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Often I Feel I Go To Some Distant Region Of The World To Be Reminded Of Who I Really Am. There Is No Mystery About Why This Should Be So. Stripped Of Your Ordinary Surroundings, Your Friends, Your Daily Routines, Your Refrigerator Full Of Your Food, Your Closet Full Of Your Clothes -- With All This Taken Away, You Are Forced Into Direct Experience. Such Direct Experience Inevitably Makes You Aware Of Who It Is That Is Having The Experience. That's Not Always Comfortable, But It Is Always Invigorating.

-Michael Crichton

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Often I Feel I

Michael Crichton

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Often I Feel I Go To Some Distant Region Of The World To Be Reminded Of Who I Really Am. There Is No Mystery About Why This Should Be So. Stripped Of Your Ordinary Surroundings, Your Friends, Your Daily Routines, Your Refrigerator Full Of Your Food, Your Closet Full Of Your Clothes -- With All This Taken Away, You Are Forced Into Direct Experience. Such Direct Experience Inevitably Makes You Aware Of Who It Is That Is Having The Experience. That's Not Always Comfortable, But It Is Always Invigorating.

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Real Life Isn't A Series Of Interconnected Events Occurring One After Another - Like Beads Strung On A Necklace. Life Is Actually A Series Of Encounters In Which One Event May Change Those That Follow In A Wholly Unpredictable, Even Devastating Way.

The Experience Of Climbing Kilimanjaro Affected Me So Powerfully That, For A Long Time Afterward, If I Caught Myself Saying, "i'm Not A Person Who Likes To Do That Activity, Eat That Food, Listen To That Music," I Would Automatically Go Out And Do What I Imagined I Didn't Like. Generally I Found I Was Wrong About Myself - I Liked What I Thought I Wouldn't Like. And Even If I Didn't Like The Particular Experience, I Learned I Liked Having New Experiences.

New Experiences

The Purpose Of Life Is To Stay Alive. Watch Any Animal In Nature--all It Tries To Do Is Stay Alive. It Doesn't Care About Beliefs Or Philosophy. Whenever Any Animal's Behavior Puts It Out Of Touch With The Realities Of Its Existence, It Becomes Exinct.

The Characteristic Human Trait Is Not Awareness But Conformity, And The Characteristic Result Is Religious Warfare. Other Animals Fight For Territory Or Food; But, Uniquely In The Animal Kingdom, Human Beings Fight For Their 'beliefs.' The Reason Is That Beliefs Guide Behavior, Which Has Evolutionary Importance Among Human Beings. But At A Time When Our Behavior May Well Lead Us To Extinction, I See No Reason To Assume We Have Any Awareness At All. We Are Stubborn, Self-destructive Conformists. Any Other View Of Our Species Is Just A Self-congratulatory Delusion.

The Purpose Of History Is To Explain The Present - To Say Why The World Around Us Is The Way It Is. History Tells Us What Is Important In Our World, And How It Came To Be. It Tells Us What Is To Be Ignored, Or Discarded. That Is True Power - Profound Power. The Power To Define A Whole Society.

It's Better To Die Laughing Than To Live Each Moment In Fear.

In Order Not To Be Misunderstood, I Want It Perfectly Clear That I Believe It Is Incumbent On Us To Conduct Our Lives In A Way That Takes Into Account All The Consequences Of Our Actions, Including The Consequences To Other People, And The Consequences To The Environment.

The Nasty Little Apes That Call Themselves Human Beings Can Do Nothing Except Run And Hide.

Scientific Power Is Like Inherited Wealth; Attained Without Discipline. You Read About What Others Have Done, And You Take The Next Step. You Can Do It Very Young. You Can Make Progress Very Fast.

Life Is Wonderful. It's A Gift To Be Alive, To See The Sun And Breathe The Air. And There Isn't Really Anything Else.

They Always Say They Didn't. I Never Heard Of One Who Said, 'you Know, I Deserve This.' Never Happens.

Cut Off From Direct Experience, Cut Off From Our Own Feelings And Sometimes Our Own Sensations, We Are Only Too Ready To Adopt A Viewpoint Or Perspective That Is Handed To Us, And Is Not Our Own.

Environmentalism Has Already Killed Somewhere Between 10-30 Million People Since The 1970s.

I Think Every Writer Should Have Tattooed Backwards On His Forehead, Like Ambulance On Ambulances, The Words 'everybody Needs An Editor.

The Truth Is, Almost Nobody Wants To Experience Real Nature. What People Want Is To Spend A Week Or Two In A Cabin In The Woods, With Screens On The Windows. They Want A Simplified Life For A While, Without All Their Stuff. Or A Nice River Rafting Trip For A Few Days, With Somebody Else Doing The Cooking. Nobody Wants To Go Back To Nature In Any Real Way, And Nobody Does. It's All Talk.

