Kevin

“Ten years ago, it was rare to find a restaurant that had a social media strategy; now, it’s hard to find one that doesn’t. Within a few years, it will be just as hard to find a company without an AI strategy. Companies that aren’t working toward developing an AI strategy today are likely to fare as well as companies that decided not to pursue a web strategy in 2002 or a mobile strategy in 2008. It’s absolutely required if you want to compete in the market.”
― Alyssa Simpson Rochwerger, Real World AI : A Practical Guide for Responsible Machine Learning

“One of the first lessons from Stoicism, then, is to focus our attention and efforts where we have the most power and then let the universe run as it will. This will save us both a lot of energy and a lot of worry. Another Stoic metaphor, from Cicero, may help illustrate the point. Consider an archer trying to hit a target. Cicero explains that the archer has a number of things under his control: he has decided how much to train and how intensely, he has chosen a bow and an arrow as a function of the distance and type of target, he has aimed as best as he can, and he has chosen the exact moment when to let the arrow go. In other words, if he has been a conscientious archer, he has done his best up to the moment when the arrow leaves his bow. Now the question is: will the arrow hit the target? That, very clearly, is not up to him.”
― Massimo Pigliucci, How to Be a Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life

“But as a human being, I have no predefined nature at all. I create that nature through what I choose to do. Of course I may be influenced by my biology, or by aspects of my culture and personal background, but none of this adds up to a complete blueprint for producing me. I am always one step ahead of myself, making myself up as I go along. Sartre put this principle into a three-word slogan, which for him defined existentialism: ‘Existence precedes essence’. What this formula gains in brevity it loses in comprehensibility. But roughly it means that, having found myself thrown into the world, I go on to create my own definition (or nature, or essence), in a way that never happens with other objects or life forms. You might think you have defined me by some label, but you are wrong, for I am always a work in progress. I create myself constantly through action, and this is so fundamental to my human condition that, for Sartre, it is the human condition,”
― Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails with Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Others

“Ellwood smiled, although the words stabbed a little. Gaunt was the only person around whom Ellwood allowed himself to talk about things like souls.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam