Quotes from Leonard Mlodinow

Paleolithic humans migrated often, and, like my teenagers, they followed the food.

I have stressed this distinction because it is an important one. It defines the fundamental difference between probability and statistics: the former concerns predictions based on fixed probabilities; the latter concerns the inference of those probabilities based on observed data.

In fact, when some wedding guest inevitably complains about the seating arrangements, you might point out how long it would have taken you to consider every possibility: assuming you spent one second considering each one, it would come to more than half a million years. The unhappy guest will assume, of course, that you are being histrionic.

if events are random, we are not in control, and if we are in control of events, they are not random. There is therefore a fundamental clash between our need to feel we are in control and our ability to recognize randomness.

Though you are unaware of it, when you run cool wine over your tongue, you don't just taste its chemical composition; you also taste its price.

People seemed to "decide" how much to eat based on box size as much as taste.

Strange is our situation here on earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to a divine purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that we are here for the sake of others.    ââ'¬â€ALBERT EINSTEIN I

We miss the effects of randomness in life because when we assess the world, we tend to see what we expect to see. We in effect define degree of talent by degree of success and then reinforce our feelings of causality by noting the correlation. That's why although there is sometimes little difference in ability between a wildly successful person and one who is not as successful, there is usually a big difference in how they are viewed.

I wouldn't have to drop out of academia and take a more lucrative position waiting tables at the faculty club.

The answer lies in a phenomenon called regression toward the mean. That is, in any series of random events an extraordinary event is most likely to be followed, due purely to chance, by a more ordinary one.

Believing in what you desire to be true and then seeking evidence to justify it doesn't seem to be the best approach to everyday decisions.

Chemicals were easier to procure than friends, and when I wanted to play with them they never said they had to stay home to wash their hair or, less politely, that they didn't associate with weirdos.

A dwarf on a giant's shoulders sees farther of the two

A pygmy upon a gyants shoulder may see farther than the [giant] himself.

Our species had to engage in complex cooperative behavior in order to survive in the wild, and—as I keep reminding my teenage children—pointing and grunting get you only so far.

But in philosophy, he was closer to his contemporary Siddhartha Gautama Buddha (c. 560 – 480 B.C.). Both believed in reincarnation, possibly as an animal, so even an animal could be inhabited by what was once a human soul. Thus, both placed a high value on all life, opposing the common practice of animal sacrifice and preaching strict vegetarianism.

German authorities saw the need for a statute explicitly forbidding anyone associated with the university from drenching freshmen with urine

Leipzig that the university had to pass a rule against throwing stones at professors.

a thousand years without a bath.

if a lecture was not interesting or proceeded too slowly or too quickly, they would jeer and become rowdy.

few people would engage in extended activity if they believed that there were a random connection between what they did and the rewards they received,"15 Lerner concluded that "for the sake of their own sanity," people overestimate the degree to which ability can be inferred from success.

the invention of mummification. This was believed to be the key to a happy afterlife; certainly there were no disgruntled customers coming back to say otherwise.

paleontological evidence suggests that the early farmers had more spinal issues, worse teeth, and more anemia and vitamin deficiencies—and died younger—than the populations of human foragers who preceded them.

research on hunter-gatherer groups ranging from the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries shows that the average nomad worked just two to four hours each day.