Information Overload I

"Faced with information overload, we have no alternative but pattern-recognition."(Marshall McLuhan, "Counterblast", 1969)

"We live in and age of hyper-awareness, our senses extend around the globe, but it's the case of aesthetic overload: our technical zeal has outstripped our psychic capacity to cope with the influx of information." (Gene Youngblood, "Expanded Cinema", 1970) 

"What about confusing clutter? Information overload? Doesn't data have to be ‘boiled down’ and  ‘simplified’? These common questions miss the point, for the quantity of detail is an issue completely separate from the difficulty of reading. Clutter and confusion are failures of design, not attributes of information." (Edward R Tufte, "Envisioning Information", 1990)

"'Point of view' is that quintessentially human solution to information overload, an intuitive process of reducing things to an essential relevant and manageable minimum. [...] In a world of hyperabundant content, point of view will become the scarcest of resources." (Paul Saffo, "It's The Context, Stupid", 1994) 

"We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning." (Jean Baudrillard, "Simulacra and simulation", 1994) 

"One of the effects of living with electric information is that we live habitually in a state of information overload. There's always more than you can cope with." (Marshall McLuhan, "Understanding Me: Lectures and Interviews" , 2003)

"What’s next for technology and design? A lot less thinking about technology for technology’s sake, and a lot more thinking about design. Art humanizes technology and makes it understandable. Design is needed to make sense of information overload. It is why art and design will rise in importance during this century as we try to make sense of all the possibilities that digital technology now affords." (John Maeda, "Why Apple Leads the Way in Design", 2010) 

"The instinctual shortcut that we take when we have 'too much information' is to engage with it selectively, picking out the parts we like and ignoring the remainder, making allies with those who have made the same choices and enemies of the rest." (Nate Silver, "The Signal and the Noise", 2012)

"Complexity has the propensity to overload systems, making the relevance of a particular piece of information not statistically significant. And when an array of mind-numbing factors is added into the equation, theory and models rarely conform to reality." (Lawrence K Samuels, "Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action", 2013)

"While having information is a crucial first step, more information isn't necessarily better. Take a look at your bookshelves and the list of seminars you have attended. If you have read more than one book about a subject or attended more than one seminar but still haven’t reached your goals, then your problem is not lack of information but rather lack of implementation." (Gudjon Bergmann) 

Paul-Henri T d'Holbach - Collected Quotes

"Art is only Nature operating with the aid of the instruments she has made."  (Paul-Henri T d'Holbach [Baron d'Holbach], "The System of Nature, Or, Laws of the Moral and Physical World", 1770)

"Chance; a word void of sense, which we always oppose to that of intelligence without attaching to it any certain ideas."  (Paul-Henri T d'Holbach [Baron d'Holbach], "The System of Nature, Or, Laws of the Moral and Physical World", 1770)

"Every probability - and most of our common, working beliefs are probabilities - is provided with buffers at both ends, which break the force of opposite opinions clashing against it; but scientific certainty has no spring in it, no courtesy, no possibility of yielding. All this must react on the minds which handle these forms of truth." (Paul-Henri T d'Holbach [Baron d'Holbach], "The System of Nature, Or, Laws of the Moral and Physical World", 1770)

"Every thing in the universe is in motion; the essence of nature is to act; and if we consider attentively its parts, we shall see that there is not a particle which enjoys absolute repose." (Paul-Henri T d'Holbach [Baron d'Holbach], "The System of Nature, Or, Laws of the Moral and Physical World", 1770)

"It is thus that in the universe everything is connected; it is itself but an immense chain of causes and effects, which flow without ceasing one from the other." (Paul-Henri T d'Holbach [Baron d'Holbach], "The System of Nature, Or, Laws of the Moral and Physical World", 1770)

"Suns are extinguished or become corrupted, planets perish and scatter across the wastes of the sky; other suns are kindled, new planets formed to make their revolutions or describe new orbits, and man, an infinitely minute part of a globe which itself is only an imperceptible point in the immense whole, believes that the universe is made for himself." (Paul-Henri T d'Holbach [Baron d'Holbach], "The System of Nature, Or, Laws of the Moral and Physical World", 1770)

"The universe, that vast assemblage of every thing that exists, presents only matter and motion: the whole offers to our contemplation, nothing but an immense, an uninterrupted succession of causes and effects."  (Paul-Henri T d'Holbach [Baron d'Holbach], "The System of Nature, Or, Laws of the Moral and Physical World", 1770)

