Create quotes

From Motley Bytes Wiki
Jump to: navigation, search

Douglas_Adams

Perception

“Everything you see or hear or experience in any way at all is specific to you. You create a universe by perceiving it, so everything in the universe you perceive is specific to you.”
  • Source: From the fictional book entitled Mostly Harmless. Written by Douglas Adams. Published by Del Rey in 1993. ISBN 978-0-345-37933-7. Chapter 9.

David_Auerbach

Unsupervised Learning

“Unsupervised learning suggests that machine learning may increasingly be able to create its own feature distinctions, which would mitigate the anthropocentric biases of human-specified categories and features, at the cost of making such distinctions more opaque to humans.”
  • Source: David Auerbach, in the article “Bitwise: A Life in Code” published in 2019 in Communications of the ACM, Volume 62, Issue 9 (September). DOI: 10.1145/3347864.

Robert_N_Britcher

Consciousness

“Consciousness is a word created by humans, in this case English-speaking humans, to describe something humans know nothing about.”
  • Source: Britcher, Robert N. (1999). The Limits of Software: People, Projects, and Perspectives. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley. ISBN 0-201-43323-0. Page 28.

Important Development Things

“The single, most important thing is that the individual programmer needs to be given total responsibility and control of the programming, including its function... eliminate project design and review as an exhaustive and rigorous process. Most of the design and review should occur as the program is written. ... Monitor progress on the project by talking to the individual programmers as [code] is being written. ... You must trust developers on the project to create a good product. ... Sometimes there are failures. ... The important thing is to fail quickly so you have time to find another approach. ... Developers must also feel free to say what they think to their supervisor. ... Managers should be the best programmers; ...There should be no overtime pay. ... Use profit-sharing and bonuses to get awesome products. ... Developers should each get their own office. ... Eliminate the dress code. Avoid meetings at all costs. ... Writing software is a lot like writing a book. Almost anyone can write garbage; very few can write a best-seller.”
  • Source: Britcher, Robert N. (1999). The Limits of Software: People, Projects, and Perspectives. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley. ISBN 0-201-43323-0. Page 155-156.

Software Transition Problem

“The biggest problem is creating a new version of an old system is the transition.”
  • Source: Britcher, Robert N. (1999). The Limits of Software: People, Projects, and Perspectives. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley. ISBN 0-201-43323-0. Page 167.

Fred_Brooks

Programmer Poetry

“The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures.”
  • Source: Brooks Jr., F. P. (1995). The Mythical Man-Month - Essays on Software Engineering (Anniversary Edition) | 1975/1995 (Anniv.). Boston. MA: Addison-Wesley. ISBN: 0201835959. Chapter 1, page 7.

David_Deutsch

Error Correction

“Without error-correction all information processing, and hence all knowledge-creation, is necessarily bounded. Error-correction is the beginning of infinity.”
  • Source: David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World (2011).

Henry_Ford

Capital

“Capital that is not constantly creating more and better jobs is more useless than sand. Capital that is not constantly making conditions of daily labour better and the reward of daily labour more just, is not fulfilling its highest function. The highest use of capital is not to make more money, but to make money do more service for the betterment of life. Unless we in our industries are helping to solve the social problem, we are not doing our principal work.”
  • Source: Henry Ford. A book. Entitled My Life and Work. Written by Henry Ford in collaboration with Samuel Crowther. Published 1922, Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Chapter XIII.

Stephen_Hawking

Zero Energy Matter

“The point is that the new raw material doesn't really have to come from anywhere.... The universe can start off with zero energy and still create matter.”
  • Source: Stephen Hawking quoted in the book “Dialogues with Scientists and Sages: The Search for Unity” by Renée Weber. Published by Routledge & Kegan Paul in 1986, Page 51.

