shultz offered a rare window into the inner workings of the Washington foreign-policy establishment. He told members of Congress, “Nothing ever gets settled in this town. It’s not like running a company or even a university. It’s a seething debating society in which the debate never stops, in which people never give up, including me, and that’s the atmosphere in which you administer.”

President Obama called the foreign-policy establishment “the Blob.” He was critical of the playbook it wanted to use, which invariably advocated the use of U.S. military force to effect regime change, interfere in other countries’ civil wars, and promote democracy and human rights, as well as a hyperactive and muscular approach to dealing with the world’s problems. Obama had a mixed record in taming the Blob; he succumbed to its preferences in Libya, but has kept it largely at bay in Syria. 

mirrors ought to be merely glanced at, not stared at

--- Mamoru Oshii, script of Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, around time code 1:24:55.

A conversation between the Major, acting through a doll, and Batou, as they attack the control center of the Locus Solus ship.

The Major: There are few who can hold up a mirror and not become evil. A mirror does not expose evil. Rather, it creates it. 

Batou: This ain't the time to become philosophical. I'm running short on ammo here. 

The Major: In short, mirrors ought to be merely glanced at, not stared at.

 

Mirrors are associated with the occult. From occult-world.com:

• In lore, mirrors are believed to reflect the soul and must be guarded against lest the soul be lost.
• The Aztecs used mirrorlike surfaces to keep witches away.
• Medieval and renaissance village wizards frequently employed mirrors to detect thieves.

the uncertainty that perhaps something that doesn't appear to be alive, actually is

--- Mamoru Oshii, script of Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, around time code 1:06. 

The speaker is a manikin looking like detective Togusa, animated by the hacker Kim, during Togusa's hallucination.

This is seriously disturbing isn't it? Trust me, I know how you feel. It's the uncertainty that something that appears to be alive, actually isn't. On the other hand, it might be the uncertainty that perhaps something that doesn't appear to be alive, actually is. 

 

issues are real but politics are just an invented way to solve those issues

 --- Trevor Noah, in What Did Trevor Learn from The Daily Show?  at time code 1:24 on The Daily Show

Great cities are like any other living things, being born and maturing and wearying and dying in their turn

 --- N.K. Jemisin in The City We Became (2020)

Excerpt

This is the lesson: Great cities are like any other living things, being born and maturing and wearying and dying in their turn.

Duh, right? Everyone who's visited a real city feels that, one way or another. All those rural people who hate cities are afraid of something legit; cities really are different. They make a weight on the world, a tear in the fabric of reality, like ... like black holes, maybe. Yeah. (I go to museums sometimes. They're cool inside, and Neil deGrasse Tyson is hot.) As more and more people come in and deposit their strangeness and leave and get replaced by others, the tear widens. Eventually it gets so deep that it forms a pocket, connected only by the thinnest thread of ... something to ... something. Whatever cities are made of.

But the separation starts a process, and in that pocket the many parts of the city begin to multiply and differentiate. Its sewers extend into places where there is no need for water. Its slums grow teeth; its art centers, claws. Ordinary things within it, traffic and construction and stuff like that, start to have a rhythm like a heartbeat, if you record their sounds and play them back fast. The city ... quickens.

Not all cities make it this far. There used to be a couple of great cities on this continent, but that was before Columbus fucked the Indians' shit up, so we had to start over. New Orleans failed, like Paulo said, but it survived, and that's something. It can try again. Mexico City's well on its way. But New York is the first American city to reach this point.

The gestation can take twenty years or two hundred or two thousand, but eventually the time will come. The cord is cut and the city becomes a thing of its own, able to stand on wobbly legs and do ... well, whatever the fuck a living, thinking entity shaped like a big-ass city wants to do.

And just as in any other part of nature, there are things lying in wait for this moment, hoping to chase down the sweet new life and swallow its guts while it screams.

That's why Paulo's here to teach me. That's why I can clear the city's breathing and stretch and massage its asphalt limbs. I'm the midwife, see.

anxious meat puppets tranquillised by culturally constructed trivialities

--- Sheldon Solomon, quoted in How do we make the most of our time? The power of confronting death, New Scientist, 15 June 2022

In context:

Subconscious fears about death drive much of human thought and behaviour, according to psychology’s terror management theory. “The idea is that we would be overwhelmed with existential terror if we didn’t have some way to manage it,” says Sheldon Solomon, a psychologist at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York. And we manage it, the idea goes, by doing things that give us a sense of meaning and value, from believing in the afterlife to creating art.