One May Even Suspect That There Is More To Reality Than Measurements Will Ever Reveal.

In The Information Society, Nobody Thinks. We Expect To Banish Paper, But We Actually Banish Thought.

Increasingly, The Mathematics Will Demand The Courage To Face Its Implications.

Science Is A Kind Of Glorified Tailoring Enterprise, A Method For Taking Measurements That Describe Something ? Reality ? That May Not Be Understood At All.

And That's How Things Are. A Day Is Like A Whole Life. You Start Out Doing One Thing, But End Up Doing Something Else, Plan To Run An Errand, But Never Get There. . . . And At The End Of Your Life, Your Whole Existence Has The Same Haphazard Quality, Too. Your Whole Life Has The Same Shape As A Single Day.

We All Live Every Day In Virtual Environments, Defined By Our Ideas.

All Your Life People Will Tell You Things. And Most Of The Time, Probably Ninety-five Percent Of The Time, What They'll Tell You Will Be Wrong.

The Doctor Is Not A Miracle Worker Who Can Magically Save Us But, Rather, An Expert Adviser Who Can Assist Us In Our Own Recovery.

Science Is Nothing More Than A Method Of Inquiry. The Method Says An Assertion Is Valid - And Will Be Universally Accepted - Only If It Can Be Reproduced By Others, And Thereby Independently Verified. The Impersonal Rigor Of The Method Has Produced Enormously Powerful Results For 400 Years. The Scientific Method Is Utterly Apolitical. A Truth In Science Is Verifiable Whether You Are Black Or White, Male Or Female, Old Or Young. It’s Verifiable Whether You Know The Experimenter, Or Whether You Don’t.

Men Under Stress Are Fools, And Fool Themselves.

Even If You Don't Believe In God, You Still Have To Believe In Something That Gives Meaning To Your Life, And Shapes Your Sense Of The World. Such A Belief Is Religious.

That's Human Nature. Nobody Does Anything Until It's Too Late.

That Is The Danger We Now Face. And This Is Why The Intermixing Of Science And Politics Is A Bad Combination, With A Bad History. We Must Remember The History, And Be Certain That What We Present To The World As Knowledge Is Disinterested And Honest.

One Of The Most Difficult Features Of Direct Experience Is That It Is Unfiltered By Any Theories Or Expectations. It's Hard To Observe Without Imposing A Theory To Explain What We're Seeing, But The Trouble With Theories, As Einstein Said, Is That They Explain Not Only What Is Observed, But What Can Be Observed. We Start To Build Expectations Based On Our Theories.

The Minute We Look, We Cease Being Afraid.

I Was Raised With The Idea That If You're Not Smart Enough To Do Science You Can Do Politics.

When You Have A Strongly Held Belief, Don't You Think It's Important To Express That Belief Accurately?

Having Wallowed In A Delightful Orgy Of Anti-french Sentiment, Having Deplored And Applauded The Villains Themselves, Having Relished The Foibles Of Bankers, Railwaymen, Diplomats, And Police, The Public Was Now Ready To See Its Faith Restored In The Basic Soundness Of Banks, Railroads, Government, And Police.

Whatever It Is You Seek, You Have To Put In The Time, The Practice, The Effort. You Must Give Up A Lot To Get It. It Has To Be Very Important To You. And Once You Have Attained It, It Is Your Power. It Can't Be Given Away : It Resides In You. It Is Literally The Result Of Your Discipline.

Caring Is Irrelevant. Desire To Do Good Is Irrelevant. All That Counts Is Knowledge And Results

Geniuses Never Pay Attention.

Science Is The Business Of Generating Testable Hypotheses.

We Cause Our Diseases. We Are Directly Responsible For Any Illness That Happens To Us.

You Know, At Times Like This One Feels, Well, Perhaps Extinct Animals Should Be Left Extinct.

Right Now, Scientists Are In Exactly The Same Position As Renaissance Painters, Commissioned To Make The Portrait The Patron Wants Done, And If They Are Smart, They'll Make Sure Their Work Subtly Flatters The Patron. Not Overtly. Subtly.

We Think We Know What We Are Doing. We Have Always Thought So. We Never Seem To Acknowledge That We Have Been Wrong In The Past, And So Might Be Wrong In The Future. Instead, Each Generation Writes Off Earlier Errors As The Result Of Bad Thinking By Less Able Minds - And Then Confidently Embarks On Fresh Errors Of Its Own.

All Major Changes Are Like Death. You Can't See To The Other Side Until You Are There.

Friendships Are Nice. So Is Competence.

