Quotes About Impact

Because metaphors are vivid and memorable, and because they are not readily subjected to critical analysis, they can have considerable impact on human judgment even when they are inappropriate, useless, or misleading," said Amos. "They replace genuine uncertainty about the world with semantic ambiguity. A metaphor is a cover-up.

The computer programmer creates the only path available to the computer user; the effect of his decisions on others is masked by their abstraction.

James Yorke, a professor who had coined the term "chaos theory." The idea was simple: some small, barely noticed event can cascade into huge consequences down the road. (The day your parents met, for instance: what if that hadn't happened?)

The effect on James of being ignored by the people who stood to benefit the most from his work was to distance himself even further from those people.

He thought of the computer as a less than straightforward tool for controlling and manipulating the world around it, like a shovel with a loose blade.

earlier the restrictions imposed in any given outbreak, the fewer the deaths.

I think it's going to set the world on fire," said Gates. "It didn't do anything. There are fifteen comments at the bottom of the piece on the Web, and all of them are Russian mail order brides.

We know what the virus will do," she liked to say. "We don't know what the humans will do.

The great thing about this project," said Tim, "is that it's software that talks to physical things rather than software that just talks to other software. You can see the effect of what you are doing.

Trump's first budget eliminated ARPA-E altogether. It also eliminated the spectacularly successful $70 billion loan program. It cut funding to the national labs in a way that implies the laying off of six thousand of their people. It eliminated all research on climate change. It halved the funding for work to secure the electrical grid from attack or natural disaster.

Nothing big happens until you close the schools. It's not like anything else. It's like a phase change. It's nonlinear. It's like when water temperature goes from thirty-three to thirty-two. When it goes from thirty-four to thirty-three, it's no big deal; one degree colder and it turns to ice.

We are the only reason your shitty state is standing.

If perception had the power to overwhelm reality in such a simple case, how much power might it have in a more complicated one?

perhaps undervalued, contributions to the whole. Fifteen percent of the country lives in towns of fewer than 10,000

United States, with a bit more than 4 percent of the world's population, had a bit more than 20 percent of its COVID-19 deaths.

the difference between a great software guy and an okay software guy is huge. A great software guy is worth ten times an okay software guy.

Communicable diseases were the diseases that created crises. In an adjective she'd found a vessel for her life purpose.

It was troubling to consider, he began, "an organism equipped with an affective and hormonal system not much different from that of the jungle rat being given the ability to destroy every living thing by pushing a few buttons." Given

From the point of view of the history of the universe, Max's death was not a big deal," said Eisman. "It was just my big deal." At

The best computer science students at Stanford were some of the best computer science students anywhere. Under Clark they gathered together into a new, potent force. 'The difference was phenomenal, for me. I don't know how many people around me noticed. But my God I noticed. The first manifestation was when all of these people started coming up and wanting to be part of my project.' That

Amos approached intellectual life strategically, as if it were an oil field to be drilled, and after two years of sitting through philosophy classes he announced that philosophy was a dry well. "I remember his words," recalled Amnon. "He said, 'There is nothing we can do in philosophy. Plato solved too many of the problems. We can't have any impact in this area. There are too many smart guys and too few problems left, and the problems have no solutions.

It's the idea that is a tiny push away from general acceptance and, when it gets that push, will change the world. The

A new trader could leap into a market and trade frantically inside it without adding anything of value to it.

James Yorke, a professor who had coined the term "chaos theory." The idea was simple: some small, barely noticed event can cascade into huge consequences down the road. (The day your parents met, for instance: what