Nominated for quote of the week, which I encountered while reading Matt Ridley’s The Rational Optimist:
He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
disconfirmation bias: n. The tendency to accept supportive evidence of a belief uncritically, but to actively refute or discount evidence that challenges that belief.
DICTIONARY, n. A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic.
What we call the past is built on bits.
Incidentally, I note that ‘HARASS SARAH’ is a PALINdrome, as well as a popular left-wing sport.
The chessboard is the world; the pieces are the phenomena of the universe; the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance.
…[the reader] should not be discouraged, if on first reading of section 0, he finds that he does not have the prerequisites for reading the prerequisites.
This is essentially the mathematician’s equivalent of the adage “Fake it ’til you make it.”
A well-trained man knows how to answer questions; an educated man knows what questions are worth asking.
Even by the standards of continuum functional integrals we have hit a new low…
He really has a great sense of humor, doesn’t he?
