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Nicolaus_Copernicus

Mobility of the Earth

“Therefore, having obtained the opportunity from these sources, I too began to consider the mobility of the earth.”
  • Source: De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (1543).

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.

Alan_Perlis

Useful Software Systems

“We recognize that a practical problem of considerable difficulty and importance has arisen: The successful design, production and maintenance of useful software systems. The importance is obvious and the more so since we see only greater growth in demands and requirements in the future. The consequences of poor performance, poor design, instability and mismatching of promise and performance are not going to be limited to the computing fraternity, or even their nearest neighbors, but will affect considerable sections of our society whose ability to forgive is inversely proportional to their ignorance of the difficulties we face. The source of difficulty is distributed through the whole problem, easy to identify, and yet its cure is hard to pinpoint so that systematic improvement can be gotten.”

Karl_Popper

Scientific Knowledge

“If the picture of the world which modern science draws comes anywhere near the truth — in other words, if we have anything like ‘scientific knowledge’ — then the conditions obtaining almost everywhere in the universe make the discovery of structural laws of the kind we are seeking — and thus the attainment of ‘scientific knowledge’ — almost impossible. For almost all regions of the universe are filled by chaotic radiation, and almost all the rest by matter in a likewise chaotic state. In spite of this, science has been miraculously successful in proceeding toward what I think should be regarded as its aim. This strange fact cannot, I think, be explained without proving too much. But it can encourage us to pursue that aim, even though we may not get any further encouragement to believe that we can actually attain it; neither from metaphysical realism nor from any other source.”
  • Source: Realism and the Aim of Science: From the Postscript to The Logic of Scientific Discovery, 1983, p. 146, ISBN 0415084008

Friedrich_Schiller

Voice of Truth

“It is difficult to discriminate the voice of truth from amid the clamour raised by heated partisans.”
  • Source: Friedrich Schiller, Original German in Schiller's ‘Sammtliche Werke’ (1834), 934. With a translation, in James Wood, Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources (1893), 382.
  • Note: Original German: “Schwer ist es, aus dem Geschrei erhitzter Parteien die Stimme der Wahrheit zu unterscheiden.”

Erwin_Schrödinger

Objective Nature

“While the direct sensual perception of the phenomenon tells us nothing as to its objective physical nature (or what we usually call so) and has to be discarded from the outset as a source of information, yet the theoretical picture we obtain eventually rests entirely on a complicated array of various informations, all obtained by direct sensual perception. It resides upon them, it is pieced together from them, yet it cannot really be said to contain them. In using the picture we usually forget about them, except in the quite general way that we know our idea of a light-wave is not a haphazard invention of a crank but is based on experiment.”
  • Source: Erwin Schrödinger in the book “Mind and Matter”, chapter 6. Contained within the anthology “What is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell with Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches”. Published in 1992 and reprinted in 2013 by Cambridge University Press, New York, NY. ISBN: 9781107604667. Online at <http://strangebeautiful.com/other-texts/schrodinger-what-is-life-mind-matter-auto-sketches.pdf> retrieved 2024. Note: “Mind and Matter” originally published separately in 1944.

Melvin_Schwartz

Mathematics More than a Language

“Mathematics is much more than a language for dealing with the physical world. It is a source of models and abstractions which will enable us to obtain amazing new insights into the way in which nature operates. Indeed, the beauty and elegance of the physical laws themselves are only apparent when expressed in the appropriate mathematical framework.”
  • Source: Melvin Schwartz, In Principles of Electrodynamics (1972, 1987), 105.

Alfred_Tarski

Language Universality

“This universality of everyday language... is the primary source of all semantic antinomies, like the antinomy of the liar... Every language which is universal... and for which the normal laws of logic hold, must be inconsistent.”

Shannon_Vallor

AI Mirror

“AI systems mirror our own intelligence back to us. This is the source of their growing commercial and scientific power.”
  • Source: From the book “The AI Mirror” by Shannon Vallor. Published 2024 by Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0197759066. Introduction, page 2.