For Solomon, this leads to a startling conclusion: that we are all just “anxious meat puppets tranquillised by culturally constructed trivialities”. But while Solomon and his colleagues have shown that subtle reminders of death make people more likely to cling to their own world view and discriminate against outsiders, there is also a bright side to this awareness of the inevitability of death.

a bunch of old men taken in by a seemingly great young woman

 --- Rupert Murdoch, quoted in "Theranos Investors React With Sadness, Satisfaction" by Christopher Weaver in the WSJ, 18 Nov 2022.

From the piece:

Investors in Theranos Inc. reacted to the sentence with sadness, embarrassment and some satisfaction.

“Of course it was fraud,” said Rupert Murdoch, executive chairman of News Corp, which owns The Wall Street Journal, in an email after the sentencing. “But I only have myself to blame for not asking a lot more questions. One of a bunch of old men taken in by a seemingly great young woman! Total embarrassment.”

For the fine line between fraud and folly, cf. this excerpt:

Early investor Marc Ostrofsky, a venture capitalist, said he didn’t believe Ms. Holmes set out to commit fraud.

“I don’t think she started out to be a dishonest person,” Mr. Ostrofsky said. “I think Silicon Valley, fake it till you make it, is where she ended up.”

See also "The Risky Business of Sam Bankman-Fried" by Ben Cohen, WSJ, 14 Nov 2022

There is much that remains unknown about the meltdown, and one big question for the investigators figuring out what happened is whether it was folly or fraud—a cautionary tale of excess risk or an empire built on a house of cards.

one big question ... is whether it was folly or fraud

 --- Ben Cohen, in his Nov 14, 2022 story for the WSJ, "The Risky Business of Sam Bankman-Fried"

From the story:

There is much that remains unknown about the meltdown, and one big question for the investigators figuring out what happened is whether it was folly or fraud—a cautionary tale of excess risk or an empire built on a house of cards.

"Folly or fraud" is often at issue tricksters, with some leaning to folly (Coyote), others to fraud (Reynard the Fox), and yet others where it's not clear (Loki).

the organism will behave as it damn well pleases

--- This is attributed to Joel Garreau on quotefancy: 

“The Harvard Law of Animal Behavior holds that under controlled experimental conditions of temperature, time, lighting, feeding, and training, the organism will behave as it damn well pleases.”

It's widely seen on the internet in variant forms, e.g. this from Philip Ball on Aeon: "Under carefully controlled experimental circumstances, the animal behaves as it damned well pleases."

Brembs in "Towards a scientific concept of free will as a biological trait: spontaneous actions and decision-making in invertebrates" in Proc Biol Sci. 278(1707), doi: 10.1098/rspb.2010.2325, cites to: Grobstein P. 1994. Variability in behavior and the nervous system. In The encyclopedia of human behavior (ed. Ramachandran V. S.), pp. 447–458 New York, NY: Academic Press, but I think this is to further support the claim the quotation is used to illustrate.

We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters

 --- attrib. to Peter Thiel, reportedly written in 2011 as part of a manifesto for his venture fund, Founders Fund

The whole world is a series of miracles, but we're so used to them we call them ordinary things

 --- Hans Christian Andersen, from The Complete Stories, ed. British Library Board (2005) (according to LibQuotes)

the moment one definitely commits oneself, the providence moves too

 --- W. H. Murray in The Scottish Himalaya Expedition (1951):

But when I said that nothing had been done I erred in one important matter. We had definitely committed ourselves and were halfway out of our ruts. We had put down our passage money--booked a sailing to Bombay. This may sound too simple, but is great in consequence. Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, the providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets: 

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. 

Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!

