Quotes About Individuals

One needs only to run a Google search on any subject of interest to see how the "information good" that is the response to one's query is produced by the coordinate effects of the uncoordinated actions of a wide and diverse range of individuals and organizations acting on a wide range of motivations-both market and nonmarket, state-based and nonstate.

It is a premise of Enlightenment liberalism that the only legitimate purpose of government is to enable individuals to make use of the freedom that is theirs by nature.

Unfortunately, there is much mediocre philosophy in circulation, and so one sometimes hears it said that There is no such thing as a family, only the individuals who make up the family. This is analogous to the claim that There is no such thing as a table, only the atoms that make up the table—which we also hear on occasion. But in reality, there are not only atoms and molecules. There are also tables.

Men are but men; we did not make ourselves.

Individual humans know embarrassingly little about the world, and as history has progressed, they have come to know less and less. A hunter-gatherer in the Stone Age knew how to make her own clothes, how to start a fire, how to hunt rabbits, and how to escape lions. We think we know far more today, but as individuals, we actually know far less. We rely on the expertise of others for almost all our needs.

The real difference between us and chimpanzees is the mythical glue that binds together large numbers of individuals, families and groups.

Terrorism works by pressing the fear button deep in our minds and hijacking the private imagination of millions of individuals.

Since humans are individuals, it is difficult to connect them to one another and to make sure that they are all up to date. In contrast, computers aren't individuals, and it is easy to integrate them into a single flexible network.

Since humans are individuals, it is difficult to connect them to one another and to make sure that they are all up to date.

From a historical perspective, the spiritual journey is always tragic, for it is a lonely path fit for individuals rather than for entire societies. Human cooperation requires firm answers rather than just questions, and those who foam against stultified religious structures end up forging new structures in their place.

Most history books focus on the ideas of great thinkers, the bravery of warriors, the charity of saints and the creativity of artists. They have much to tell about the weaving and unravelling of social structures, about the rise and fall of empires, about the discovery and spread of technologies. Yet they say nothing about how all this influenced the happiness and suffering of individuals. This is the biggest lacuna in our understanding of history. We had better start filling it.

When considering automation, therefore, it is wrong to compare the abilities of a single human driver to that of a single self-driving car, or of a single human doctor to that of a single AI doctor. Rather, we should compare the abilities of a collection of human individuals to the abilities of an integrated network.

In fact, AI might make centralized systems far more efficient than diffused systems, because machine learning works better the more information it can analyze. If you disregard all privacy concerns and concentrate all the information relating to a billion people in one database, you can train much better algorithms than if you respect individual privacy and have in your database only partial information on a million people.

The real difference between us and chimpanzees is the mythical glue that binds together large numbers of individuals, families and groups. This glue has made us the masters of creation.

In contrast, upgrading the healthy is an elitist project, because it rejects the idea of a universal standard applicable to all and seeks to give some individuals an edge over others.

There is only a blind evolutionary process, devoid of any purpose, leading to the birth of individuals. 'Endowed

Without government planning, economic resources and scientific research, individuals will not get far in their quest for happiness.

A igualdade só pode ser assegurada se forem diminuídas as liberdades daqueles que estão em melhores condições. Garantir que cada indivíduo seja livre para fazer o que desejar inevitavelmente compromete a igualdade.

Millions of years of evolution have designed us to live and think as community members. Within a mere two centuries we have become alienated individuals. Nothing testifies better to the awesome power of culture.

El capital se va paulatinamente de los estados dictatoriales que no defienden a los individuos privados y su propiedad. En cambio, afluye a los estados que hacen cumplir la norma de la ley y de la propiedad privada.

In the technotronic society the trend would seem to be towards the aggregation of the individual support of millions of uncoordinated citizens, easily within the reach of magnetic and attractive personalities exploiting the latest communications techniques to manipulate emotions and control reason.

Retirement is the last opportunity for individuals to reinvent themselves, let go of the past, and find peace and happiness within.

Confucius was not so much a philsopher as a proto-ideologist: what interested him was not metaphysical Truths but rather a harmonious social order within which individuals could lead happy and ethical lives. He was the first to outline clearly what one is tempted to call the elementary scene of ideology, its zero-level, which consists in asserting the (nameless) authority of some substantial Tradition.

We are all inexorably wound together as individuals, as families, as communities, and as a society. We must take care to value, accommodate, and, at times, assist the variety and diversity, each unique facet, in the noble work - the blessed art - of family.