"When we examine the opinions of men, we find that nothing is more uncommon, than common sense; or, in other words, they lack judgment to discover plain truths, or to reject absurdities, and palpable contradictions." (Paul-Henri T d'Holbach [Baron d'Holbach], "Good Sense without God, or, Freethoughts Opposed to Supernatural Ideas" , 1772) 

"Science is the only way we have of shoving truth down the reluctant throat." (Paul-Henri T d'Holbach [Baron d'Holbach]) 

The Web of Life II

"It is thus that in the universe everything is connected; it is itself but an immense chain of causes and effects, which flow without ceasing one from the other." (Paul-Henri T d'Holbach [Baron d'Holbach], "The System of Nature, Or, Laws of the Moral and Physical World", 1770)

"Brightness and freshness take possession of the mind when it is crossed by the light of principles, shewing the facts of Nature to be organically connected." (John Tyndall, "Six Lectures on Light Delivered in America in 1872-1873" 3rd Ed., 1901) 

"This whole electric universe is a complex maze of similar tensions. Every particle of matter in the universe is separated from its condition of oneness, just as the return ball is separated from the hand, and each is connected with the other one by an electric thread of light which measures the tension of that separateness." (Walter Russell, "The Secret of Light", 1947)

"We shall walk together on this path of life, for all things are a part of the universe, and are connected with each other to form one whole unity." (Maria Montessori, "To Educate the Human Potential", 1947)

"We have since defined Gaia as a complex entity involving the Earth's biosphere, atmosphere, oceans, and soil; the totality constituting a feedback or cybernetic system which seeks an optimal physical and chemical environment for life on this planet." (James Lovelock, "Gaia: A new look at life on Earth", 1981)

"Nothing exists in the universe that is separate from anything else. Everything is intrinsically connected, irrevocably interdependent, interactive, interwoven into the fabric of all of life." (Neale D Walsch, "Conversations With God: An Uncommon Dialogue", 2003) 

"In our Gaian world, everything is connected to and influences everything else." (Tim Flannery, "The Weather Makers", 2005)

"I understand that everything is connected, that all roads meet, and that all rivers flow into the same sea." (Paulo Coelho, "Aleph", 2011)

"All the variables we can observe in an ecosystem-population densities, availability of nutrients, weather patterns, and so forth-always fluctuate. This is how ecosystems maintain themselves in a flexible state, ready to adapt to changing conditions. The web of life is a flexible, ever-fluctuating network. The more variables are kept fluctuating, the more dynamic is the system; the greater is its flexibility; and the greater is its ability to adapt to changing conditions." (Fritjof Capra, "The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision", 2014)

"Deep ecology does not separate humans - or anything else-from the natural environment. It sees the world not as a collection of isolated objects, but as a network of phenomena that are fundamentally interconnected and interdependent. Deep ecology recognizes the intrinsic value of all living beings and views humans as just one particular strand in the web of life." (Fritjof Capra, "The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision", 2014)

The Web of Life I

"Constantly regard the universe as one living being, having one substance and one soul; and observe how all things have reference to one perception, the perception of this one living being; and how all things act with one movement; and how all things are the cooperating causes of all things which exist; observe too the continuous spinning of the thread and the contexture of the web." (Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations". cca. 121–180 AD)

"As a net is made up of a series of ties, so everything in this world is connected by a series of ties. If anyone thinks that the mesh of a net is an independent, isolated thing, he is mistaken. It is called a net because it is made up of a series of a interconnected meshes, and each mesh has its place and responsibility in relation to other meshes." (Gautama Buddha) [attributed] 

"Omnia vivunt, omnia inter se conexa" 

"Everything is alive; everything is interconnected." (Cicero) 

"Nature, displayed in its full extent, presents us with an immense tableau, in which all the order of beings are each represented by a chain which sustains a continuous series of objects, so close and so similar that their difference would be difficult to define. This chain is not a simple thread which is only extended in length, it is a large web or rather a network, which, from interval to interval, casts branches to the side in order to unite with the networks of another order." (Comte Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon, "Les Oiseaux Qui Ne Peuvent Voler", Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux Vol. I, 1770) 

"All Nature is linked together by invisible bonds and every organic creature, however low, however feeble, however dependent, is necessary to the well-being of some other among the myriad forms of life." (George P Marsh, From Man and Nature, 1864)

"When we try to pick anything out by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe." (John Muir, "My First Summer in the Sierra", 1911)

