Look out, it’s right behind youLook out, it’s right behind you
“One of the most dangerous enemies you can face is complacency.” — Garry Kasparov (quoted in The Most Human Human, by Brian Christian)
Category: Lit & Crit
Know your opponentKnow your opponent
“Success is the enemy of future success.” — Garry Kasparov (quoted in The Most Human Human, by Brian Christian)
An Ephesian romanceAn Ephesian romance
“A durable love is one that’s dynamic, not static; long-running, not long-standing; a river we step into every day and not twice.” — Brian Christian, The Most Human Human (emphasis in original)
Deep foundationsDeep foundations
“He who cannot draw on three thousand years is living hand to mouth.” — Goethe (quoted in The Most Human Human, by Brian Christian)
So much for happy endingsSo much for happy endings
“Nothing is more dispiriting than ‘And they all lived happily ever after,’ which means, in information entropy terms, ‘And then nothing interesting or noteworthy ever happened to them again for the rest of their lives.’” — Brian Christian, The Most Human Human
May it please the courtMay it please the court
“Our legal system is adversarial, founded, like capitalism, on the idea that a bunch of people trying to tear each other apart, plus certain laws and procedures preventing things from getting too out of hand, will yield, in one, justice, and in the other, prosperity, for all. Sometimes this does happen; other times, it doesn’t. At any rate, it’s a terrible metaphor for the rest of life.”– Brian Christian, The Most Human Human
Hold that shaking shimmy against meHold that shaking shimmy against me
“We hear communications experts telling us time and again about things like the ‘7-38-55 rule,’ first posited in 1971 by UCLA psychology professor Albert Mehrabian: 55 percent of what you convey when you speak comes from your body language, 38 percent from the tone of your voice, and a paltry 7 percent from the words you choose. Yet it’s that 7 percent that can and will be held against you in a court of law.” — Brian Christian, The Most Human Human
Tabula rasa rides againTabula rasa rides again
“A great deal of fairly recent developmental psychology and a great deal of research in psychiatry and psychoanalysis and so forth has suggested, at least, that the idea that there would be a true ‘you’ that comes into the world unaffected, unadulterated by the influence of the social environment in which you develop, is a myth. That in fact you are, as it were, socialized from the get-go. So that if you were to peel away the layers of socialization, it’s not as if what would be left over would be the true you. What would be left over would be nothing.” — Bernard Reginster (from The Most Human Human, by Brian Christian)
Signs that point the way block the waySigns that point the way block the way
“You question the assumptions of physics and you end up in metaphysics–a branch of philosophy. You question the assumptions of history and you end up in epistemology–a branch of philosophy. You try to take any other discipline out at the foundations and you end up in philosophy; you try to take philosophy out at the foundations and you only end up in meta-philosophy: even deeper in than when you started.” — Brian Christian, The Most Human Human
The agony of victory, the thrill of defeatThe agony of victory, the thrill of defeat
“Games have a goal; life doesn’t. Life has no objective. This is what the existentialists call ‘the anxiety of freedom.’ Thus we have an alternate definition of what a game is–anything that provides temporary relief from existential anxiety. This is why games are such a popular form of procrastination. And this is why, on reaching one’s goals, the risk is that the reentry of existential anxiety hits you even before the thrill of victory–you’re thrown immediately back on the uncomfortable question of what to do with your life.” — Brian Christian, The Most Human Human
Today a koi, tomorrow a catfishToday a koi, tomorrow a catfish
“We must choose a standard to hold ourselves to. Perhaps we’re influenced to pick some particular standard; perhaps we pick it at random. Neither seems particularly ‘authentic,’ but we swerve around paradox here because it’s not clear that this matters. It’s the commitment to the choice that makes behavior authentic.” — Brian Christian, The Most Human Human (emphasis in original)
Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and shortSolitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short
“What defines us is that we don’t know what to do and there aren’t any revelations out there for us waiting to be found. Profoundly disoriented and lacking any real mooring, we must make it all up from scratch ourselves, each one of us, individually. We arrive in a bright room, wet, bloody, bewildered, some stranger smacking us and cutting what had been, up to that point, our only source of oxygen and food. We have no idea what is going on. We don’t know what we’re supposed to do, where we’re supposed to go, who we are, where we are, or what in the world, after all this trauma, comes next. We wail.” — Brian Christian, The Most Human Human (emphasis in original)
Your moveYour move
“The truest tests of skill and intuition come when everything looks quiet and we aren’t sure what to do, or if we should do anything at all.” — Garry Kasparov (from The Most Human Human, by Brian Christian)
We will never pass this way againWe will never pass this way again
“I suppose when you get down to it, everything is always once in a lifetime. We might as well act like it.” — Brian Christian, The Most Human Human
The clouds are all in different placesThe clouds are all in different places
“The reason to wake up in the morning is not the similarity between today and all other days, but the difference.” — Brian Christian, The Most Human Human (emphasis in original)
One for the roadOne for the road
“Life is not about maximizing everything.” — Glenn Murcutt (from The Most Human Human, by Brian Christian)
What you learn in the cubicleWhat you learn in the cubicle
“When everything constantly needs approval, you create a culture of nonthinkers.” — Jason Fried & David Hansson (from The Most Human Human, by Brian Christian)
Faces, books, spaces, and linksFaces, books, spaces, and links
“Cobbled-together bits of human interaction do not a human relationship make. Not fifty one-night stands, not fifty speed dates, not fifty transfers through the bureaucratic pachinko. No more than sapling tied to sapling, oak though they may be, makes an oak. Fragmentary humanity isn’t humanity.” — Brian Christian, The Most Human Human
