Quotes About Complexity

There is only one way to set up a board. There are nine million variations after the first six moves. And after eight moves there are two hundred and eighty-eight billion different positions. And those possibilities keep growing. There are more possible ways to play a game of chess than the amount of atoms in the observable universe.

Love is what the humans are all about but they don't understand it. If they understood it, then it would disappear.

This was jazz music. It was full of the complexity and contradictions that I would soon learn made humans human.

AS DR DAVID Adam says in his brilliant account of obsessive compulsive disorder, The Man Who Couldn't Stop: 'Only a fool or a liar will tell you how the brain works.' A brain is not a toaster. It is complex.

There was more to her than a flat line of mild to moderate depression, spiced up with occasional flourishes of despair.

We're all total bastards, us humans, but also totally wonderful.

Nora had read about multiverses and knew a bit about Gestalt psychology. About how human brains take complex information about the world and simplify it, so that when a human looks at a tree it translates the intricately complex mass of leaves and branches into this thing called 'tree'. To be a human was to continually dumb the world down into an understandable story that keeps things simple.

That is the biggest paradox, I think, about the modern world. We are all connected to each other but we often feel shut out. The increasing overload and complexity of modern life can be isolating.

Ein Mensch war wie eine Stadt. Ein paar weniger wünschenswerte Aspekte durften nicht den Blick aufs Ganze verstellen. Vielleicht gab es einiges, was man nicht mochte, ein paar zwielichtige Straßen und Vororte, aber wegen der guten Seiten lohne es sich doch. - S. 61

Der Turm ist meine Lieblingsfigur", sagte sie jetzt. "Man denkt, man müsse nicht auf ihn achten. Weil er sich immer unkompliziert geradeaus bewegt. Dame, Springer und Läufer behält man im Auge, weil sie sich heimlich anschleichen. Aber gerade der Turm wird einem oft zum Verhängnis. Das Umkomplizierte ist nie ganz das, was es zu sein scheint." - S. 104

Nora had read about multiverses and knew a bit about Genstat psychology. About how human brains take complex information about the world and simplify it, so that when a human looks at a tree it translates the intricately complex mass of leaves and branches into this thing called 'tree'. To be a human was to continually dumb the world down into an understandable story that keeps things simple.

Listen, I know you think my father was a bad human, and it was a bad thing he did, but there was good, too. He was just weak. We had no money. Humans are... complicated.

A person was like a city. You couldn't let a few less desirable parts put you off the whole. There may be bits you don't like, a few dodgy side streets and suburbs, but the good stuff makes it worthwhile.

inventions of things which they had no idea how to handle (the atomic bomb, the Internet, the semicolon)

Marriage was a truly alien concept. There probably weren't enough editions of Cosmopolitan on the planet for me to ever understand it.

She knew that everything humans see is a simplification. A human sees the world in three dimensions. That is a simplification. Humans are fundamentally limited, generalizing creatures, living on auto-pilot, who straighten out curved streets in their minds, which explains why they get lost all the time.

I, for instance, discovered little moments of happiness, or humor, within despair. I realized things weren't always one thing or another thing. It was sometimes both. And as soon as we notice all that space inside us, we have a new perspective. Yes, there is room for a lot of pain but there is room for other things too.

There are more possible ways to play a game of chess than the amount of atoms in the observable universe. So

The kind of smile no one is capable of before the age of forty. The kind that contains sadness and defiance and amusement all at once.

At the beginning of a game, there are no variations. There is only one way to set up a board. There are nine million variations after the first six moves. And after eight moves there are two hundred and eighty-eight billion different positions. And those possibilities keep growing. There are more possible ways to play a game of chess than the amount of atoms in the observable universe.

O Universo tinha tendência a mergulhar no caos e na entropia. Era um princípio de termodinâmica simples. Talvez também fosse o princípio de uma existência básica.

The world was becoming faster and louder, and the social systems were becoming as chaotic and fragmented as jazz scores.

There are more possible ways to play a game og chess than the amount of atoms in the observable universe. So it gets very messy. And there is no right way to play; there are many ways. In chess, as in life, possibility is the basis of everything.

I suppose the way I understand my life is as a kind of Russian doll, with different versions inside other versions, each one enclosing the other, whereby the life before isn't seen from the outside but is still there.