Quotes About Complexity

Actually, orcas aren't quite as complex as scientists imagine. Most killer whales are just four tons of doofus dressed up like a police car.

Most of us don't live our lives with one, integrated self that meets the world, we're a whole bunch of selves.

Most of us don't live our lives with one, integrated self that meets the world, we're a whole bunch of selves.

Out came an extraordinarily complex network of plastic, brass, and stainless-steel tubing, which in seconds Kona had assembled into what Quinn thought was either a very small and elegant linear particle accelerator or, more likely, the most complex bong ever constructed.

I'm glad to have known you, oh Queen of Flowers. You are a prickly and problematic person, but life is more interesting with you around.

What he wanted was both simple and complex: he wanted Galbatorix to understand ...

The physics are simple in theory, but in practice they are filled with the possibility for limitless error.

A lover who hates, a saint who sins, and an angel who kills.

The behavior of any human being is, of course, a very complex phenomenon, and the historian who attempts to explain it is indulging in a certain arrogance.

In the early days, computers inspired widespread awe and the popular press dubbed them giant brains. In fact, the computer's power resembled that of a bulldozer; it did not harness subtlety, though subtlety went into its design.

At the level of the microcode, physical and abstract meet. The

I think I wanted to see how complicated things happen," West said years later. "There's some notion of control, it seems to me, that you can derive in a world full of confusion if you at least understand how things get put together. Even if you can't under stand every little part, how infernal machines get put together.

Looking into the VAX, West had imagined he saw a diagram of DEC's corporate organization. He felt that VAX was too complicated. He did not like, for instance, the system by which various parts of the machine communicated with each other; for his taste, there was too much protocol involved. He decided that VAX embodied flaws in DEC's corporate organization.

Some problems are easy to find and hard to fix; some are hard to find and easy to fix; some go both ways.

Medicine is not efficient," I heard Jim say to a group of interns many years after Taube had retired. "It's not supposed to be efficient. It has nothing to do with efficiency.

She sighed. 'But it's not that simple, you know, really it isn't. It's not really him, you know. I mean not really the person. It's everything, it's everywhere. So where do you break out to? You're just one person and it's everywhere. So where do you break out to? I don't know, Tambu, really I don't know. So what do you do? I don't know.

It's becoming increasingly clear that mechanized intelligence can solve a rapidly expanding repertoire of problems.

Each of us is sometimes a cretin, a fool, a moron, or a lunatic. A normal person is just a reasonable mix of these components, these four ideal types.

The beauty of the universe consists not only of unity in variety, but also of variety in unity.

You live on the surface, Lia told me years later. You sometimes seem profound, but it's only because you piece a lot of surfaces together to create the impression of depth, solidity. That solidity would collapse if you try to stand it up.

Yes, I know, it's not the truth, but in a great history little truths can be altered so that the greater truth emerges.

With Germans, as with women, you never get to the point.

Über die deutsche Sprache: "Sie halten sich für tief, weil ihre Sprache unklar ist, ihr fehlt die clarté der französischen Sprache, sie sagt nie exakt das, was sie sollte, so dass kein Deutscher jemals weiß, was er sagen wollte – und dann verwechselt er diese Undeutlichkeit mit Tiefe. Es ist mit Deutschen wie mit Frauen, man gelangt bei ihnen nie auf den Grund

The maximum of confusion achieved with the maximum of order: it seems a sublime calculation.