Foolproof methodFoolproof method
“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.” — Oscar Wilde
Relative valuesRelative values
“Stealing a man’s wife, that’s nothing, but stealing his car, that’s larceny.” — James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice
There’s always something that needs doingThere’s always something that needs doing
“A poet is a man, who, having nothing to do, finds something to do.” — Anatole Broyard (from The Granta Book of the American Short Story, ed. Ford)
To sleep, perchanceTo sleep, perchance
“Above the autumnal opacity of the park the night is flushed by a vague reddish glow. In the ravaged upholstery of the treetops crows wake with caws of mindless alarm and, deceived by the false dawn, take off in noisy squads; their yawping, reeling disarray throws tumult and vibrations into the murky redness tartly redolent of herbage and fallen leaves. Eventually the great flurry of loops and turns all over the sky subsides; calming gradually, it descends, lighting in the combed-out tangle of trees in a ragged, provisional file that still shows signs of unrest, rife with misgivings, chatter falling silent, plaintive queries. At last the swarm settles down for good and becomes part of the sibilant stillness of the surrounding languor. And night, deep and late, resumes its sway.” — Bruno Schulz, “Fatherland” (trans. Wieniewska)
AbscissionAbscission
“Autumn is the human soul’s yearning for matter, essence, boundary. When for unexplored reasons human metaphors, projects, dreams begin to hanker for realization, the time of autumn is at hand. Those phantoms that, formerly spread out over the furthest reaches of the human cosmos, lent its high vaults the colors of their spectra now return to man, seeking the warmth of his breath, the cozy narrow shelter of his home, the niche that holds his bed.” — Bruno Schulz, “Autumn” (trans. Wieniewska)
You think so?You think so?
“Faith is nice but doubt gets you an education.” — John Lahr, “God Squad”
Where the coyotes moan so lowWhere the coyotes moan so low
“Intense loneliness gives all great American literature something in common, the sense of a lonely animal howling in the dark.” — Stephen Spender (from The Granta Book of the American Short Story, ed. Ford)
Well, shut my mouthWell, shut my mouth
“Once language exists only to convey information it is dying.” — Richard Hugo (from The Granta Book of the American Short Story, ed. Ford)
The gleaningsThe gleanings
“We have been outsourcing our intelligence, and our humanity, to machines for centuries. They have long been faster, bigger, tougher, more deadly. Now they are much quicker at calculation and infinitely more adept at memory than we have ever been. And so now we decide that memory and calculation are not really part of mind. It’s not just that we move the goalposts; we mock the machines’ touchdowns as they spike the ball. We place the communicative element of language above the propositional and argumentative element, not because it matters more but because it’s all that’s left to us.” — Adam Gopnik, “Get Smart”
EnchantedEnchanted
“We played host to mysterious distinguished strangers and lost ourselves in conjectures in our desire to penetrate their disguises. In the evenings everyone gathered in the great hall, where, by flickering candlelight, we listened to one tale or revelation after another. There were times when the plot spun through these stories jumped out of the narrative frame and stepped among us, live and hungry for prey, and tangled us up in its perilous whorl. Sudden recognitions, unexpected disclosures, an improbable encounter pushed their way into our private lives. We lost the ground beneath our feet, placed in jeopardy by contingencies we ourselves had unleashed. From far away the howling of wolves was carried on the air, we brooded over romantic entanglements, ourselves halfway caught up with their coils, while an inscrutable night rustled on the other side of the window, fraught with shapeless aspirations, ardent, incomprehensible confidences, unplumbed, inexhaustible, itself knotted into labyrinthine convolutions.” — Bruno Schulz, “The Republic of Dreams” (trans. Wieniewska)
Give life an inch, it’ll take a whole planetGive life an inch, it’ll take a whole planet
“The town lives under the sign of the Weed, of wild, avid, fanatical plant life bursting out in cheap, coarse greenery–toxic, rank, parasitic. That greenery grows under the sun’s conjury, the maws of the leaves suck in seething chlorophyll; armies of nettles, rampant, voracious, devour the flower plantings, break into the gardens, spread over the unguarded back walls of houses and barns overnight, run wild in the roadside ditches. It is amazing what insane vitality, feckless and unproductive, lives in this fervid dab of green, this distillate of sun and groundwater. From a pinch of chlorophyll it draws out and extrapolates under the blaze of these summer days that luxuriant texture of emptiness, a green pith replicated a hundred times onto millions of leaf surfaces, downy or furred, of veined translucent verdure pulsing with watery plant blood, giving off the pungent herbal smell of the open fields.” — Bruno Schulz, “The Republic of Dreams” (trans. Wieniewska)
Narcissoid voidNarcissoid void
“What do I look like? Sometimes I see myself in the mirror. A strange, ridiculous, and painful thing! I am ashamed to admit it: I never look at myself full face. Somewhat deeper, somewhat farther away I stand inside the mirror a little off center, slightly in profile, thoughtful and glancing sideways. Our looks have stopped meeting. When I move, my reflection moves too, but half-turned back, as if it did not know about me, as if it had got behind a number of mirrors and could not come back. My heart bleeds when I see it so distant and indifferent. It is you, I want to exclaim; you have always been my faithful reflection, you have accompanied me for so many years and now you don’t recognize me! Oh, my God! Unfamiliar and looking to one side, my reflection stands there and seems to be listening for something, awaiting a word from the mirrored depths, obedient to someone else, waiting for orders from another place.” — Bruno Schulz, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (trans. Wieniewska)