cybe's quotes

Suppression not the path to knowledge

The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion and politics but it is not the path to knowledge.
It has no place in the evidence of science.

— Carl Sagan, Cosmos, 1981


One Law - as above - so below (microcosm/macrocosm)

Everything is governed by one law. A human being is a microcosmos, i.e. the laws prevailing in the cosmos also operate in the minutest space of the human being."

— Viktor Schauberger, * Implosion Magazine, No. 8, p.6 (Callum Coats: Energy Evolution (2000))


Human measures and countermeasures proceed from limited scientific truth and judgment

"When a decision is made to cope with the symptoms of a problem, it is generally assumed that the corrective measures will solve the problem itself. They seldom do. Engineers cannot seem to get this through their heads. These countermeasures are all based on too narrow a definition of what is wrong. Human measures and countermeasures proceed from limited scientific truth and judgment. A true solution can never come about in this way."

— Masanobu Fukuoka


If we throw mother nature out the window...

"If we throw mother nature out the window, she comes back in the door with a pitchfork."

— Masanobu Fukuoka


The real danger...

The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.
— Sydney J. Harris

A list of all the ways technology has failed to improve the quality of life,

For a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve the quality of life, please press three.
— Alice Kahn

Tools

Lo! Men have become the tools of their tools.
— Henry David Thoreau

...inferiority complex...

Some people worry that artificial intelligence will make us feel inferior, but then, anybody in his right mind should have an inferiority complex every time he looks at a flower.
— Alan C. Kay

The dependency on science and technology...

We've arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.
— Carl Sagan

Can machines think?

The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
— B.F. Skinner, Contingencies of Reinforcement, 1969

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