Relational quotes

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Robert_N_Britcher

One Database

“I went too far. I specified too much detail. I insisted that one relational database connect every element of the software development environment. The subsystem designers and coders soon learned that this elegant solution could not work. Uniformity and commonality have their limits. ... They developed separate databases that could be queried independently. The team succeeded and I learned when to stop.”
  • Source: Britcher, Robert N. (1999). The Limits of Software: People, Projects, and Perspectives. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley. ISBN 0-201-43323-0. Page 41.

Module Specialization

“Centuries of experience and common sense dictate that a module be specialized, that it do one thing or one set of related things, like the liver or the heart...”
  • Source: Britcher, Robert N. (1999). The Limits of Software: People, Projects, and Perspectives. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley. ISBN 0-201-43323-0. Page 43.

Dedre_Gentner

Abstract Creativity

“In the life we lead today, we need to be reminded of things that are only abstractly or relationally similar. And the more creative you want to be, the more important that is.”
  • Source: Dedre Gentner in an interview with author David Epstein reported in his book “Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World”. Published 2019 by Riverhead Books. Chapter 5, page 104. ISBN 978-0735214484.

Herbert_Simon

Markets and Coordination

“Markets aim to coordinate the decisions and behavior of multitudes of economic actors to guarantee that the quantity of brussels sprouts shipped to market bears some reasonable relation to the quantity that consumers will buy and eat, and that the price at which brussels sprouts can be sold bears a reasonable relation to the cost of producing them. Any society that is not a subsistence economy, but has substantial specialization and division of labor, needs mechanisms to perform this coordinative function. Markets are only one, however, among the spectrum of mechanisms of coordination on which any society relies. [central planning, bargaining and negotiation, business, government, education, balloting procedures]”

Shannon_Vallor

AI Longtermism

“What longtermists and effective altruists have in common... is the utilitarian view that morality is a happiness optimization problem, a matter of running the numbers. Conveniently for AI enthusiasts... For a virtue ethicist like me, there are profound dangers and moral errors in any view of morality that separates it from humane feeling, relational bonds, and social context, reducing it to a mere computation of net happiness units.”
  • Source: From the book “The AI Mirror” by Shannon Vallor. Published 2024 by Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0197759066. Chapter 3, page 77.