Quotebook

This is a collection of quotes I found interesting in one way or another.

Literature

The fact we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.

— Douglas Adams

Así también un orbe entero, con toda su pequeñez y su grandeza, puede ubicarse en una estrella que titila en la inmensidad del espacio, y así como la mera ciencia humana es capaz de dividir un rayo de luz y analizar su composición, así tambien otras inteligencias más excelsas podrán leer acaso en el tenue brillar de esta tierra nuestra todo pensamiento y toda acción, todo vicio y toda virtud de cada uno de los seres responsables que la pueblan.

— Charles Dickens, Historia de dos ciudades. pag. 212 (1859)

Bajo esa bóveda tachonada de luminarias fijas y eternas, tan lejanas algunas de este minúsculo planeta que según afirman los sabios es dudoso que sus rayos hayan tenido tiempo de llegar a el descubrirlo como un punto en el espacio donde nada se sufre y nada se hace.

— Charles Dickens, Historia de dos ciudades - El zapatero. (1859)

De las anteriores dos citas se evidencia el conocimiento de astronomía que poseía Charles Dickens, y como lo influía a contemplar un punto de vista más allá de la tierra, donde todo lo que conocemos es minúsculo.

A pale blue dot

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest.

But for us, it’s different. Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, ever king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

— Carl Sagan, A pale blue dot

For the very reason that here nothing served a purpose -not ever, not to anyone- and that here no guillotine of evolution was in play, nature, constrained neither by the life she bore nor by the death she inflicted, could achieve liberation, displaying a prodigality characteristic of herself, a limitless wastefulness, a brute magnificence that was useless, a eternal power of creation without a goal, without a need, without a meaning.

— Stanislaw Lem, Fiasco

Es un sentimiento creciente entre algunos grupos de este país la noción de que cuando un hombre o una compañía han sacado un beneficio del publico durante un cierto número de años, el gobierno y los tribunales tienen el deber de salvaguardar esos beneficios en el futuro, incluso frente a circunstancias de cambio y contra el interés del publico… Ni los individuos ni las corporaciones tienen el menor derecho de acudir a los tribunales y exigir que el reloj de la historia sea detenido, o retrasado, en beneficio particular suyo.

—Robert.A Heinlein, La línea de la vida

The intensity of every astonishment gradually wear off; the human mind, by the sheer effect of repetition and habit, gradually becomes accustomed to the strangest and least familiar ideas.

— Milic Capek, The philosophical impact of contemporary physics

El coronel experimentó la sensación de que nacían hongos y lirios venenosos en sus tripas.

— Gabriel Garcia Marquez, El coronel no tiene quien le escriba

Antítesis entre la belleza de los lirios y el malestar que representan.

Fue en aquella cabaña perdida en las montañas del Gran Khingam donde algo comenzó a cambiar en el interior de Ye Wenjie. Las negras profundidades de la tundra congelada de su corazón comenzaron a deshelarse. Apareció una pequeña laguna de aguas cristalinas.

— Liu Cixin, El problema de los 3 cuerpos

Rostov, poco a poco ante la presencia de Berg, poco grata para el, adoptó de nuevo el tono anterior de húsar valentón, y animándose les conto acerca de sus andanzas en Schengraben exactamente como cuenta las batallas los que han tomado parte en ellas, es decir, como les gustaría, que hubieran sucedido, como lo han oído de otros narradores, como fuera más hermoso contarlas no exactamente como han sucedido.

— Leon Tolstoi, Guerra y paz

Se sentía a la cabeza de un movimiento que había comenzado y ya se había convertido en incontenible. Era com un caballo enganchado corriendo cuesta abajo. No sabia si tiraba o era arrastrado, pero avanzaba lo más rápido posible, sin tener tiempo de pensar a donde conduciría ese movimiento.

