"Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist."
When unimpeachably intelligent people literally “can’t find” the program (window, tab, etc.) that they were/are using, one must, I think, admit that it is the user interface that is unintelligent.
Oliver
The devil is in the data structure.
Oliver
Before stating that you believe something, try to name something that you would accept as evidence not to believe that thing.
Oliver
Society remembers those who make a prescient, unpopular stand. We should remind ourselves that 1. today (as then) people like this seem quite odd or even dangerous to us, 2. there is a large, forgotten set who made a justified unpopular stand, but were wrong by chance.
Oliver
“The whole world’s living in a digital dream
It’s not really there
It’s all on the screen”
—Joe Walsh, “Analog Man”
True, but don’t forget that the first “screen” is the retina and its mapping to the brain: our concious experience derived thus isn’t “real” either.
Oliver
“It was impossible to get a conversation going, everybody was talking too much.” The best Yogi-isms are superficially contradictory, the contradiction serving to illuminate what words actually mean to us.
Oliver
People who act in a “serious” manner, often aren’t actually taking the world seriously.
Oliver
We should stop conflating “sceptic” as in someone who doubts or requires evidence (a noble thing) with someone who simply does not believe a given position (whether rationally or not), e.g. “climate change sceptic.”
Oliver
Popper says that collaboration among cultures leads to innovation, because, to collaborate, people must communicate via abstraction. I wonder the same is true of popular music groups: the excellent ones are that way, in part, because the group develops interesting abstractions.
Oliver
An idea from my late father for dealing with totalitarian governments: Let them be, but with a single condition: there must be a safe, simple, easy and obvious way to leave.
Oliver