“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.”
― How Physics Makes Us Free
― 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.”
― From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds
― From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds
“Wild cognition, it seems, has (literally) no time for the filing cabinet.”
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“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.”
― Natural Justice
― Natural Justice
“[O]ur brains try to predict the patterns that serve our needs and that fit our action repertoires. This may well result in the use of simple models whose power resides precisely in their failing to encode every detail and nuance present in the sensory array. This is not a barrier to true contact with the world - rather, it's a prerequisite for it. For knowing the world, in the only sense that can matter to an evolved organism, means being able to act in that world: being able to respond quickly and efficiently to salient environmental opportunities.”
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Hélio’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Hélio’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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