Human Beings Are So Destructive. I Sometimes Think We're A Kind Of Plague, That Will Scrub The Earth Clean. We Destroy Things So Well That I Sometimes Think, Maybe That's Our Function. Maybe Every Few Eons, Some Animal Comes Along That Kills Off The Rest Of The World, Clears The Decks, And Lets Evolution Proceed To Its Next Phase.

Cure The Symptoms, Cure The Disease.

Physics Was The First Of The Natural Sciences To Become Fully Modern And Highly Mathematical.chemistry Followed In The Wake Of Physics, But Biology, The Retarded Child, Lagged Far Behind.

In Science, The Old Men Are Usually Wrong. But In Politics, The Old Men Are Wise, Counsel Caution, And In The End Are Often Right.

Books Aren't Written - They're Rewritten. Including Your Own. It Is One Of The Hardest Things To Accept, Especially After The Seventh Rewrite Hasn't Quite Done It.

The Rules Of Grammar Exist In Large Part To Permit Readers And Writers To Operate From A Shared Set Of Expectations.

Each Person Bears A Fear Which Is Special To Him. One Man Fears A Close Space And Another Man Fears Drowning; Each Laughs At The Other And Calls Him Stupid. Thus Fear Is Only A Preference, To Be Counted The Same As The Preference For One Woman Or Another, Or Mutton For Pig, Or Cabbage For Onion.

Often I Feel I Go To Some Distant Region Of The World To Be Reminded Of Who I Really Am. There Is No Mystery About Why This Should Be So. Stripped Of Your Ordinary Surroundings, Your Friends, Your Daily Routines, Your Refrigerator Full Of Your Food, Your Closet Full Of Your Clothes -- With All This Taken Away, You Are Forced Into Direct Experience. Such Direct Experience Inevitably Makes You Aware Of Who It Is That Is Having The Experience. That's Not Always Comfortable, But It Is Always Invigorating.

Although Knowledge Of How Things Work Is Sufficient To Allow Manipulation Of Nature, What Humans Really Want To Know Is Why Things Work. Children Don't Ask How The Sky Is Blue. They Ask Why The Sky Is Blue.

I Want A News Service That Tells Me What No One Knows But Is True Nonetheless.

Life Will Find A Way.

Because The History Of Evolution Is That Life Escapes All Barriers. Life Breaks Free. Life Expands To New Territories. Painfully, Perhaps Even Dangerously. But Life Finds A Way.

The Best Doctors Found A Middle Position Where They Were Neither Overwhelmed By Their Feelings Nor Estranged From Them. That Was The Most Difficult Position Of All, And The Precise Balance - Neither Too Detached Nor Too Caring - Was Something Few Learned.

Morality Must Keep Up With Technology Because If A Person Is Faced With The Choice Of Being Moral And Dead Or Immoral And Alive, They'll Choose Life Everytime.

This Novel Is Fiction, Except For The Parts That Aren't.

In Other Centuries, Human Beings Wanted To Be Saved, Or Improved, Or Freed, Or Educated. But In Our Century, They Want To Be Entertained. The Great Fear Is Not Of Disease Or Death, But Of Boredom. A Sense Of Time On Our Hands, A Sense Of Nothing To Do. A Sense That We Are Not Amused.

You Know What's Wrong With Scientific Power? It's A Form Of Inherited Wealth. And You Know What Assholes Congenitally Rich People Are.

Yes, You Have Cancer. Yes, Your Kids Are On Drugs. Yes, There Is An Elephant Outside Your Tent. Now The Question Becomes, What Are You Going To Do About It? Subsequent Emotions May Not Be Pleasant, But The Hysteria Stops. Hysteria Accompanies An Unwillingness To Look At What Is Really Going On; It Promotes An Unwillingness To Look. We Feel We Are Afraid To Look, When Actually It Is Not-looking That Makes Us Afraid. The Minute We Look, We Cease Being Afraid.

The Past History Of Human Belief Is A Cautionary Tale. We Have Killed Thousands Of Our Fellow Human Beings Because We Believed They Had Signed A Contract With The Devil, And Had Become Witches. We Still Kill More Than A Thousand People Each Year For Witchcraft. In My View, There Is Only One Hope For Humankind To Emerge From What Carl Sagan Called "the Demon-haunted World" Of Our Past. That Hope Is Science.

Human Beings Never Think For Themselves. For The Most Part, Members Of Our Species Simply Repeat What They Are Told - And Become Upset If They Are Exposed To Any Different View. The Characteristic Human Trait Is Not Awareness But Conformity. We Are Stubborn, Self-destructive Conformists. Any Other View Of Our Species Is Just A Self-congratulatory Delusion.

For Our Own Species, Evolution Occurs Mostly Through Our Behavior. We Innovate New Behavior To Adapt.

Readers Probably Haven't Heard Much About It Yet, But They Will. Quantum Technology Turns Ordinary Reality Upside Down.

