Roopa > Roopa's Quotes

“In this thinking, the mind’s conscious, decision-making “will” is actually a by-product of whatever the unconscious brain has already decided to do. Free will is a retrospective illusion, however convincing, and we feel “urges” to do only what we’re going to do anyway. Pride alone makes us insist otherwise.”
― Sam Kean, The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons: The History of the Human Brain as Revealed by True Stories of Trauma, Madness, and Recovery

“Yes, of course duct tape works in a near-vacuum. Duct tape works anywhere. Duct tape is magic and should be worshiped.”
― Andy Weir, The Martian

“I guess you could call it a "failure", but I prefer the term "learning experience".”
― Andy Weir, The Martian

“Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less, in human beings of whom they know nothing. —Voltaire”
― Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

“And it is solely by risking life that freedom is obtained. —Hegel”
― Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

“The plural of anecdote is not data.”
― Steven D. Levitt, Think Like a Freak

“Don’t listen to what people say; watch what they do.”
― Steven D. Levitt, Think Like a Freak

“Solving a problem is hard enough; it gets that much harder if you’ve decided beforehand it can’t be done.”
― Steven D. Levitt, Think Like a Freak

“There is no evidence that we've been placed on this planet to be especially happy or especially normal. And in fact our unhappiness and our strangeness, our anxieties and compulsions, those least fashionable aspects of our personalities, are quite often what lead us to do rather interesting things.”
― Jon Ronson, The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry

“I wondered if sometimes the difference between a psychopath in Broadmoor and a psychopath on Wall Street was the luck of being born into a stable, rich family.”
― Jon Ronson, The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry

“Ask a victim to look at the positive things and she’ll say, ‘I can’t. My eyes are swollen,”
― Jon Ronson, The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry

“Now, it has been independently shown that people hate to lose something more than they enjoy gaining it. For example, they don't mind paying for something with a credit card even when told there is a discount for cash, but they hate paying the same amount if they are told there is a surcharge for using credit. As a result, people will often refuse to gamble for an expected profit (they turn down bets such as "Heads, you win $120; tails, you pay $100), but they will gamble to avoid an expected loss (such as "Heads, you no longer owe $120; tails, you now owe an additional $100"). (This kind of behavior drives economists crazy, but is avidly studied by investment firms hoping to turn it to their advantage.) The combination of people's loss aversion with the effects of framing explains the paradoxical result: the "gain" metaphor made the doctors risk-averse; the "loss" metaphor made them gamblers.”
― Steven Pinker, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature