Quotes About Complexity

BOTH GÖDEL'S AND COHEN'S arguments proceed by constructing a model of set theory, though I will not explain them in detail.

When you put four Alaskans into a room, you have five marriages, six divorces, and seven political parties.

If a self-organizing system becomes too static, it runs down; if it becomes too chaotic, it breaks apart.

It's my personal onion theory. See, it's like we've all got layers on layers, going deep inside, to layer ten, that place where we're spiritual and private. But we don't show those deep layers.

The correct answer to almost any question in economics is: It depends.

The economics we need is of the "seminar room" variety, not the "rule-of-thumb" kind. It is an economics that recognizes its limitations and caveats and knows that the right message depends on the context. The fine print is what economists have to contribute.

The world is better served by syncretic economists and policymakers who can hold multiple ideas in their heads than by 'one-handed' economists who promote one big idea regardless of context.

We have arrived at one of the central paradoxes of economics: uniformity amid diversity. Economists work with a plethora of models, pointing in all kinds of contradictory directions. Yet when it comes to the issues of the day, their views often converge in ways that cannot be justified by the strength of the available evidence.

One of the most amazing things about mathematics is the people who do math aren't usually interested in application, because mathematics itself is truly a beautiful art form. It's structures and patterns, and that's what we love, and that's what we get off on.

What does a car bomb say about poverty, or the execution of a rural mayor explain about disenfranchisement?... The war had become, it it wasn't from the beginning, an indecipherable text.

La mundanidad de la excelencia. Los logros humanos más deslumbrantes proceden en realidad de la combinación de innumerables elementos individuales que por separado son, en cierto sentido, corrientes.

Boundary crossers reject either/or choices and seek multiple options and blended solutions. They lead hyphenated lives filled with hyphenated jobs and enlivened by hyphenated identities.

largely metaphorical."7 In a complex world, mastery of metaphor—a whole-minded ability that some cognitive scientists have called "imaginative rationality"—has become ever more valuable

Because of their difficulty analyzing the particulars, they became adept at recognizing the patterns.

All great entrepreneurs are Systems Thinkers. All who wish to become great entrepreneurs need to learn how to become a Systems Thinker…to develop their innate passion for seeing things whole.

Why Time Flies: A Mostly Scientific Investigation (2017) By Alan Burdick A wonderful and witty work of science journalism that captures the complexity, frustration, and exhilaration of trying to understand the nature of time.

Right now, we have the most complex relationship with technology that we've ever had. Your regular person has more technology in their life now than the whole world had 100 years ago.

Humans are inscrutable. Infinitely unpredictable. This is what makes them dangerous.

The number of combinations possible and hence the number of different thoughts or brain states each of us can have exceeds the number of known particles in the entire known universe.

It is difficult to appreciate the complexity of the brain because the numbers are so huge. The average brain consists of 100 billion neurons.

prefrontally mediated, in which we attribute these shifts to what we've seen in the other person. Naturally, such a complex pathway can be bogged down by rigid valenced plateaus of probability, which skew accurate interpretations of the meaning of sensations.

Some estimate the number of firing patterns of the brain—on/off profiles of total brain activation that are possible—to be ten times ten one million times, or ten to the millionth power. The human brain is thought to be the most complex thing in the universe, artificial or natural.

It's really easy to make a movie that five people understand. It's really hard to make something that a lot of people understand and yet is not obvious, still has subtlety and ambiguity, and leaves you with something to do as a viewer.

I don't want the viewer to be able to peel away the layers of my painting like the layers of an onion and find that all the blues are on the same level.