— Leon Tolstoi, Guerra y paz

Bismark esta convencido de que salió victorioso de la ultima guerra a causa de complicadas, astutas y profundas consideraciones estatales. Los miembro del Vaterland piensan que fue fruto de patriotismo. Los ingleses piensan que fueron más astutos que Napoleón y todo lo que ellos piensan no ha sido sino creado por su imaginación con ayuda de su intelecto para justificar la necesidad de derramamiento de sangre de la sociedad europea. La misma necesidad que tienen las hormigas negras y amarillas de aniquilarse las unas a otra y de construir sus hormigueros del mismo modo.

— Leon Tolstoi, Guerra y paz

En los acontecimientos históricos las grandes personalidades son las etiquetas que dan la denominación al acontecimiento pero son las que, al igual que las etiquetas, tienen una menor relación con el acontecimiento

— Leon Tolstoi, Guerra y paz

El fuego detrás del cuarzo estaba ahora débil, encaminándose a regañadientes hacia la muerte.

— Isaac Asimov, se puede evitar un conflicto

Oía el corazón. No podia imaginar que aquel leve ruido que me acompañaba desde hacia tanto tiempo pudiese cesar nunca.

— Albert Camus, El extranjero

Ella parecía la única parte real de su existencia. Al lado de ella, toda la Eternidad no era sino una devil fantasia por la cual no valía la pena vivir.

— Isaac Asimov, El fin de la eternidad

Si queremos efecto extraños y combinaciones extraordinarias, debemos buscarlos en la vida misma que siempre llega mucho más lejos que cualquier esfuerzo de la imaginación.

— Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Sherlock Holmes. La liga de los pelirrojos

Este fragmento que sucede en dialogo entre Sherlock Holmes y Watson puede tomarse como consejo de Sir Arthur Conan Doyle que puede ser aplicado para realizar escritos de ficción basados en eventos reales.

It is my belief, Watson, found upon my experience , that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful country side.

— Arthur Conan Doyle, The adventure of the Cooper Beeches

What I find interesting about this quote is not that I find it true but rather it is telling of a way of thinking of Conan Doyle, a glimpse on how he saw and felt about the world.

Sherlock Holmes strikes as a very modern and relatable character, his life in some way resembles our modern life, he rides carriages as we would a taxi, he has meals and drinks coffee as part of his daily routine, and the fact that he has to pay rent to his land lady miss Turner are small details of normal life that makes you feel fully immerse and think of his stories as realistic as your own experiences.

Se equivoca, profesor. Que el vulgo crea en cometas extraordinarios que atraviesan el espacio, o en la existencia de monstruos antediluvianos que pueblan el interior del la tierra, pase, pero ni el astrónomo ni el geólogo admiten tales quimeras.

— Julio Verne, Veinte mil lenguas de viaje submarino

¿Acaso no existe ninguna manera de gobernar el mundo sin hacer que la violencia sea la manera decisiva de juzgar entre el bien y el mal? … vivimos en un mundo en el que la Union Soviética dispone de suficiente armamento como para matar cincuenta veces a cada habitante de la tierra, pero se siente insegura porque los Estados Unidos tienen suficiente armamento como para matar a todos sesenta veces.

— Isaac Asimov, No violencia. La visita del tiranosaurio- prologo Penterra

La posteridad considera una revolución triunfante como el levantamiento de una nación o de un grupo que forman un solo frente, pero la mayoría de las veces esa idea no es más que un lustre patriótico que se da al recuerdo. En toda revolución, aquellos que siguen fervorosamente la lucha hasta la muerte son una minoría, y suele haber un numero al menos igual que son decididamente antirrevolucionarios, más una mayoría efectiva que es apática y va a donde la llevan ( en una u otra dirección) si es necesario, pero prefiere que la dejen en paz

— Isaac Asimov, Guía de la biblia nuevo testamento

Cuando la historia se ocupa de las personalidades, las descripciones son blancas o negra, según los intereses del escritor.