"We are seeking another basic outlook: the world as an organization.  This would profoundly change the categories of our thinking and influence our practical attitudes.  We must envision the biosphere as a whole with mutually reinforcing or mutually destructive interdependencies." (Ludwig von Bertalanffy, "Robots, Men and Minds", 1967)

"[...] everything is inter-linked. And therefore everything has numberless causes. The entire universe contributes to the least thing. A thing is as it is because the world is as it is." (Nisargadatta Maharaj, "I am That", 1973)

"If we recognise that every ecosystem can also be viewed as a food web, we can think of it as a circular, interlacing nexus of plant animal relationships (rather than a stratified pyramid with man at the apex). [...] Each species, be it a form of bacteria or deer, is knitted together in a network of interdependence, however indirect the links may be." (Murray Bookchin, "The Ecology of Freedom", 1982)

"Today the network of relationships linking the human race to itself and to the rest of the biosphere is so complex that all aspects affect all others to an extraordinary degree. Someone should be studying the whole system, however crudely that has to be done, because no gluing together of partial studies of a complex nonlinear system can give a good idea of the behaviour of the whole." (Murray Gell-Mann, 1997)

"We are beginning to see the entire universe as a holographically interlinked network of energy and information, organically whole and self referential at all scales of its existence. We, and all things in the universe, are non-locally connected with each other and with all other things in ways that are unfettered by the hitherto known limitations of space and time." (Ervin László,"Cosmos: A Co-creator's Guide to the Whole-World", 2010)

On Artificial Intelligence I

"There is no security against the ultimate development of mechanical consciousness, in the fact of machines possessing little consciousness now. A mollusc has not much consciousness. Reflect upon the extraordinary advance which machines have made during the last few hundred years, and note how slowly the animal and vegetable kingdoms are advancing. The more highly organized machines are creatures not so much of yesterday, as of the last five minutes, so to speak, in comparison with past time." (Samuel Butler, "Erewhon: Or, Over the Range", 1872)

"A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human." (Alan Turing, "Computing Machinery and Intelligence", 1950)

"The following are some aspects of the artificial intelligence problem: […] If a machine can do a job, then an automatic calculator can be programmed to simulate the machine. […] It may be speculated that a large part of human thought consists of manipulating words according to rules of reasoning and rules of conjecture. From this point of view, forming a generalization consists of admitting a new word and some rules whereby sentences containing it imply and are implied by others. This idea has never been very precisely formulated nor have examples been worked out. […] How can a set of (hypothetical) neurons be arranged so as to form concepts. […] to get a measure of the efficiency of a calculation it is necessary to have on hand a method of measuring the complexity of calculating devices which in turn can be done. […] Probably a truly intelligent machine will carry out activities which may best be described as self-improvement. […] A number of types of 'abstraction' can be distinctly defined and several others less distinctly. […] the difference between creative thinking and unimaginative competent thinking lies in the injection of a some randomness. The randomness must be guided by intuition to be efficient." (John McCarthy et al, "A Proposal for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence", 1955)

"We shall therefore say that a program has common sense if it automatically deduces for itself a sufficient wide class of immediate consequences of anything it is told and what it already knows. [...] Our ultimate objective is to make programs that learn from their experience as effectively as humans do." (John McCarthy, "Programs with Common Sense", 1958)

"When intelligent machines are constructed, we should not be surprised to find them as confused and as stubborn as men in their convictions about mind-matter, consciousness, free will, and the like." (Marvin Minsky, "Matter, Mind, and Models", Proceedings of the International Federation of Information Processing Congress Vol. 1 (49), 1965)

"Artificial intelligence is the science of making machines do things that would require intelligence if done by men." (Marvin Minsky, 1968)

"Artificial intelligence is based on the assumption that the mind can be described as some kind of formal system manipulating symbols that stand for things in the world. Thus it doesn't matter what the brain is made of, or what it uses for tokens in the great game of thinking. Using an equivalent set of tokens and rules, we can do thinking with a digital computer, just as we can play chess using cups, salt and pepper shakers, knives, forks, and spoons. Using the right software, one system (the mind) can be mapped onto the other (the computer)." (George Johnson, Machinery of the Mind: Inside the New Science of Artificial Intelligence, 1986)

"The deep paradox uncovered by AI research: the only way to deal efficiently with very complex problems is to move away from pure logic. [...] Most of the time, reaching the right decision requires little reasoning.[...] Expert systems are, thus, not about reasoning: they are about knowing. [...] Reasoning takes time, so we try to do it as seldom as possible. Instead we store the results of our reasoning for later reference." (Daniel Crevier, "The Tree of Knowledge", 1993)

