Quotes About Ambiguity

In quantum theory, words are blunt tools.

The more you want to explain about a black swan event like the storming of the Bastille," wrote the sociologist Duncan Watts, "the broader you have to draw the boundaries around what you consider to be the event itself.

effective learning from experience can't happen without clear feedback, and you can't have clear feedback unless your forecasts are unambiguous and scorable. Sound familiar? It should. Drezner cited an article about the IARPA tournament.

Assemble forecasters. Ask them large numbers of questions with precise time frames and unambiguous language. Require that forecasts be expressed using numerical probability scales. And wait for

Human nature turns out to be more complicated than the idea that people will get along if only the rules are clear enough. Uncertainty, the ultimate evil that modern law seeks to eradicate, generally fosters cooperation, not the opposite.

I thought you'd say it might be a trap.' 'It might be trap,' he said. 'It doesn't feel like a trap.' 'Well it wouldn't, would it? Not if it was a good trap.

I always wondered how it would feel when it was over,' said Malik eventually. 'Turns out it doesn't feel like anything, much.

Uncertainty is real," Byers writes. "It is the dream of total certainty

a distinction that philosophers have proposed between "epistemic" and "aleatory" uncertainty.

Aleatory uncertainty is something you not only don't know; it is unknowable.

It was at the end of the day, at twilight--the hour we call "between a dog and a wolf.

Las cosas no son blancas ni negras, lo que reina es el gris. Los hombres, sus almas... Pasa lo mismo. Tú eres un alma gris, rematadamente gris, cómo todos nosotros.

Je n'ai jamais su au juste quel est son âge.

Rien n'est tout noir, ni tout blanc, c'est le gris qui gangne. Les hommes et leurs âmes, c'est pareil... T'es une âme grise, joliment grise, comme nous tous...

Ik heb nog nooit een schoft of een heilige gezien. De dingen zijn nooit helemaal zwart of helemaal wit, alles is grijs. Mensen en hun zielen ook… Je ziel is grijs, behoorlijk grijs, zoals die van ons allemaal…

What if?" points in both directions.

To Marcel Duchamp's blithe "There is no solution, because there is no problem," the Japanese visual artist Shigeko Kubota replied, "There is no problem, because there is no solution.

Our interest's on the dangerous edge of things. / The honest thief, the tender murderer, / The superstitious atheist.

The birds sang in the dust in an elaborate weave, ambiguous, deafening, prey to existence poor passions lost between the modest summits of groves of mulberry and elder; and I, like them, in secluded places reserved for the lost and pure, would wait for evening to fall, for the silent smells of fire and joyous misery to fill the air, for the Angelus bell to toll, veiled in the new peasant mystery fulfilled in the ancient mystery.

Once life is finished it acquires a sense; up to that point it has not got a sense; its sense is suspended and therefore ambiguous.

Erano indefinibili e questo creava maggior imbarazzo.

The world is divided into the ordinary and the extraordinary. The problem is deciding which is which.

As may be seen, there is only one sensible piece of advice to give to those who find themselves having to talk to an author about one of his books without having read it: praise it without going into detail. An author does not expect a summary or a rational analysis of his book and would even prefer you not to attempt such a thing. He expects only that, while maintaining the greatest possible degree of ambiguity, you will tell him you like what he wrote.

L'auteur n'attend nullement un résumé ou un commentaire argumenté de son livre et il est même préférable que ceux-ci ne lui soient pas donnés, il attend seulement, en préservant la plus grande ambiguïté possible, qu'on lui dise avoir aimé ce qu'il a écrit.