The secret in exploring a philosophical thesis is to maintain the excitement while increasing the intelligibility

 --- Donald Davidson, quoted (paraphrased) in List, C., & Pettit, P. (2006). Group agency and supervenience. Southern Journal of Philosophy, 44, 85–105. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2041-6962.2006.tb00032.x

Institutions create shadowed places in which nothing can be seen and no questions asked

 --- Mary Douglas, How Institutions Think (1986), p. 69

In context:

Every ten years or so classroom text books go out of date. Their need to be revised is in some part due to new work in science or to the deeper delving of historians. Much more, it is because science has come to seem over-religious or scandalously irreligious (Nelkin 1977), or because the history of the last decade gives a wrong political feeling (Fitzgerald 1979). In the intervening years, some slogans have become risible, some words have become empty, and others too full, holding too much cruelty or bitterness to modern ears. Some names count for more, and others that count for less are due to be struck out. The revisionary effort is not aimed at producing the perfect optic flat. The mirror, if that is what history is, distorts as much after revision as it did before. The aim of revision is to get the distortions to match the mood of the present times. But the mirror is a poor metaphor of the public memory. The seeker after historical truth is not trying to get a clearer image of his own face, or even a more flattering image. Conscious tinkering and remaking is only a small part of the shaping of the past. When we look closely at the construction of past time, we find the process has very little to do with the past at all and everything to do with the present. Institutions create shadowed places in which nothing can be seen and no questions asked. They make other areas show finely discriminated detail, which is closely scrutinized and ordered.

The mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting

 --- Plutarch, in "On Listening"

From Plutarch, Essays, transl. Robin Waterfield, Penguin Books, p. 50 (1992), Google Books

For the correct analogy for the mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting - no more - then it motivates one towards originality and instils the desire for truth.

See also On Listening to Lectures, as published in Vol. I of the Loeb Classical Library edition, transl. F. C. Babbit (1927) (uchicago.edu)

For the mind does not require filling like a bottle, but rather, like wood, it only requires kindling to create in it an impulse to think independently and an ardent desire for the truth.

H/t to redditors Ctrl-C and jean-luc_gohard in a thread on r/askphilosophy.

Life is a matter of really tough choices

 --- Joe Biden, quoted by Ned Temko in Biden in Saudi Arabia: The strategy behind ‘making nice’, CSMonitor, July 13, 2022.

From the piece"

It’s a maxim coined by Joe Biden a dozen years ago, when he was still vice president. But it might just as well be emblazoned on Air Force One as he embarks on his first presidential visit to the Middle East: “Life is a matter of really tough choices.”

Back then, he was talking about a political trade-off on tax-cut legislation. Now, however, he’s had to face a much tougher choice on a larger stage: a world seismically jolted by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

The result: an even more difficult, and controversial, trade-off. It’s between the emphasis on democracy and human rights he has placed at the core of his foreign policy, and his campaign to build and sustain international support to isolate Mr. Putin and deny him victory.

the proper relationship to the emerging ontology

 --- John Vervaeke, in Egregores, Mobs and Demons | with Jordan Hall & John Vervaeke, Jun 24, 2022, on Jonathan Pageau's YouTube channel, at time code 1:05:51

... how can we virtuously and with virtuosity participate in the largely virtual medium in which the kairos is presenting itself so that we can discover the proper relationship to the emerging ontology, if i can put it that way. That, to me, is the question. ...

He often causes the gods terrible problems, and just as often solves those problems with his schemes

 --- A description of Loki, from Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda; given by Jackson Crawford in his Norse Mythology for The Great Courses, lecture 7, "Loki and his Children"

From Crawford's course notes (I don't know which translation he's using; it may be his own)

One is counted among the Aesir gods, who is called by some “the slanderer of the gods” or “the first maker of lies” or “the blemish on all the gods and all humankind.” … He is handsome in appearance, evil in disposition, and extremely changeable in mood. Before all others, he is the champion of the kind of wisdom that is deceit, and he uses lies for all his purposes. He often causes the gods terrible problems, and just as often solves those problems with his schemes.

From the Gylfaginning, translated by Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur (1916)

XXXIII. “Also numbered among the Æsir is he whom some call the mischief-monger of the Æsir, and the first father of falsehoods, and blemish of all gods and men: he is named Loki or Loptr, son of Fárbauti the giant; his mother was Laufey or Nál; his brothers are Býleistr and Helblindi. Loki is beautiful and comely to look upon, evil in spirit., very fickle in habit. He surpassed other men in that wisdom which is called ‘sleight,’ and had artifices for all occasions; he would ever bring the Æsir into great hardships, and then get them out with crafty counsel. His wife was called Sigyn, their son Nari or Narfi.