Science Is The Most Exciting And Sustained Enterprise Of Discovery In The History Of Our Species. It Is The Great Adventure Of Our Time. We Live Today In An Era Of Discovery That Far Outshadows The Discoveries Of The New World Five Hundred Years Ago.

Auschwitz Exists Because Of Politicized Science.

They Believed That Prediction Was Just A Function Of Keeping Track Of Things. If You Knew Enough, You Could Predict Anything. That's Been Cherished Scientific Belief Since Newton.' And?' Chaos Theory Throws It Right Out The Window.

Face The Facts, All These Environmental Organizations Are Thirty, Forty, Fifty Years Old. They Have Big Buildings, Big Obligations, Big Staffs. They May Trade On Their Youthful Dreams, But The Truth Is, They're Now Part Of The Establishment. And The Establishment Works To Preserve The Status Quo. It Just Does.

Whenever You Hear The Consensus Of Scientists Agrees On Something Or Other, Reach For Your Wallet, Because You're Being Had.

I Am Certain There Is Too Much Certainty In The World.

If You Don't Know History, Then You Don't Know Anything. You Are A Leaf That Doesn't Know It Is Part Of A Tree.

Working Inspires Inspiration. Keep Working. If You Succeed, Keep Working. If You Fail, Keep Working. If You Are Interested, Keep Working. If You Are Bored, Keep Working.

Nobody Dares To Solve The Problems-because The Solution Might Contradict Your Philosophy, And For Most People Clinging To Beliefs Is More Important Than Succeeding In The World.

Consensus Is Invoked Only In Situations Where The Science Is Not Solid Enough.

Do You Know What We Call Opinion In The Absence Of Evidence? We Call It Prejudice.

Considering That We Live In An Era Of Evolutionary Everything---evolutionary Biology, Evolutionary Medicine, Evolutionary Ecology, Evolutionary Psychology, Evolutionary Economics, Evolutionary Computing---it Was Surprising How Rarely People Thought In Evolutionary Terms. It Was A Human Blind Spot. We Look At The World Around Us As A Snapshot When It Was Really A Movie, Constantly Changing.

Everyone Has A Hidden Agenda. Except Me!

Like All Trial Attorneys, He Knew The Importance Of Not Dressing Too Well.

Conventional Wisdom Is Invariably Out Of Date. Because In The Time It Has Taken To Become Conventional - To Become What Everyone Believes - The World Has Moved On. Conventional Wisdom Is A Remnant Of The Past.

It Is Especially Difficult For Modern People To Conceive That Our Modern, Scientific Age Might Not Be An Improvement Over The Prescientific Period.

They Didn't Understand What They Were Doing. I'm Afraid That Will Be On The Tombstone Of The Human Race.

Safety Is The Last Refuge Of The Scoundrel!

Often I Feel I Go To Some Distant Region Of The World To Be Reminded Of Who I Really Am.

God Creates Dinosaurs, God Kills Dinosaurs, God Creates Man, Man Kills God, Man Brings Back Dinosaurs.

He Prays Because He Knows He Doesn't Control It. He's At The Mercy Of It.

Without Question, The Notion Of The Doctor As A Legitimate Fee-for-service Entrepreneur, Making His Fortune From Misfortunes Of His Patients, Is Old-fashioned, Distasteful, And Doomed.

Nobody Wants To Feel They're Not A Rebel.

Theories Are Just Fantasies. And They Change.

A Wonderful Area For Speculative Academic Work Is The Unknowable. These Days Religious Subjects Are In Disfavor, But There Are Still Plenty Of Good Topics. The Nature Of Consciousness, The Workings Of The Brain, The Origin Of Aggression, The Origin Of Language, The Origin Of Life On Earth, Seti And Life On Other Worlds...this Is All Great Stuff. Wonderful Stuff. You Can Argue It Interminably. But It Can't Be Contradicted, Because Nobody Knows The Answer To Any Of These Topics.

Expectation Works In Mysterious Ways---and Totally Unconsciously.

Mysterious Ways

The Work Of Science Has Nothing Whatever To Do With Consensus. Consensus Is The Business Of Politics. Science, On The Contrary, Requires Only One Investigator Who Happens To Be Right, Which Means That He Or She Has Results That Are Verifiable By Reference To The Real World. In Science Consensus Is Irrelevant. What Is Relevant Is Reproducible Results. The Greatest Scientists In History Are Great Precisely Because They Broke With The Consensus.

There Is Always A Cause For Fear. The Cause May Change Over Time, But The Fear Is Always With Us.

When I Sit Down In Front Of A Windows Machine, I Can't Write; When I Sit Down In Front Of My Mac, I Can Write. So I Only Use Macs.

