25 quotes
Through our sentences and paragraphs long-gone ghosts still have their say within the collective mind.
Almost every reality you "know" at any given second is a mere ghost held in memory.
Individual perception untainted by others' influence does not exist.
Remember a networked learning machine's most basic rule: strengthen the connections to those who succeed, weaken them to those who fail.
The "most extreme" followers of Heraclitus said that it is impossible to fix a name to anything.
The God Problem: How a Godless Cosmos Creates (2012)
When you repeat an old pattern in a new location, you sometimes make something new.
The God Problem: How a Godless Cosmos Creates (2012)
The real core of communication is what information theory's founder, Claude Shannon calls "meaning." And meaning is not covered in information theory.
The God Problem: How a Godless Cosmos Creates (2012)
From a few basic rules you can generate a cosmos.
The God Problem: How a Godless Cosmos Creates (2012)
A does not equal A because of location. For example, location in time.
The God Problem: How a Godless Cosmos Creates (2012)
Humor is a conformity enforcer clothed in the garb of congeniality. It focuses on others' weaknesses, disasters, stupiidities, and abnormalities.
Reality is a fabrication slapped together by an often bumbling inner team. ...The proclamation that "there can be no such thing as an objective fact" has a great deal of validity.
Men and animals do not merely struggle to maintain their individual existence; they are members of larger social groups. And, all too often, it is the social unit, not the individual, whose survival comes first.
The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History (1997)
Opposites work together in the very opposite of the way they seem... They work together in teams.
The God Problem: How a Godless Cosmos Creates (2012)
One plus one does not equal two.
The God Problem: How a Godless Cosmos Creates (2012)
The first two rules of science are: 1. The truth at any price including the price of your life. 2. Look at things right under your nose as if you've never seen them before, then proceed from there.
The God Problem: How a Godless Cosmos Creates (2012)
The ultimate repository of herd influence is language—a device which not only condenses the opinions of those with whom we share a common vocabulary, but sums up the perceptual approach of swarms who have passed on.
A collective learning machine achieves its feats by using five elements... (1) conformity enforcers; (2) diversity generators; (3) inner-judges; (4) resource shifters; and (5) intergroup tournaments.
Crowds of silent voices whisper in our ears, transforming the nature of what we see and hear. Some are those of childhood authorities and heroes; others come from family and peers. The strangest emerge from beyond the grave.
Aristotle and Heraclitus were both right. A equals A. But A does not equal A.
The God Problem: How a Godless Cosmos Creates (2012)
In a strange way, Marcion understood the situation better than the more conventional followers of the church, for Lucifer is merely one of the faces of a larger force. Evil is a by-product, a component, of creation.
The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History (1997)