—Asimov, Segunda fundación

Lo que hace más importante a tu rosa es el tiempo que tú has perdido con ella

— Antonie De Saint Exupery. El principito

-los hombres de tu tierra- dijo el principito cultivan cinco mil rosas en un jardín y no encuentran lo que buscan. -No lo encuentran nunca - le respondí - y sin embargo, lo que buscan podrían encontrarlo en una sola rosa o en poco de agua

— Antonie De Saint Exupery. El principito

The given civilization would enter a crisis to end all crisis, i.e, extinction

— Stanislaw Lem, Fiasco

How easily an isolated group of the best people can become a threat to themselves through the influence of an individual, particularly if that individual is one of whom they count, as he were made of even better stuff than they.

— Stanislaw Lem, Fiasco

In Asimov’s series the need to understand history in order to construct a sustainable future becomes the pivotal theme, both on the level of narration and on the level of characters that turn their knowledge of history into action.

— Jari Kakela

Science fiction engages in representation that makes the described phenomenon unfamiliar, but as readers recognize what this defamiliarizing representation refer to, it enables them to discover new ways of thinking and thus promotes rational understanding.

— Jari Kakela

[Asimov] has the habit of centering his fiction in plot and clearly stating to his reader, in rather direct terms, what is happening in his story and why it is happening.

— Jari Kakela

Asimov’s plots are rarely very dramatic as such. Rather they focus on the rational, gradual discovery of what has happened (or will, or should happen) frequently resulting in detective story like narrative structures …

it is this sense of accumulating evidence, or knowledge and understanding of the world and the events described, which creates the narrative tension much of Asimov’s work.

— Jari Kakela

Establishing the historicity of the present in the sense of denaturalizing the present by showing it to be neither arbitrary nor inevitable but the conjunctural result of complex, knowable material processes.

Carl Freedman, Critical theory and science fiction

Es cierto que la nación no se crea por leyes ni decretos, sobre todo en Colombia, pues sabido es que muchas normas estipuladas en la Constitución son letra muerta

— María Elena Erazo, Construcción de la nación Colombiana

Ustedes se deleitan haciendo leyes pero más se deleitan burlándolas como los niños que jugando en la playa levantan con paciencia castillo de arena que luego destruyen entre risas.

— Facundo Cabral, El profeta de Gibran

E-government is defined as a way for governments to use the most innovative information and communication technologies, particularly web-based applications, to provide citizens and business with more convenient access to government information and services

— Zhiyuan Fang, Egoverments in digital era

Se habla a veces de hecho, de la crueldad «bestial» del hombre, pero esto es terriblemente injusto y ofensivo para las bestias: una bestia nunca puede ser tan cruel como el hombre , tan artística, tan plásticamente cruel.

— Fiodor Dostievskin, Los hermanos Karamazov

Let me tell you, my friend, that there are things done to-day in electrical science which would have been deemed unholy by the very men who discovered the electricity - who would themselves not so long before have been burned as wizards,

— Bram stroker, Dracula

El ni siquiera tomo aliento para explicar que las cucarachas, el insecto más antiguo sobre la tierra, era ya la víctima favorita de los chancletazos en el Antiguo Testamento, pero que como especie era definitivamente refractaria a cualquier método de exterminio, desde las rebanadas de tomate con boráx hasta la harina con azúcar, pues sus mil seiscientas tres variedades habían resistido a la más remota,tenaz y despiadada persecución que el hombre había desatado desde sus orígenes contra ser viviente alguno, inclusive el propio hombre, hasta el extremo de que así como se atribuía al género humano un instinto de reproducción, debía atribuírsele otro más definido y apremiante, que era el instinto de matar cucarachas, y que si éstas habían logrado escapar a la ferocidad humana era porque se habían refugiado en las tinieblas, donde se hicieron invulnerables por el miedo congénito del hombre a la oscuridad.