People Were So Naive About Plants, Ellie Thought. They Just Chose Plants For Appearance, As They Would Choose A Picture For The Wall. It Never Occurred To Them That Plants Were Actually Living Things, Busily Performing All The Living Functions Of Respiration, Ingestion, Excretion, Reproduction---and Defense.

If You Gamble Long Enough, You'll Always Lose -- The Gambler Is Always Ruined.

The American Media Produce A Product Of Very Poor Quality. Its Information Is Not Reliable, It Has Too Much Chrome And Glitz, Its Doors Rattle, It Breaks Down Almost Immediately, And It's Sold Without Warranty. It's Flashy, But It's Basically Junk.

You Think You Can Destroy The Planet? What Intoxicating Vanity. . . . . We've Been Residents Here For The Blink Of An Eye. If We're Gone Tomorrow, The Earth Will Not Miss Us.

No One Escapes From Life Alive.

In Any Case, You Read With Exasperation Or Amusement The Multiple Errors In A Story-and Then Turn The Page To National Or International Affairs, And Read With Renewed Interest As If The Rest Of The Newspaper Was Somehow More Accurate About Far-off Palestine Than It Was About The Story You Just Read. You Turn The Page, And Forget What You Know.

A Hundred Years From Now, People Will Look Back On Us And Laugh. They'll Say, 'you Know What People Used To Believe? They Believed In Photons And Electrons. Can You Imagine Anything So Silly?' They'll Have A Good Laugh, Because By Then There Will Be Newer Better Fantasies... And Meanwhile, You Feel The Way The Boat Moves? That's The Sea. That's Real. You Smell The Salt In The Air? You Feel The Sunlight On Your Skin? That's All Real. Life Is Wonderful. It's A Gift To Be Alive, To See The Sun And Breathe The Air. And There Isn't Really Anything Else.

She Had Been Living Like A Hermit Herself, In A Cramped, Seedy Apartment In Somerville, Spending Long Hours In The Lab. All-nighters Had Become A Regular Thing. She Didn't Have Any Close Friends, Didn't Go Out On Dates, Didn't Even Go To The Movies By Herself. She Had Sacrificed A Normal Life In Order To Get A Phd, And Become A Scientist.

Historically, The Claim Of Consensus Has Been The First Refuge Of Scoundrels; It Is A Way To Avoid Debate By Claiming That The Matter Is Already Settled.

You Can Answer Your Own Question. You Already Know The Answer, If You Can Just Gain Access To It.

The Greatest Scientists In History Are Great Precisely Because They Broke With The Consensus. There Is No Such Thing As Consensus Science. If It's Consensus, It Isn't Science. If It's Science, It Isn't Consensus. Period.

This Fascination With Computer Models Is Something I Understand Very Well. Richard Feynmann Called It A Disease. I Fear He Is Right.

You Can't Get Decent Mexican Food In Dc.

Most Areas Of Intellectual Life Have Discovered The Virtues Of Speculation, And Have Embraced Them Wildly. In Academia, Speculation Is Usually Dignified As Theory.

The Academic World Was Marching Toward Ever More Specialized Knowledge, Expressed In Ever More Dense Jargon.

They Don't Have Intelligence. They Have What I Call 'thintelligence.' They See The Immediate Situation. They Think Narrowly And They Call It 'being Focused.' They Don't See The Surround. They Don't See The Consequences.

The Characteristic Human Trait Is Not Awareness But Conformity, And The Characteristic Result Is Religious Warfare.

The Greatest Challenge Facing Mankind Is The Challenge Of Distinguishing Reality From Fantasy, Truth From Propaganda.

Sometimes Women Scare The Hell Out Of Me.

You Are The Reason Why He Exists On This Earth. You Don't Have The Right To Abandon Him Just Because He's Inconvenient Or Has Trouble In School.

As The Practical Value Of Altering Consciousness Becomes Recognized, Procedures To Effect These Alterations Will Become Increasingly Ordinary And Unremarkable. The Whole Concept Of Changing States Of Consciousness Will Cease To Have A Threatening Or Exotic Aspect.

Welcome...to Jurassic Park!

Living Systems Are Never In Equilibrium. They Are Inherently Unstable. They May Seem Stable, But They’re Not. Everything Is Moving And Changing. In A Sense, Everything Is On The Edge Of Collapse.

Today, One Of The Most Powerful Religions In The Western World Is Environmentalism. Environmentalism Seems To Be The Religion Of Choice For Urban Atheists.

A Man Can See By Starlight, If He Takes The Time.

Environmentalism Needs To Be Absolutely Based In Objective And Verifiable Science, It Needs To Be Rational, And It Needs To Be Flexible. And It Needs To Be Apolitical. To Mix Environmental Concerns With The Frantic Fantasies That People Have About One Political Party Or Another Is To Miss The Cold Truth - That There Is Very Little Difference Between The Parties, Except A Difference In Pandering Rhetoric.

