Quotes About Complexity

The past is fractal premonition, infinite to the eye but nothing to be built on . . .

nature is more imaginative than we are.

The Higgs is like a toilet. It hides all the messy details

Some theorists have estimated that there are perhaps 10500 different possible consistent four-dimensional universes that could result from a single ten-dimensional string theory.

self-referential semantic labyrinth.

She had used a simile, to explain and flatter and apologize all at once. She had written, "You're like New York City. I love to visit, but I could never live there.

Human motivation is very complex. Most people don't really know why they do things.

communication is theoretically very difficult. They think we

Because that's what we're dealing with here. Layers upon layers upon layers, like the layers of an onion, in the Deep Web itself, and inside all of its separate sites.

But, the third conclusion, and the most confounding conclusion: You can't design a character too specifically.

Learning is relatively easy when the link between cause and effect is clear. But complex systems often sever that connection: causes remote from effects, solutions detached from problems, and feedback delayed or misleading (Cyert and March, 1963; Senge, 1990).

Targeting individuals, while ignoring larger system failures, oversimplifies the problem and does little to prevent its recurrence.

Plique-à-jour, which means "windows of light," is one of the most stunning and difficult enameling techniques.

Some string theorists prefer to believe that string theory is too arcane to be understood by human beings, rather than consider the possibility that it might just be wrong.

Human beings can build airplanes, but they can't build a human being like you.

It's never been hard for me to fall in love, a quality that has yet to simplify one single day of my life.

Why am I still surprised when it turns out there is more to the story?

By virtue of being an -ism, pluralism is a monism.

most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.

other words, the movement of the dye molecule was virtually impossible to predict before the fact even though it was relatively easy to understand afterward.

Random events often look like nonrandom events, and in interpreting human affairs we must take care not to confuse the two.

We fill in blanks and make guesses, but the truth about us is far more complex and subtle than that which can be understood as the straightforward calculation of conscious and rational minds.

complex systems (among which I count our lives) we should expect that minor factors we can usually ignore will by chance sometimes cause major incidents.8

wherever they looked, the chaos of life seemed to produce quantifiable and predictable patterns.