Quotes About Diversity

First, in terms of the observations of the cultural anthropologists who developed relativism, the degree of moral diversity is overstated and the high degree of moral consensus is understated.

Just because different cultures have different moral standards, even if the degree of moral diversity is not overstated, it does not follow that there is no such thing as absolute values that transcend culture.

A fourth weakness of relativism is that it provides no way to arbitrate among competing cultural value claims.

In a recent survey, innovative people — from inventors to scientists, writers to programmers — were asked what techniques they used. Over 70% believed they got their best ideas by exploring areas they were not experts in

Wow, so much to learn!" said Volant the eagle. "Fish-eating bats, pale bats, bats with little ears, bats with long noses, bats with noses that look like leaves… Next thing you know, you're going to tell me there are bats that drink blood like vampires!" "There are those, indeed, as well," said Sully the Leaf-nosed bat.

we're what you call heterogenous. That means we're everywhere, everybody at once. We're both good and bad, right and wrong. We're the great resolvers of conflict. We're like octopuses--because we'll swallow anything. Even men. Even battling and forlorn men like you and your dad. You guys try so hard to be subjects, characters, things, you forget us women are the whole story. We embrace you all. What you really want to destroy is women, that story of yourself you can't control.

I'm very thankful to players like John Stockton and Spud Webb. They've made it possible for someone like me to make it. I think teams are actually looking for one player under 6-feet now, because they make things happen.

The street outside my window is one of a million likeminded Los Angeles streets. Taggers, homeless, families and lovers, thieves and beggars, running children and old women, churches, bars, corner stores, Spanish, Cambodian and Armenian words and accents. I want to hug my street and all within, to feel the throbbing pulse beating its steady rhythm.

killing rats wasn't in my job description.

diverse teams make better mousetraps.

For each individual among the many has a share of excellence and practical wisdom, and when they meet together, just as they become in a manner one man, who has many feet, and hands, and senses, so too with regard to their character and thought. Hence the many are better judges than a single man of music and poetry, for some understand one part, and some another, and among them they understand the whole. (Aristotle, Politics, book 3, chapter 11)

Progress depends as much on our collective differences as it does on our individual IQ scores.

If we can understand how to leverage diversity to achieve better performance and greater robustness, we might anticipate and prevent collapses.

importance, essence, and averaging. The importance of diversity in complex systems is the central theme of this book. Why does diversity matter? What roles does it play? I show that diversity has many roles and effects. Diversity can provide insurance, improve productivity, spur innovation, enhance robustness, produce collective knowledge,

creates synergies. It allows the whole to be more than the parts. And diversity between communities provides robustness to major changes.

diverse, connected, interdependent entities whose behavior is determined by rules, which may adapt, but need not. The interactions of these entities often produce phenomena that are more than the parts. These phenomena are called emergent.

To rely on a single model is hubris.

when our thinking is informed by diverse logically consistent, empirically validated frames, we are more likely to make wise choices.

When scientists speak of diversity, they can mean any of three characteristics of a population. They can mean variation in some attribute, such as differences in the length of finches' beaks. They can mean diversity of types, such as different types of stores in a mall. Or they can mean differences in configuration, such as different connections between atoms in a molecule.

Systems that produce complexity consist of diverse rule-following entities whose behaviors are interdependent. Those entities interact over a contact structure or network. In addition, the entities often adapt.

People are diverse, we are socially influenced, we are error-prone, we are purposive, and we learn. In addition, people possess agency—we have the capacity to act.

When behavior is socially influenced, extreme actions can create spillovers. This occurs when political activists energize voters. We will encounter this effect of diversity when we model riots.

On identity politics: "The hyphenated American is ridiculous. But that's what we have to put up with. I think that any person that's in the United States is better off here than they would be where they came from.

He didn't broadcast it, but Archie Leach once worked in Nashville on a bill with four performing seals.