I Was Certain That Some People, Whether By Accident Of Birth Or Some Pecularity Of Training, Could Tune In To Another Source Of Information And Could Know Things About People We Didn't Think Were Possible To Know.

Personally, I Don't Deal Much In Theory. I Have To Deal With The Facts. And On The Basis Of Facts, I Don't See Much Difference In The Behavior Of Men And Women.

I Hadn't Traveled With The Intention Of Learning About Anything Except Myself. And The Real Point Of All This Travel Was Not What I Had Come To Believe Or Disbelieve About The Wider World, But What I Had Learned About Myself.

The Belief That There Are Other Life Forms In The Universe Is A Matter Of Faith. There Is Not A Single Shred Of Evidence For Any Other Life Forms, And In Forty Years Of Searching, None Has Been Discovered. There Is Absolutely No Evidentiary Reason To Maintain This Belief.

I Can Tell You That Second Hand Smoke Is Not A Health Hazard To Anyone And Never Was, And The Epa Has Always Known It.

Kids Didn't Have Huge Backpacks When I Was Their Age. We Didn't Have Backpacks At All. Now It Seemed All The Kids Had Them. You Saw Little Second-graders Bent Over Like Sherpas, Dragging Themselves Through The School Doors Under The Weight Of Their Packs. Some Of The Kids Had Their Packs On Rollers, Hauling Them Like Luggage At The Airport. I Didn't Understand Any Of This. The World Was Becoming Digital; Everything Was Smaller And Lighter. But Kids At School Lugged More Weight Than Ever.

The Extreme Positions Of The Crossfire Syndrome Require Extreme Simplification - Framing The Debate In Terms Which Ignore The Real Issues.

Nobody Is Driven By Abstractions Like 'seeking Truth.

The People In Hollywood Are Fabulously Stupid.

Good Novels Are Not Written, They're Rewritten!

Scientific Research Was Much Like Prospecting: You Went Out And You Hunted, Armed With Your Maps And Instruments, But In The Ened Your Preparations Did Not Matter, Or Even Your Intuition. You Needed Your Luck, And Whatever Benefits Accrued To The Diligent, Through Sheer, Grinding Hard Work.

But Complex Animals Had Obtained Their Adaptive Flexibility At Some Cost--they Had Traded One Dependency For Another. It Was No Longer Necessary To Change Their Bodies To Adapt, Because Now Their Adaptation Was Behavior, Socially Determined. That Behavior Required Learning. In A Sense, Among Higher Animals Adaptive Fitness Was No Longer Transmitted To The Next Generation By Dna At All. It Was Now Carried By Teaching.

It's Hard To Decide Who's Truly Brilliant; It's Easier To See Who's Driven, Which In The Long Run May Be More Important.

We Are One Of Only Three Species On Our Planet That Can Claim To Be Self-aware, Yet Self-delusion May Be A More Significant Characteristic Of Our Kind.

Discovery, They Believe, Is Inevitable. So They Just Try To Do It First. That's The Game In Science.

Harassment Is About Power---the Undue Exercise Of Power By A Superior Over A Subordinate.

Story Of Our Species...everyone Knows It's Coming, But Not So Soon.

Anyone Who Says He Knows God's Intention Is Showing A Lot Of Very Human Ego.

And Entertainment Has Nothing To Do With Reality. Entertainment Is Antithetical To Reality.

To Give Up Responsibility For Our Lives Is Not Healthy.

The Romantic View Of The Natural World As A Blissful Eden Is Only Held By People Who Have No Actual Experience Of Nature. People Who Live In Nature Are Not Romantic About It At All. They May Hold Spiritual Beliefs About The World Around Them, They May Have A Sense Of The Unity Of Nature Or The Aliveness Of All Things, But They Still Kill The Animals And Uproot The Plants In Order To Eat, To Live. If They Don't, They Will Die.

At The Edge Of Chaos, Unexpected Outcomes Occur. The Risk To Survival Is Severe.

Exercise Invigorates The Body And Sharpens The Mind.

In A Media-saturated World, Persistent Hype Lends Unwarranted Credulity To The Wildest Claims.

The Greatest Challenge Facing Mankind Is The Challenge Of Distinguishing Reality From Fantasy, Truth From Propaganda. Perceiving The Truth Has Always Been A Challenge To Mankind, But In The Information Age (or As I Think Of It, The Disinformation Age) It Takes On A Special Urgency And Importance.

When I Get Sick, I Go To My Doctor Like Everyone Else. A Doctor Has Powerful Tools That May Help Me. Or Those Tools May Hurt Me, Make Me Worse. I Have To Decide. It's My Life. It's My Responsibility.