Donald_Hoffman

AI Computation

“If we look at an LLM [Large Language Model] or a future AI [Artificial Intelligence], it's going to be some kind of computational system. And computational systems have their limits. We have Gödel who said that at a minimum. I'm betting that you and I are avatars of an infinite intelligence that's the true source of all creativity and that Einstein or any scientist taps into when they come up with their truly original ideas. The first step would be to say, if it's just a computational bias, then it doesn't transcend. It doesn't get to this true originality. But then there's a deeper level... These are just avatars in a particular headset. So why can't we create a new avatar in our headset that looks like a computer that is actually an avatar of the deep intelligence? If we are only going to stick with the computational thing... But somehow the [human] avatar is a portal into the infinite consciousness... And we know one way of creating new portals into this infinite consciousness, and that is having kids. So that is one technology that allows us to do that. Once we understand spacetime as a headset, and we understand the headset and at least some layers of its relationship to the infinite reality, that's the source of true insight and true originality and creativity, could we figure out new ways to open up genuine new portals, and might that look like AI… The jury is out.”
  • Source: Donald Hoffman, in the YouTube video entitled “Donald Hoffman's New Approach To Consciousness” channel “Dr Brian Keating”. Online at <https://youtu.be/mU_WBela71Y?si=fNfLLsOsUDRDC1XD> posted 2024-08, retrieved 2024-08. In video at 1:14:40.

Sabine_Hossenfelder

Brain Atoms

“The average human brain, for example, contains about a thousand trillion trillion atoms. [About 1027]. Even with today’s most powerful supercomputers, no one can calculate just how all these atoms interact to create conscious thought.”
  • Source: Hossenfelder, Sabine. Existential Physics: A Scientist's Guide to Life's Biggest Questions (p. 83). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Bernardo_Kastrup

Inverting Materialism

“Here we have Jung completely inverting the logic of mainstream materialism: it’s the psychic function that creates, maintains, and modifies the organic structure, not the other way around.”
  • Source: From “Decoding Jung's Metaphysics: The Archetypal Semantics of an Experiential Universe”. Written by Bernardo Kastrup. Published by IFF Books, Washington DC. Kindle Edition. Page 78. Chapter 5.

David_E_Nye

Unanticipated Consequences

“The combined choices of inventors, entrepreneurs, and consumers create unanticipated cultural consequences. Because no single individual or institution wills certain changes, they are often mistaken for attributes of the machine itself... Machines are human-directed agents of cultural change.”
  • Source: A book. Written by David E. Nye. Entitled 'Narratives and Spaces'. Published in 1997 by Univerity of Exeter Press, Exeter, UK. Hardback ISBN 0-85989-555-6. Paperback ISBN 0-85989-556-4. Introduction, pages 2-3.

Technology Contested

“Technologies are contested terrains. World's fairs, spectacular lighting, and media events all have changed in response to shifting public tastes. Americans had divided reactions to the Apollo Space Program, and they created divergent narratives to understand computers, the electrification of society, and the meanings of energy sources. Technologies are contested, and a close reading of such events... reveals not hegemonic control but a welter of meanings. The public understands technology not as one-dimensional agents of change, but as both enabling and disabling innovations.”
  • Source: A book. Written by David E. Nye. Entitled 'Narratives and Spaces'. Published in 1997 by Univerity of Exeter Press, Exeter, UK. Hardback ISBN 0-85989-555-6. Paperback ISBN 0-85989-556-4. Introduction, page 3.

Infinitely Malleable

“The internet continued that process of abstraction, creating an infinitely malleable world. The next step is virtual reality.”
  • Source: A book. Written by David E. Nye. Entitled 'Narratives and Spaces'. Published in 1997 by Univerity of Exeter Press, Exeter, UK. Hardback ISBN 0-85989-555-6. Paperback ISBN 0-85989-556-4. Chapter 11, page 187.

Ipek_Ozkaya

Next Generation Software Engineers

“With LLMs and their sister AI-driven apps assisting developers, we need to be teaching next-generation software engineers when to trust, how to create evidence to trust, how to do trust assessment rapidly and correctly, and how to improve such assistants.”
  • Source: Ipek Ozkaya, “Application of Large Language Models to Software Engineering Tasks: Opportunities, Risks, and Implications,” in IEEE Software, volume 40, number 3, pages 4-8, May-June 2023, DOI: 10.1109/MS.2023.3248401.

