“Many of my all-time favorite movies are almost entirely verbal. The entire plot of My Dinner with Andre is “Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory eat dinner.” The entire plot of Before Sunrise is “Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy walk around… — Brian Christian Copy Share Image
“Though all Christians start a wedding invitation by solemnly declaring their marriage is due to special Divine arrangement, I, as a philosopher, would like to talk in greater detail about this … —JOHANNES KEPLER If you prefer Mr. Martin to every other person; if you think him the most agreeable man you have ever been in company with, why should you… — Brian Christian Copy Share
“It’s fairly intuitive that never exploring is no way to live. But it’s also worth mentioning that never exploiting can be every bit as bad. In the computer science definition, exploitation actually comes to characterize many of what we consider to be life’s best moments. A family gathering together on the holidays is exploitation. So is a bookworm settling into… — Brian Christian Copy Share
“Forrest Gander: "Maybe the best we can do is try to leave ourselves unprotected. To keep brushing off habits, how we see things and… — Brian Christian Copy Share Image
“We asked Shoup if his research allows him to optimize his own commute, through the Los Angeles traffic to his office at UCLA. Does… — Brian Christian Copy Share Image
“look no further than Peter A. Lawrence’s developmental biology text The Making of a Fly, which in April 2011 was selling for $23,698,655.93 (plus $3.99 shipping) on Amazon’s third-party marketplace. How and why had this—admittedly respected—book reached a sale price of more than $23 million? It turns out that two of the sellers were setting their prices algorithmically as constant… — Brian Christian Copy Share
“Though time management seems a problem as old as time itself, the science of scheduling began in the machine shops of the industrial revolution. In 1874, Frederick Taylor, the son of a wealthy lawyer, turned down his acceptance at Harvard to become an apprentice machinist at Enterprise Hydraulic Works in Philadelphia. Four years later, he completed his apprenticeship and began… — Brian Christian Copy Share
“There is no such thing as absolute certainty, but there is assurance sufficient for the purposes of human life. —JOHN STUART MILL” — Brian Christian Copy Share Image
Pleasantries are low entropy, biased so far that they stop being an earnest inquiry and become ritual. Ritual has its virtues, of course, and… — Brian Christian Copy Share Image
“What a familiarity with the construction of Turing test bots had begun to show me was that we fail - again and again- to… — Brian Christian Copy Share Image
“When our expectations are uncertain and the data are noisy, the best bet is to paint with a broad brush” — Brian Christian Copy Share Image