We Live In A World Of Frightful Givens. It Is Given That You Will Behave Like This, Given That You Will Care About That. No One Thinks About The Givens. Isn't It Amazing? In The Information Society, Nobody Thinks. We Expected To Banish Paper, But We Actually Banished Thought.

Let's Be Clear. The Planet Is Not In Jeopardy. We Are In Jeopardy. We Haven't Got The Power To Destroy The Planet - Or To Save It. But We Might Have The Power To Save Ourselves.

All Human Behavior Has A Reason. All Behavior Is Solving A Problem.

In Truth, One Of Our Company, The Solemn Warrior Ecthgow, Was So Demented From Liquor That He Was Drunk While Still Upon His Horse, And He Fell Attempting To Dismount. Now The Horse Kicked Him In The Head, And I Feared For His Safety, But Ecthgow Laughed And Kicked The Horse Back.

The Rock, For Its Part, Is Not Even Aware Of Our Existence Because We Are Alive For Only A Brief Instant Of Its Lifespan. To It, We Are Like Flashes In The Dark.

Do You Want To Understand How To Swim, Or Do You Want To Jump In And Start Swimming? Only People Who Are Afraid Of The Water Want To Understand It. Other People Jump In And Get Wet.

Science Can't Tell You Why Anything Happens.

Only Assholes Put A Nickname On Their Business Card.

It's Not Easy To Cut Through A Human Head With A Hacksaw.

We Think We Know What We Are Doing. We Have Always Thought So.

Social Control Is Best Managed Through Fear.

You've Never Heard Of Chaos Theory? Non-linear Equations? Strange Attractors? Ms. Sattler, I Refuse To Believe You're Not Familiar With The Concept Of Attraction.

Keep Working. Don't Wait For Inspiration. Work Inspires Inspiration. Keep Working.

We Are All Assumed, These Days, To Reside At One Extreme Of The Opinion Spectrum, Or Another. We Are Pro-abortion Or Anti-abortion. We Are Free Traders Or Protectionists. We Are Pro-private Sector Or Pro-government. We Are Feminists Or Chauvinists. But In The Real World, Few Of Us Hold These Extreme Views. There Is Instead A Spectrum Of Opinion.

Human Intelligence Was More Trouble Than It Was Worth. It Was More Destructive Than Creative, More Confusing Than Revealing, More Discouraging Than Satisfying, More Spiteful Than Charitable.

Finally, I Would Remind You To Notice Where The Claim Of Consensus Is Invoked. Consensus Is Invoked Only In Situations Where The Science Is Not Solid Enough. Nobody Says The Consensus Of Scientists Agrees That E=mc2. Nobody Says The Consensus Is That The Sun Is 93 Million Miles Away. It Would Never Occur To Anyone To Speak That Way.

Science Is As Corruptible A Human Activity As Any Other.

Praise Not The Day Until Evening Has Come, A Woman Until She Is Burnt, A Sword Until It Is Tried, A Maiden Until She Is Married, Ice Until It Has Been Crossed, Beer Until It Has Been Drunk.

I Eventually Realized That Direct Experience Is The Most Valuable Experience I Can Have. Western Man Is So Surrounded By Ideas, So Bombarded With Opinions, Concepts, And Information Structures Of All Sorts, That It Becomes Difficult To Experience Anything Without The Intervening Filter Of These Structures.

I Believe My Life Has A Value, And I Don't Want To Waste It Thinking About Clothing. I Don't Want To Think About What I Will Wear In The Morning. Truly, Can You Imagine Anything More Boring Than Fashion?

Discovery Is Always Rape Of The Natural World. Always.

God Created Dinosaurs. God Destroyed Dinosaurs. God Created Man. Man Destroyed God. Man Created Dinosaurs. Dinosaurs Eat Man...woman Inherits The Earth.

In Science Consensus Is Irrelevant. What Is Relevant Is Reproducible Results.

Grant Knew That People Could Not Imagine Geological Time. Human Life Was Lived On Another Scale Of Time Entirely. An Apple Turned Brown In A Few Minutes. Silverware Turned Black In A Few Days. A Compost Heap Decayed In A Season. A Child Grew Up In A Decade. None Of These Everyday Human Experiences Prepared People To Be Able To Imagine The Meaning Of Eighty Million Years - The Length Of Time That Had Passed Since This Little Animal Had Died.

The Second Reason To Abandon Environmental Religion Is More Pressing. Religions Think They Know It All, But The Unhappy Truth Of The Environment Is That We Are Dealing With Incredibly Complex, Evolving Systems, And We Usually Are Not Certain How Best To Proceed. Those Who Are Certain Are Demonstrating Their Personality Type, Or Their Belief System, Not The State Of Their Knowledge.