For comparison, this from Niel Gaiman's Norse Mythology (2017)

Loki is very handsome. He is plausible, convincing, likable, and far and away the most wily, subtle, and shrewd of all the inhabitants of Asgard. It is a pity, then, that there is so much darkness inside him: so much anger, so much envy, so much lust. . . . Loki is the son of Laufey, who was also known as Nal, or needle, because she was slim and beautiful and sharp. His father was said to be Farbauti, a giant; his name means "he who strikes dangerous blows," and Farbauti was as dangerous as his name. . . He is tolerated by the gods, perhaps because his stratagems and plans save them as often as they get them into trouble. 

Loki makes the world more interesting but less safe. He is the father of monsters, the author of woes, the sly god.

it is not irrational for an administrator to defend a policy as good without being able to specify what it is good for

 --- Charles Lindblom, The Science of “Muddling Through.” Public Administration Review, 19(2), 79–88, 1959. https://doi.org/10.2307/973677 (h/t Dale Hatfield)

In context

Agreement on policy thus becomes the only practicable test of the policy's correctness. And for one administrator to seek to win the other over to agreement on ends as well would accomplish nothing and create quite unnecessary controversy.

If agreement directly on policy as a test for "best" policy seems a poor substitute for testing the policy against its objectives, it ought to be remembered that objectives themselves have no ultimate validity other than they are agreed upon. Hence agreement is the test of "best" policy in both methods. But where the root method requires agreement on what elements in the decision constitute objectives and on which of these objectives should be sought, the branch method falls back on agreement wherever it can be found.

In an important sense, therefore, it is not irrational for an administrator to defend a policy as good without being able to specify what it is good for.

we belong to our time and we share in its opinions, its feelings, even its delusions

 --- Henri Matisse, Notes of a Painter, 1908, reproduced in Obelisk Art History

Closing paragraph

Rules have no existence outside of individuals: otherwise a good professor would be as great a genius as Racine. Any one of us is capable of repeating fine maxims, but few can also penetrate their meaning. I am ready to admit that from a study of the works of Raphael or Titian a more complete set of rules can be drawn than from the works of Manet or Renoir, but the rules followed by Manet and Renoir were those which suited their temperaments and I prefer the most minor of their paintings to all the work of those who are content to imitate the Venus of Urbino or the Madonna of the Goldfinch. These latter are of no value to anyone, for whether we want to or not, we belong to our time and we share in its opinions, its feelings, even its delusions. All artists bear the imprint of their time, but the great artists are those in whom this is most profoundly marked. Our epoch for instance is better represented by Courbet than by Flandrin, by Rodin better than by Frémiet. Whether we like it or not, however insistently we call ourselves exiles, between our period and ourselves an indissoluble bond is established, and M. Péladan himself cannot escape it. The aestheticians of the future may perhaps use his books as evidence if they get it in their heads to prove that no one of our time understood anything about the art of Leonardo da Vinci.

both parties are effectively minorities — but each continues to think it is on the verge of winning big

 --- Yuval Levin, Why do our politicians keep pursuing a losing strategy?, AEI blog, 29 Mar 2022

In context:

The very fact that voters are unhappy with both parties makes it hard for either one to take a hint from its electoral failures. Even more than polarization, it is the closeness of elections that has degraded the capacity of our democracy to respond to voter pressure. In an era of persistent, polarized deadlock, both parties are effectively minorities — but each continues to think it is on the verge of winning big.

His explanation:

You might think that two minority parties would each feel pressure to expand its coalition and become a majority, but actually both have behaved as if they were the rightful majorities already. Each finds ways to dismiss the other’s wins as narrow flukes and treat its own as massive triumphs.

This is sustainable only because elections are so close. Politicians learn big lessons from big losses or big wins, so neither of our parties has learned much in a long time, and neither can quite grasp that it just isn’t very popular and could easily lose the next election.

This dynamic has many causes — from the advent of party primaries to the evolution of the media and much in between. Polarization doesn’t have to mean deadlock, but a long-term pattern of growing negative polarization, in which each party sees the other as the country’s biggest problem, creates incentives for the parties to seek narrower but ideologically purer wins rather than build broader if less ideologically coherent coalitions.