Steven_Pinker

Two Modes of Thinking

“People think in two modes. They can form fuzzy stereotypes by uninsightfully soaking up correlations among properties, taking advantage of the fact that things in the world tend to fall into clusters (things that bark also bite and lift their legs at hydrants). But people can also create systems of rules — intuitive theories — that define categories in terms of the rules that apply to them, and that treat all the members of the category equally.”
  • Source: Steven Pinker (1997). How the Mind Works. New York, NY: W. W. Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-06973-0; eISBN 978-0-393-06973-0. Chapter 2 Section: Connectoplasm.

Plato

Geometry

“Geometry will draw the soul toward truth, and create the spirit of philosophy, and raise up that which is now unhappily allowed to fall.”
  • Source: Plato, in Republic, originally written circa 375 BCE. Translated by G.M.A. Grube. Published by Hackett Publishing in 1992. ISBN:978-1603846462. Book VII.

Henri_Poincaré

Scientific Language

“All the scientist creates in a fact is the language in which he enunciates it. If he predicts a fact, he will employ this language, and for all those who can speak and understand it, his prediction is free from ambiguity. Moreover, this prediction once made, it evidently does not depend upon him whether it is fulfilled or not.”
  • Source: The Value of Science (1905), in The Foundations of Science: Science and Hypothesis, The Value of Science, Science and Method(1946), trans. by George Bruce Halsted, 332.

Michael_Polanyi

Scientific Method Elucidation

“Almost every major systematic error which has deluded men for thousands of years relied on practical experience. Horoscopes, incantations, oracles, magic, witchcraft, the cures of witch doctors and of medical practitioners before the advent of modern medicine, were all firmly established through the centuries in the eyes of the public by their supposed practical successes. The scientific method was devised precisely for the purpose of elucidating the nature of things under more carefully controlled conditions and by more rigorous criteria than are present in the situations created by practical problems.”
  • Source: Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge (1958), 183.

Jesse_Robbins

Do Not Fight Stupid (aka Jesse's Rule)

“Don't fight stupid, make more awesome!”

Alfred_P_Sloan

Greatest Thrill

“The greatest real thrill that life offers is to create, to construct, to develop something useful. Too often we fail to recognize and pay tribute to the creative spirit. It is that spirit that creates our jobs. There has to be this pioneer, the individual who has the courage, the ambition to overcome the obstacles that always develop when one tries to do something worthwhile, especially when it is new and different.”

  • Source:
    • Alfred P. Sloan in his book “Adventures of a White-Collar Man”, published in 1941 by Doubleday Press, New York, NY. First edition. Also quoted in: John Bourne (2000), Learning Effectiveness and Faculty Satisfaction. p. 11.

Albert_Speer

Position to Know

“For being in a position to know and nevertheless shunning knowledge creates direct responsibility for the consequences - from the very beginning.”
  • Source: From the book "Inside the Third Reich" by Albert Speer, published 1970 by Simon and Schuster, ISBN 978-0-684-82949-4. Chapter 2, page 19.

Shoshana_Zuboff

Technology Leadership

“The questions that we face today are finally about leadership. Will there be leaders who are able to recognize the historical moment and the choices it presents? Will they find ways to create the organizational conditions in which new visions, new concepts, and a new language of workplace relations can emerge? Will they be able to create organizational innovations that can exploit the unique capacities of the new technology and thus mobilize their organization's productive potential to meet the heightened rigors of global competition? Will there be leaders who understand the crucial role that human beings from each organizational stratum can play in adding value to the production of goods and services? If not, we will be stranded in a new world with old solutions. We will suffer through the unintended consequences of change, because we have failed to understand this technology and how it differs from what came before.”
  • Source: Zuboff, S. (1988). In The Age Of The Smart Machine: The Future Of Work And Power. New York, NY: Basic Books, p. 12. ISBN:0465032125.

Diminished Worker

“In diminishing the role of the worker's body in the labor process, industrial technology has also tended to diminish the importance of the worker. In creating jobs that require less human effort, industrial technology has also been used to create jobs that require less human talent.”
  • Source: Zuboff, S. (1988). In The Age Of The Smart Machine: The Future Of Work And Power. New York, NY: Basic Books, p. 22. ISBN:0465032125.

