Hélio Steven

“In the cosmic scheme of things, your life barely registers as a blip. It is hardly noticeable in the long arc of history. The information you produce by moving your arm up is not going to tell you much about anything of interest. But when you scope down in a way that reflects the horizon scaled to human thought and action, your life looms large in the image. It doesn’t just loom large; it occupies a central place. The events of your life provide the frame of reference around which the events of History arrange themselves in circles of diminishing knowledge and concern. The difference that your choices make to your own future is large, indeed.”
― Jenann Ismael, How Physics Makes Us Free

“Evolution is all about turning "bugs" into "features," turning "noise" into "signal," and the fuzzy boundaries between these categories are not optional; the opportunistic open-endedness of natural selection depends on them.”
― Daniel C. Dennett, From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds

“Wild cognition, it seems, has (literally) no time for the filing cabinet.”
― Andy Clark

“Mechanism design takes up Hume's challenge by designing games in which the knaves to whom power is delegated are treated as players. The checks in the constitution are the rules of the game. These are used to prevent a player going off the rails in situations that the designer can effectively monitor and evaluate. However, it is the controls that are more important, since these apply to decisions that the designer can't monitor, or doesn't know how to evaluate. To get the players to act in accordance with the designer's aims rather than their own in such situations, it is necessary that the payoffs of the game be carefully chosen to provide the right incentives.”
― Ken Binmore, Natural Justice