Quotes About Complexity

Russia is a country with unpredictable past.

Chess looks like a zero-sum game; if one loses, the other wins—until a dog trots by and knocks over the table, spills the beer, and leaves you both worse off than before.

It is dangerous to spring to obvious conclusions about baseball or, for that matter, ball players. Baseball is not an obvious game.

What the Second Law indeed states, roughly speaking, is that things are getting more 'random' all the time.

There is even a view, not uncommonly expressed, that might best be regarded as a combination of A and D (or perhaps B and D)-a possibility that will actually feature significantly in our later deliberations. According to this view, the brain's action is indeed that of a computer, but it is a computer of such wonderful complexity that its imitation is beyond the wit of man and science, being necessarily a divine creation of God-the 'best programmer in the business'!

Any complicated activity, which may be mathematical calculations, or playing a game of chess, or commonplace actions-if they have been understood in terms of clear-cut computational rules-are the things that modern computers are good at; but the very understanding that underlies these computational rules is something that is itself beyond computation.

is not easy to ascertain what an algorithm actually is, simply by examining its output.

The picture of a universe of infinitely many wholly unrelated substances is at least as hard to understand as the monism of Spinoza, and far less easy to reconcile with appearances.

Kant's position is extremely subtle – so subtle, indeed, that no commentator seems to agree with any other as to what it is.

There are so many plans, and so many schemes, and so many reasons why there should be neither plans nor schemes.

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who divide everything into two groups, and those who don't.

So I simply said one of the great trite truths: There is generally more than one side to a story.

Really. It can't be as bad as all that," she said. "Bad? Good and evil are always mixed up. It provides order.

I am a man who occasionally aspires to things beyond the belly and the phallus. I am not the saint the Buddhists think me to be, and I am not the hero out of legend. I am a man who knows much fear, and who occasionally feels guilt.

Curious, he thought, how, if you knew a person long enough, he could elicit every kind of emotion from you, every possible reaction, envy, admiration, pity, irritation, fury, fondness, jealousy, love, disgust. But in the end all human beings became candidates for compassion, all of us, without exception...and if we could recognize this from the beginning, what a saving in pain and grief and misery.

To try to write love is to confront the muck of language: that region of hysteria where language is both too much and too little, excessive and impoverished.

What affects me most powerfully: mourning in layers—a kind of sclerosis. [Which means: no depth. Layers of surface—or rather, each layer: a totality. Units]

My claim is to live to the full contradiction of my time

I am caught in this contradiction: on the one hand, I believe I know the other better than anyone and triumphantly assert my knowledge to the other ( I know you—I'm the only one who really knows you!); and on the other hand, I am often struck by the obvious fact that the other is impenetrable, intractable, not to be found; I cannot open up the other, trace back the other's origins, solve the riddle. Where does the other come from? Who is the other? I wear myself out, I shall never know.

The literary story is a story that deals with the complicated human heart with an honest tolerance for the ambiguity in which we live.

Having created an empire of unfathomable complexity, he was smart enough to see that he had to submerge his identity in the organization.

As we shall see, the truth was far more complex, for the bank would skillfully harness the Fed and use it to amplify its powers.

Mr. J.P. he's such a sweetie underneath the sternness

A low thrum in his gut. Love. What is the measure of such a thing? Love, or the word love, is like an elusive jungle bird that because it is so durable has thousands of mimics and camouflaged neighbors.