Mathematics as Game I

"So is not mathematical analysis then not just a vain game of the mind? To the physicist it can only give a convenient language; but isn't that a mediocre service, which after all we could have done without; and, it is not even to be feared that this artificial language be a veil, interposed between reality and the physicist's eye? Far from that, without this language most of the initimate analogies of things would forever have remained unknown to us; and we would never have had knowledge of the internal harmony of the world, which is, as we shall see, the only true objective reality." (Henri Poincaré, "The Value of Science", 1905)

"Mathematics is not like a game whose tasks are determined by arbitrarily stipulated rules. Rather, it is a conceptual system possessing internal necessity that can only be so and by no means otherwise." (David Hilbert, "Natur und Mathematisches Erkennen", 1919–20) 

"A serious threat to the very life of science is implied in the assertion that mathematics is nothing but a system of conclusions drawn from definitions and postulates that must be consistent but otherwise may be created by the free will of the mathematician. If this description were accurate, mathematics could not attract any intelligent person. It would be a game with definitions, rules and syllogisms, without motivation or goal." (Richard Courant & Herbert Robbins, "What Is Mathematics?", 1941)

"Geometry, whatever others may think, is the study of different shapes, many of them very beautiful, having harmony, grace and symmetry. […] Most of us, if we can play chess at all, are content to play it on a board with wooden chess pieces; but there are some who play the game blindfolded and without touching the board. It might be a fair analogy to say that abstract geometry is like blindfold chess – it is a game played without concrete objects." (Edward Kasner & James R Newman, "New Names for Old", 1956) 

"To the average mathematician who merely wants to know that his work is securely based, the most appealing choice is to avoid difficulties by means of Hilbert's program. Here one regards mathematics as a formal game and one is only concerned with the question of consistency." (Paul Cohen, "Axiomatic set theory, American Mathematical Society", 1971)

"There is an infinite regress in proofs; therefore proofs do not prove. You should realize that proving is a game, to be played while you enjoy it and stopped when you get tired of it." (Imre Lakatos, "Proofs and Refutations", 1976)

"The way the mathematics game is played, most variations lie outside the rules, while music can insist on perfect canon or tolerate a casual accompaniment." (Marvin Minsky, "Music, Mind, and Meaning", 1981)

"If doing mathematics or science is looked upon as a game, then one might say that in mathematics you compete against yourself or other mathematicians; in physics your adversary is nature and the stakes are higher." (Mark Kac, "Enigmas Of Chance", 1985)

"Mathematicians are used to game-playing according to a set of rules they lay down in advance, despite the fact that nature always writes her own. One acquires a great deal of humility by experiencing the real wiliness of nature." (Philip W Anderson, "More and Different: Notes from a Thoughtful Curmudgeon", 2011)

"Often the key contribution of intuition is to make us aware of weak points in a problem, places where it may be vulnerable to attack. A mathematical proof is like a battle, or if you prefer a less warlike metaphor, a game of chess. Once a potential weak point has been identified, the mathematician’s technical grasp of the machinery of mathematics can be brought to bear to exploit it." (Ian Stewart, "Visions of Infinity", 2013)

Game Theory II

"A proven theorem of game theory states that every game with complete information possesses a saddle point and therefore a solution." (Richard A Epstein, "The Theory of Gambling and Statistical Logic" [Revised Edition], 1977)

"Game theory is a collection of mathematical models designed to study situations involving conflict and/or cooperation. It allows for a multiplicity of decision makers who may have different preferences and objectives. Such models involve a variety of different solution concepts concerned with strategic optimization, stability, bargaining, compromise, equity and coalition formation." (Notices of the American Mathematical Society Vol. 26 (1), 1979) 

"A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play." (James P Cars, "Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility", 1986)

"Game theory is a theory of strategic interaction. That is to say, it is a theory of rational behavior in social situations in which each player has to choose his moves on the basis of what he thinks the other players' countermoves are likely to be." (John Harsanyi, "Games with Incomplete Information", The American Economic Review Vol. 85 (3), 1997)

"In principle, every social situation involves strategic interaction among the participants. Thus, one might argue that proper understanding of any social situation would require game-theoretic analysis. But in actual fact, classical economic theory did manage to sidestep the game-theoretic aspects of economic behavior by postulating perfect competition, i. e., by assuming that every buyer and every seller is very small as compared with the size of the relevant markets, so that nobody can significantly affect the existing market prices by his actions." (John Harsanyi, "Games with Incomplete Information" 1997)