AI Danger Us

“We are the source of the danger to ourselves from AI, and this is a good thing —  it means we hold the power to resist, and the power to heal.”
  • Source: From the book “The AI Mirror” by Shannon Vallor. Published 2024 by Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0197759066. Introduction, page 7.

John_Archibald_Wheeler

It From Bit

“It from bit symbolizes the idea that every item of the physical world has at bottom — at a very deep bottom, in most instances — an immaterial source and explanation; that which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes-no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe.”
  • Source: John Archibald Wheeler from a paper originally presented at the 1989 Santa Fe Institute workshop. Published in the book "Complexity, Entropy & the Physics of Information: Volume I", edited by Wojciech H. Zurek, section "Physics of information", as a paper entitled "Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links". Published in 1993 by the SFI Press Archive Series. ISBN: 978-1-947864-27-6.

Shoshana_Zuboff

Skill and Effort

“These twin functions of the body -- as a source of skill and as a source of efforts -- complicated the way in which employers confronted the problems of labor discipline and the speed with which they invested in labor-saving technology, just as they complicated workers' responses to that technology.”
  • Source: Zuboff, S. (1988). In The Age Of The Smart Machine: The Future Of Work And Power. New York, NY: Basic Books, p. 36. 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.

Authority is the Spiritual Dimension of Power

“Authority is the spiritual dimension of power because it depends upon faith in a system of meaning that decrees the necessity of the hierarchical order and so provides for the unity of imperative control. Authority requires collective participation in a system of meaning that extends beyond the immediate context, beyond those who command or obey, and reaches into the domain of transcendent values. Members of a hierarchical order are linked together through allegiance to or faith in a common belief system, and every action that ensures the smooth exercise of imperative control refers back to, and expresses the bonds one has with, some fundamental source of meaning.”
  • Source: Zuboff, S. (1988). In The Age Of The Smart Machine: The Future Of Work And Power. New York, NY: Basic Books, p. 222. ISBN:0465032125.

Manager Panic

“People at every organizational level -- managers, engineers, and operators -- each spent a good deal of time speculating on the sources of this dynamic and its ultimate consequences. One top manager maintained that the core of the problem was the lack of an alternative to the traditional managerial function. ‘The problem is that managers don't have skills and knowledge or a vision of their new role. They are asking, What is going to happen to me? And so they are in a panic.'”
  • Source: Zuboff, S. (1988). In The Age Of The Smart Machine: The Future Of Work And Power. New York, NY: Basic Books, p. 251. ISBN:0465032125.

Panopticon Coaching

“To be sure, some managers saw the enhanced certainty of their information about subordinates as an opportunity to accelerate learning and improve performance. They found that the data from the Overview System made it possible to survey a wide range of behavior for evidence of irregularities. To the extent that the sources of such irregularities could be discovered, the data could be used to 'coach' subordinates and to help them realign their behavior within acceptable standards... On the other hand, many of Cedar Bluff's managers were more interested in the possibility of obtaining foolproof data than in the opportunity of using such data for coaching. In the context of a conventional technology, managers had to rely on their subordinates for valid information. The quality of the data they received was likely to be a function of the quality of the reciprocal relationship they had established. In contrast, an informating technology could provide valid information under any conditions.”
  • Source: Zuboff, S. (1988). In The Age Of The Smart Machine: The Future Of Work And Power. New York, NY: Basic Books, p. 324. ISBN:0465032125.

Anticipatory Conformity

“Anticipatory conformity is a tactic for avoiding the dread associated with the possibility of shame. It accepts visibility and adapts to it by producing behavior that minimizes the risk of unwanted discovery. As the immediate environment is saturated with measurement, the pressure of visibility begins to reorganize behavior at its source, shaping it in conformity with the normative standards of the observer.”
  • Source: Zuboff, S. (1988). In The Age Of The Smart Machine: The Future Of Work And Power. New York, NY: Basic Books, p. 345. 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.