Quotes About Complexity

Yes, I'm shallow, I don't mind admitting it. Perhaps I should admit that there's no end to the depths of my shallowness.

I hated myself, but I also loved myself in a hateful way.

I may be wicked, but I'm not bad.

I grew up in a household that was filled with Scottish and Irish ballads. So I think that the complexity and the melancholy and the languor of them has kind of gotten into my bones and that's the way I write. Now what does it contribute to my books? I don't know; I guess I would say that those are the kinds of books I like to read, books with vivid images and lots of mist and velvet cloaks and stuff. It's not as though I'm setting out to do that; it's just who I am.

Those who exclaim that "animals are not people" tend to forget that, while true, it is equally true that people are animals. To minimize the complexity of animal behavior without doing the same for human behavior erects an artificial barrier.

Emotions help us navigate a complex world that we don't fully comprehend. They are our body's way of ensuring that we do what is best for us.

Emotions may be slippery, but they are also by far the most salient aspect of our lives. They give meaning to everything.

There are lots of wonderful cognitive adaptations out there that we don't have or need. This is why ranking cognition on a single dimension is a pointless exercise. Cognitive evolution is marked by many peaks of specialization. The ecology of each species is key. The

There are lots of wonderful cognitive adaptations out there that we don't have or need. This is why ranking cognition on a single dimension is a pointless exercise. Cognitive evolution is marked by many peaks of specialization. The ecology of each species is key.

There is no single form of cognition, and there is no point in ranking cognitions from simple to complex. A species's cognition is generally as good as what it needs for its survival. (p. 200)

The difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind. —Charles Darwin

What is the largest land mammal doing with three times as many neurons as our own species?

But surely the simplicity of an explanation is no necessary criterion of its truth."17

Ironically, the study of animal cognition not only raises the esteem in which we hold other species, but also teaches us not to overestimate our own mental complexity. We

We can't return to this preindustrial way of life. We live in societies of a mind-boggling scale and complexity that demand quite a different organization than humans ever enjoyed in their state of nature. Yet, even though we live in cities and are surrounded by cars and computers, we remain essentially the same animals with the same psychological wants and needs.

We develop a plan and put a hierarchy in place to manage its execution, which allows us to lay a railroad track across the country or build a huge cathedral that takes generations to complete.

Today I believe in the possibility of love; that is why I endeavor to trace its imperfections, its perversions.

I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.

I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness.

I never wish to be easily defined. I'd rather float over other people's minds as something strictly fluid and non-perceivable; more like a transparent, paradoxically iridescent creature rather than an actual person.

When we do the work of translating and simplifying complex terminology, we allow people to see their agency in the process—to take responsibility for joining and shaping the conversation and for turning words into action.

A junkyard contains all the bits and pieces of a Boeing 747, dismembered and in disarray. A whirlwind happens to blow through the yard. What is the chance that after its passage a fully assembled 747, ready to fly, will be found standing there? So small as to be negligible, even if a tornado were to blow through enough junkyards to fill the whole Universe.

Life cannot have had a random beginning ... The trouble is that there are about 2000 enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in 10^40,000, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup.

The notion that not only the biopolymer but the operating program of a living cell could be arrived at by chance in a primordial organic soup here on the Earth is evidently nonsense of a high order.