Quotes About Complexity

People think computers will keep them from making mistakes. They're wrong. With computers you make mistakes faster.

Infinite Jest isn't a book, it's a fucking planet.

For our purposes, if we are to look at the evolution that led to where we are now, instead of the nice neat tree, I think it could reasonably be described as one big, million-year clusterfuck.

Biologists sometimes get physics envy, because every time we find out one of our big rules – universal genetics, evolution by natural selection – things look more complex within them as soon as we begin to look.

But we don't have more protein-coding genes than a chimpanzee. In fact, we have fewer genes than a roundworm. Or a banana.

It was the co-evolution of minds, brains and hands that drove us to use sticks, knap stones, refine those flakes, and eventually, after long periods of stasis, develop our technological prowess so that we could carve statues, and musical instruments, and weapons that made resources ever-more available. Despite a few animals having similarly complex brains, none has come close to our tool skills for many millions of years.

how much of what seemed known and well established is, in fact, unknown and steeped in ambiguity.

though the data should be pure and straightforward, science is done by people, who are never either.

despite what you might have read, genetics won't tell you how smart your kids will be, or what sports they should play, or what gender person they might fancy, or how they will die, or why some people commit acts of heinous violence and murder. Just as important as what genetics can tell us is what it can't.

males and females can be made. In the second broad category of being a sexual organism are the species that have dozens of sexes, possibly thousands.

I will show you that despite what you might have read, genetics won't tell you how smart your kids will be, or what sports they should play, or what gender person they might fancy, or how they will die, or why some people commit acts of heinous violence and murder. Just as important as what genetics can tell us is what it can't.

Genes never work in isolation, and almost never have just one role.

We are all Rumsfeldian, if we are doing science right.

For our purposes, if we are to look at the evolution that led to where we are now, instead of the nice neat tree, I think it could reasonably be described as one big million-year clusterfuck. Whenever humans met - Sapiens, Neanderthal, Denisovans - they had sex. What a time to be alive.

Just as important as what genetics can tell us is what it can't.

For every complicated problem there is a solution that is simple, direct, understandable, and wrong." H. L. Mencken

That was cool and that sucked all at the same time.

How is it possible to know so much about a person and yet know nothing at all?

If I'm in love with him, how come I can so perfectly inhabit the mindset of thinking he's a git and the bane of my life?

Life is complicated. It wtarts before we're ready, it continues while we're still trying to figure out the point of it. And it ends long before we've worked out just what to do.

I know that no one's story is simple. And no single story tells the whole truth.

If there was one truth that I'd learned from all my reading, it was this: Happy endings do not apply to everyone. Someone is always left out of that final, jubilant scene. This time, that someone was me.

Happy endings do not apply to everyone. Someone is always left out of that final, jubilant scene.

emergence notices the way small actions and connections create complex systems, patterns that become ecosystems and societies. Emergence is our inheritance as a part of this universe; it is how we change. Emergent strategy is how we intentionally change in ways that grow our capacity to embody the just and liberated worlds we long for.