"We all would like to know more and, at the same time, to receive less information. In fact, the problem of a worker in today's knowledge industry is not the scarcity of information but its excess. The same holds for professionals: just think of a physician or an executive, constantly bombarded by information that is at best irrelevant. In order to learn anything we need time. And to make time we must use information filters allowing us to ignore most of the information aimed at us. We must ignore much to learn a little." (Mario Bunge, "Philosophy in Crisis: The Need for Reconstruction", 2001)
"Metaphorizing is a manner of thinking, not a property of thinking. It is a capacity of thought, not its quality. It represents a mental operation by which a previously existing entity is described in the characteristics of another one on the basis of some similarity or by reasoning. When we say that something is (like) something else, we have already performed a mental operation. This operation includes elements such as comparison, paralleling and shaping of the new image by ignoring its less satisfactory traits in order that this image obtains an aesthetic value. By this process, for an instant we invent a device, which serves as the pole vault for the comparison’s jump. Once the jump is made the pole vault is removed. This device could be a lightning-speed logical syllogism, or a momentary created term, which successfully merges the traits of the compared objects." (Ivan Mladenov, "Conceptualizing Metaphors: On Charles Peirce’s marginalia", 2006)
"But ignorance exists in the map, not in the territory. If I am ignorant about a phenomenon, that is a fact about my own state of mind, not a fact about the phenomenon itself. A phenomenon can seem mysterious to some particular person. There are no phenomena which are mysterious of themselves. To worship a phenomenon because it seems so wonderfully mysterious, is to worship your own ignorance." (Eliezer Yudkowsky, "Mysterious Answers To Mysterious Questions" 2007)
"Out of twinkling stardust all came, into dark matter all will fall. Death mocks us as we laugh defiance at entropy, yet ignorance birthed mortals sail forth upon time’s cruel sea." (Peter F Hamilton, "The Temporal Void", 2008)
"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)
"Thus, when we speak of a mathematical concept, we speak not of a single isolated mental image, but rather of a family of mutually correcting mental images. They are privately owned, but publicly checked, examined, corrected, and accepted or rejected. This is the role of the mathematical research community, how it indoctrinates and certifies new members, how it reviews, accepts or rejects proposed publication, how it chooses directions of research to follow and develop, or to ignore and allow to die. All these social activities are based on a necessary condition: that the individual members have mental models that fit together, that yield the same answers to test questions. A new branch of mathematics is established when consensus is reached about the possible test questions and their answers. That collection of possible questions and answers (not necessarily explicit) becomes the means of accepting or rejecting proposed new members." (Reuben Hersh, "Mathematical Intuition: Poincaré, Pólya, Dewey" [in "The Courant–Friedrichs–Lewy (CFL) Condition", 2013])
"Our greatest enemies are ultimately not our political adversaries but entropy, evolution (in the form of pestilence and the flaws in human nature), and most of all ignorance - a shortfall of knowledge of how best to solve our problems." (Steven Pinker, "Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress", 2018)
"Images are generally resistant to change and ignore messages that do not conform to their internal settings. Sometimes, however, they do react and can alter in an incremental or even revolutionary manner. Humans can talk about and share their images and, in the symbolic universe they create, reflect upon what is and what might be." (Michael C Jackson, "Critical Systems Thinking and the Management of Complexity", 2019)
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