"Like all of mathematics, game theory is a tautology whose conclusions are true because they are contained in the premises." (Thomas Flanagan, "Game Theory and Canadian Politics", 1998)

"I think game theory creates ideas that are important in solving and approaching conflict in general." Robert Aumann, 2005)

"The players in a game are said to be in strategic equilibrium (or simply equilibrium) when their play is mutually optimal: when the actions and plans of each player are rational in the given strategic environment - i. e., when each knows the actions and plans of the others." (Robert Aumann, "War and Peace", 2005)

"An equilibrium is not always an optimum; it might not even be good. This may be the most important discovery of game theory." (Ivar Ekeland, "The Best of All Possible Worlds", 2006)

"Game theory brings to the chaos–theory table the idea that generally, societies are not designed, and that most situations don't come with a rulebook. Instead, people have their own plans and designs on how things should fit together. They want to determine how the game is played, and they see societal designers as myopic busybodies who would imprison them with their theories." (Lawrence K Samuels, "In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action", 2013)

Game Theory I

"The implication of game theory, which is also the implication of the third image, is, however, that the freedom of choice of any one state is limited by the actions of the others." (Kenneth Waltz, "Man, the State, and War", 1959)

"At present game theory has, in my opinion, two important uses, neither of them related to games nor to conflict directly. First, game theory stimulates us to think about conflict in a novel way. Second, game theory leads to some genuine impasses, that is, to situations where its axiomatic base is shown to be insufficient for dealing even theoretically with certain types of conflict situations... Thus, the impact is made on our thinking process themselves, rather than on the actual content of our knowledge. (Anatol Rapoport, "Fights, games, and debates", 1960)

"It is the shortcomings of game theory (as originally formulated) which force the consideration of the role of ethics, of the dynamics of social structure, and of social structure and of individual psychology in situations of conflict." (Anatol Rapoport, "Fights, games, and debates", 1960)

"Although the drama of games of strategy is strongly linked with the psychological aspects of the conflict, game theory is not concerned with these aspects. Game theory, so to speak, plays the board. It is concerned only with the logical aspects of strategy." (Anatol Rapoport, "The Use and Misuse of Game Theory", Scientific American 207, 1962)

"Game theory applies to a very different type of conflict, now technically called a game. The well-known games such as poker, chess, ticktacktoe and so forth are games in the strict technical Bark and counterbark sense. But what makes parlor games is not their entertainment value or detachment from real life." (Anatol Rapoport, "The Use and Misuse of Game Theory", Scientific American 207, 1962)

"Whether game theory leads to clear-cut solutions, to vague solutions, or to impasses, it does achieve 

one thing. In bringing techniques of logical and mathematical analysis gives men an opportunity to bring conflicts up from the level of fights, where the intellect is beclouded by passions, to the level of games, where the intellect has a chance to operate." (Anatol Rapoport, "The Use and Misuse of Game Theory", Scientific American 207, 1962)

"[Game theory is] essentially a structural theory. It uncovers the logical structure of a great variety of conflict situations and describes this structure in mathematical terms. Sometimes the logical structure of a conflict situation admits rational decisions; sometimes it does not." (Anatol Rapoport, "Prisoner's dilemma: A study in conflict and cooperation", 1965)

"Evolutionary game theory is a way of thinking about evolution at the phenotypic level when the fitnesses of particular phenotypes depend on their frequencies in the population." (John M Smith, "Evolution and the Theory of Games", 1973)

"Strategy in complex systems must resemble strategy in board games. You develop a small and useful tree of options that is continuously revised based on the arrangement of pieces and the actions of your opponent. It is critical to keep the number of options open. It is important to develop a theory of what kinds of options you want to have open." (John H Holland, [presentation] 2000)

"Game theory postulates rational behavior for each participant. Each player is conscious of the rules and behaves in accordance with them, each player has sufficient knowledge of the situation in which he or she is involved to be able to evaluate what the best option is when it comes to taking action (a move), and each player takes into account the decisions that might be made by other participants and their repercussions with respect to his or her own decision. Game theory about zero-sum games with two participants is relevant for chess. In this type of situation, each action that is favorable to one participant (player) is proportionally unfavorable for the opponent. Thus, the gain of one represents the loss of the other." (Diego Rasskin-Gutman, "Chess Metaphors: Artificial Intelligence and the Human Mind", 2009)