Sometimes I Think Man Needs To Feel A Special Position Within Nature, And This Leads Him To Believe That He Is Either Specially Hated By Other Animals Or Specially Cherished. Instead Of The Truth, Which Is That He's Just Another Animal On The Plain. A Smart One, But Just Another Animal.

Historically, The Claim Of Consensus Has Been The First Refuge Of Scoundrels; It Is A Way To Avoid Debate By Claiming That The Matter Is Already Settled. Whenever You Hear The Consensus Of Scientists Agrees On Something Or Other, Reach For Your Wallet, Because You're Being Had. The Greatest Scientists In History Are Great Precisely Because They Broke With The Consensus.

Power Is Neither Male Or Female.

The Planet Has Survived Everything, In Its Time. It Will Certainly Survive Us.

No Man Is So Good As To Be Free From All Evil, Nor So Bad As To Be Worth Nothing.

There Isn't Any Delusion. It Is Absolutely Clear That This Body Energy Is A Genuine Phenomenon Of Some Kind.

Nobody Smart Knows What They Want To Do Until They Get Into Their Twenties Or Thirties.

I Operate Under The Assumption That The Mass Media Will Never Be Accurate. ... It Operates With The Objective To Simplify And Exaggerate, Which Is Exactly What Walt Disney Told His Cartoonists.

Nobody Believes A Weather Prediction Twelve Hours Ahead. Now We're Being Asked To Believe A Prediction That Goes Out 100 Years Into The Future? And Make Financial Investments Based On That Prediction? Has Everybody Lost Their Minds?

In The End, Science Offers Us The Only Way Out Of Politics. And If We Allow Science To Become Politicized, Then We Are Lost. We Will Enter The Internet Version Of The Dark Ages, An Era Of Shifting Fears And Wild Prejudices, Transmitted To People Who Don't Know Any Better.

One Of The Most Difficult Things For A Writer In This Business To Accept Is The Uncertain Fate Of One's Work.

All Your Life, Other People Will Try To Take Your Accomplishments Away From You. Don't You Take It Away From Yourself.

The Notion That The Natural World Obeys Its Own Rules And Doesn't Give A Damn About Your Expectations Comes As A Massive Shock. But The Natural World Is Not So Malleable. On The Contrary, It Will Demand That You Adapt To It - And If You Don't, You Die.

At Forty, I Was Too Old To Work As A Programmer Myself Anymore; Writing Code Is A Young Person’s Job.

Extrapolating From The Statistical Growth Of The Legal Profession, By The Year 2035 Every Single Person In The United States Will Be A Lawyer, Including Newborn Infants.

They Are Focused On Whether They Can Do Something. They Never Think Whether They Should Do Something.

Sneaking Up On It Sometimes Helps: I've Found I Can Be Very Productive For An Hour Before Dinner, Because There Obviously Isn't Enough Time To Really Do Anything, So I Can Tell Myself I'm Just Screwing Around.

Reality Is Always Greater - Much Greater - Than What We Know, Than Whatever We Can Say About It.

I Tended To Faint When I Saw Accident Victims In The Emergency Ward, During Surgery, Or While Drawing Blood.

False Fears Are A Plague, A Modern Plague!

We Need To Get Environmentalism Out Of The Sphere Of Religion. We Need To Stop The Mythic Fantasies, And We Need To Stop The Doomsday Predictions. We Need To Start Doing Hard Science Instead.

Increasingly, People Perceive No Difference Between The Narcissistic Self-serving Reporters Asking Questions, And The Narcissistic Self-serving Politicians Who Evade Them.

Asking Questions

Although Personally, I Think Cyberspace Means The End Of Our Species.

Raising Children Is, In A Sense, The Reason The Society Exists In The First Place. It's The Most Important Thing That Happens, And It's The Culmination Of All The Tools And Language And Social Structure That Has Evolved.

The Fact That The Patients Were Complex Human Beings With A Rich Life Beyond The Hospital Never Really Sank Into The Consciousness Of The Residents. Because They Had No Rich Lives Beyond The Hospital, They Assumed No One Else Did, Either. In The End, What They Lacked Was Not Medical Knowledge But Ordinary Life Experience.

Medical Knowledge

It Takes Enormous Effort To Avoid All Theories And Just See.

If True Computer Music Were Ever Written, It Would Only Be Listened To By Other Computers.

This Is The Gift Of Your Species And This Is The Danger, Because You Do Not Choose To Control Your Imaginings. You Imagine Wonderful Things And You Imagine Terrible Things, And You Take No Responsibility For The Choice. You Say You Have Inside You Both The Power Of Good And The Power Of Evil, The Angel And The Devil, But In Truth You Have Just One Thing Inside You - The Ability To Imagine.

In Our Modern Complex World, Fundamentalism Is Dangerous Because Of Its Rigidity And Its Imperviousness To Other Ideas.

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