Quotes About Understanding

We think we know a lot, even though individually we know very little, because we treat knowledge in the minds of others as if it were our own.

Ironically, the better we map this process, the harder it becomes to explain conscious feelings. The better we understand the brain, the more redundant the mind seems. If the entire system works by electric signals passing from here to there, why the hell do we also need to feel fear?

Modern-day science is a unique tradition of knowledge, inasmuch as it openly admits collective ignorance regarding the most important questions.

Famine, plague and war will probably continue to claim millions of victims in the coming decades. Yet they are no longer unavoidable tragedies beyond the understanding and control of a helpless humanity.

hence few try to understand what they have signed up for. Like when you download some software and are asked to sign an accompanying contract that consists of dozens of pages of legalese—you take one look at it, immediately scroll down to the last page, tick 'I agree' and forget about it. Yet in fact modernity is a surprisingly simple deal. The entire contract can be summarised in a single phrase: humans agree to give up meaning in exchange for power.

Knowledge that does not change behaviour is useless. But knowledge that changes behaviour quickly loses its relevance. The more data we have and the better we understand history, the faster history alters its course, and the faster our knowledge becomes outdated.

Gautama found that there was a way to exit this vicious circle. If, when the mind experiences something pleasant or unpleasant, it simply understand things as they are, then there is no suffering. If you experience sadness but you do not suffer from it. There can actually be richness in the sadness. If you experience joy without craving that the joy linger and intensify, you continue to feel joy without losing your peace of mind.

Pero el enigma real de la vida no es qué ocurre cuando nos morimos, sino qué ocurre antes. Si queremos comprender la muerte, necesitamos comprender la vida.

In such a world, the last thing a teacher needs to give her pupils is more information. They already have far too much of it. Instead, people need the ability to make sense of information, to tell the difference between what is important and what is unimportant, and above all to combine many bits of information into a broad picture of the world.

This is the paradox of historical knowledge. Knowledge that does not change behaviour is useless. But knowledge that changes behaviour loses its relevance. The more data we have and the better we understand history, the faster history alters its course, and the faster our knowledge becomes outdated.

Writing was born as the maidservant of human consciousness, but is increasingly becoming its master. Our computers have trouble understanding how Homo sapiens talks, feels and dreams. So we are teaching Homo sapiens to talk, feel and dream in the language of numbers, which can be understood by computers. And

Today science fiction is the most important artistic genre. It shapes the understanding of the public on things like artificial intelligence and biotechnology, which are likely to change our lives and society more than anything else in the coming decades.

Justice demands not just a set of abstract values, but also an understanding of concrete cause-and-effect relations.

Estudiamos historia no para conocer el futuro, sino para ampliar nuestros horizontes, para comprender que nuestra situación actual no es natural ni inevitable y que, en consecuencia, tenemos ante nosotros muchas más posibilidades de las que imaginamos.

Yet what people might really need are the tools to connect to their own experiences.

the name of "sharing experiences," people are encouraged to understand what happens to them in terms of how others see it.

The Knowledge Illusion: We think we know a lot even though individually we know very little because we treat knowledge in the mind of others as if it were our own.

Cognitive dissonance is often considered a failure of the human psyche. In fact, it is a vital asset. Had people been unable to hold contradictory beliefs and values, it would probably have been impossible to establish and maintain any human culture. If, say, a Christian really wants to understand the Muslims who attend that mosque down the street, he shouldn't look for a pristine set of values that every Muslim holds dear.

The more we know, the less we can predict

The real test of 'knowledge' is not whether it is true, but whether it empowers us. Scientists usually assume that no theaory is 100 per cent correct. Consequently, thruth is a poor test for knowledge. The real test is utility. A theory that enables us to do new things constitutes knowledge.

They can nevertheless play the game with complete strangers because they have all learned an identical set of ideas about basketball. These ideas are entirely imaginary, but if everyone shares them, we can all play the game. The same applies, on a larger scale, to kingdoms, churches, and trade networks,

The world of thought, belief and feeling is by definition far more difficult to decipher.

zipper's operation. Most people had no idea.2 This is what Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach have termed "the knowledge illusion." We think we know a lot, even though individually we know very little, because we treat knowledge in the minds of others as if it were our own.

They can nevertheless play the game with complete strangers because they have all learned an identical set of ideas about basketball. These ideas are entirely imaginary, but if everyone shares them, we can all play the game.