Frederick Taylor

“The man who emerged as the chief symbol of the rational approach to management was Frederick Taylor. Though much has been written on Taylor and the philosophy and methods of scientific management, it is worth highlighting a few central themes for three reasons. First, Taylorism explicitly treats the worker's body in its two dimensions -- as a source of effort and as a source of skill. Second, workers' responses to Taylorism reveal the ambivalence that this dual role of the body can create, as it did among the bleach plant operators or the nineteenth-century glassmakers. Third, the logic that motivated the early purveyors and adapters of scientific management has continued to dominate the course of automation in the twentieth-century workplace. As will be argued later, it is a logic that must undergo a fundamental reevaluation as information technology is widely adapted to productive activity.”
  • Source: Zuboff, S. (1988). In The Age Of The Smart Machine: The Future Of Work And Power. New York, NY: Basic Books, p. 41. ISBN:0465032125.

The Panopticon

“The Panopticon was an architectural innovation developed by the moral philosopher Jeremy Bentham. In Foucault's view, it is both a sign of and metaphor for this new disciplinary society. Bentham extolled the Panopticon as a technological triumph capable of exploiting the productive potential of those who had flouted, thwarted, or otherwise escaped social authority. His initial targets were convicts and paupers, though he did not fail to see the potential usefulness of the Panopticon for students, asylum inmates, and workers. The architectural plan conceived by Bentham was first constructed by his brother Samuel, an engineer, in 1787 for a factory at Critchef in Russia. It was later adapted to the problems of housing convicts and paupers. The structure consisted of a twelve-sided polygon formed in iron and sheathed in glass in order to create the effect of what Bentham called 'universal transparency.' A central tower, pierced with wide windows, opened onto the inner wall of the surrounding polygonal structure, which itself was divided into narrow cells extending across the width of the building. Each cell had a window on both the inner and outer walls, allowing light to cross it and illuminate all the inhabitants to an observer in the central tower, while that observer could not be seen from any one of the cells. Mirrors were fixed around the tower to direct extra light into these apartments.”
  • Source: Zuboff, S. (1988). In The Age Of The Smart Machine: The Future Of Work And Power. New York, NY: Basic Books, p. 320. ISBN:0465032125.

Panoptic Power

“This rendering of panoptic power reflects an important evolution of the original concept. It rests on a new collectivism in which ‘the many' view themselves and each views ‘the other.' Horizontal visibility is created even as vertical visibility is intensified. The model is less one of Big Brother than of a workplace in which each member is explicitly empowered as his or her fellow worker's keeper. Instead of a single omniscient overseer, this panopticon relies upon shared custodianship of data that reflect mutually enacted behavior. This new collectivism is an important antidote to the unilateral use of panoptic power, but it is not a trouble-free ideal. Horizontal transparency breeds new human dilemmas as well.”
  • Source: Zuboff, S. (1988). In The Age Of The Smart Machine: The Future Of Work And Power. New York, NY: Basic Books, p. 351. ISBN:0465032125.

Technology Change

“To fully grasp the way in which a major new technology can change the world... it is necessary to consider both the manner in which it creates intrinsically new qualities of experience and the way in which new possibilities are engaged by the often-conflicting demands of social, political, and economic interests in order to produce a 'choice.' To concentrate only on intrinsic change and the texture of an emergent mentality is to ignore the real weight of history and the diversity of interests that pervade collective behavior. However, to narrow all discussion of technological change to the play of these interests overlooks the essential power of technology to reorder the rules of the game and thus our experience as players. Moreover, these two dimensions of technological change, the intrinsic and the contingent, need to be understood, not separately, but in relation to one another. The same innovation that abstracts work and increases its intellectual content, thus enhancing the learning of lower level employees... can also, within the context of the choices by which it is adapted, be experienced as a new source of divisiveness and control.”
  • Source: Zuboff, S. (1988). In The Age Of The Smart Machine: The Future Of Work And Power. New York, NY: Basic Books, p. 389. ISBN:0465032125.