— Gabriel Garcia Marquez, cien años de soledad

• Diremos que lo encotramos flotando en la canastilla - sonrió
• No se lo creerá nadie- dijo la monja
• Si se lo creyeron a las Sagradas Escritura - replico Fernanda-, no veo por qué no han de creérmelo a mi

— Gabriel Garcia Marquez, cien años de soledad

Era en aquel momento temprano del reinado que cada pueblo vive unas cinco veces en un siglo. Un periodo revolucionario, diferente de lo que llamamos «revolución» solo por el hecho de que el poder está en manos del antiguo gobierno y no del nuevo. En estas revoluciones, como en todas las demás, se habla del espíritu de los nuevos tiempos, de las exigencias de este tiempo, de los derechos del hombre, de la necesidad de que impere la sensatez en la estructura del estado y la justicia general. Bajo el pretexto de estas ideas, también entran en liza las pasiones más irrazonables del hombre. Pasarán el tiempo y las ganas, y los antiguos introductores de lo novedoso se aferrarán a su antiguo orden nuevo, ahora anticuado, y defenderán la decoración de su casa frente a la juventud que crece, que de nuevo quiere y necesita satisfacer su necesidad de probar fuerzas.

— Leon Tolstoi, Guerra y paz

The crusade was failing on the shore of the promised land, its prophet entrenched in its vision, its soldier-priest lost in self-doubt. In the literature describing the anthropology of religions, this is the time of scapegoats and the murderous crowd.

—Thierry Bardin, bootstrapping Douglas Endelbart and the origins of Personal Computing

El universo es la historia de un incendio provocado y ahogado por la gravitación

—Stanislaw Lem, Golem XIV

Tu lectura ya no es solitaria: piensas en la Lectora que en este mismo momento está abriendo también ella el libro, y eh aquí que a la novela por leer se superpone una posible novela por vivir, o mejor dicho: el inicio de una posible historia.

— Italo Calvino, Si una noche de invierno un viajero

Y una vez conquistados para tu persona, marcados por tu posesión los objetos ya no tienen pinta de estar allí por casualidad, asumen un significado como partes de un discurso, como una memoria hecha de señales y emblemas.

— Italo Calvino, Si una noche de invierno un viajero

El mayor deseo del escritor atormentado sería ser leído com lee aquella joven. Se pone a escribir una novela como piensa que la escribíria el escritor productivo. Mientra taanto el mayor deseo del escritor productivo sería ser leído como lee aquella joven: se pone a escribir una novela como piensa que la escrbiría el escritor atormentado.

— Italo Calvino, Si una noche de invierno un viajero

So many vows. They make you swear and swear. Defend the king. Obey the king. Obey your father. Protect the innocent. Defend the weak. What if your father despises the king? What If the king massacres the innocent?

—Jaime Lanister, Game of thrones tv show

Si alguna vez me cruzas por la calle

Regálame tu beso y no te aflijas

Si ves que estoy pensando en otra cosa

No es nada malo, es que pasó una brisa

La brisa de la muerte enamorada

Que ronda como un ángel asesino

Mas no te asustes, siempre se me pasa Es solo la intuición de mi destino

—Fito Paes, al lado del camino

STEM

Physics my friend is a narrow path drawn across a gulf that the human imagination cannot grasp

— Stanislaw Lem, Fiasco

Although the harmonic series when summed diverges it does so at an incredible slow rate as if a snail was crawling to infinity.

— Physics explained youtube channel

figuring out mathematical operations and tricks certainly takes significant amounts of effort, time, and devotion. Today, we often take for granted those symbols and explanations that are neatly compiled into math and science textbooks. It is easy to forget that every equation encases a story: frustration, fascination, arduous work, friendly collaborations, disappointment, and the occasional serendipity. Mathematics is not just about numbers, but it is also about the people whose work gives us the luxury and pleasure of understanding.

— Rafael Villarreal-Calderon, Chopping Logs: A Look at the History and Uses of Logarithms

El trabajo de Boltzmann no negaba la vigencia de las leyes de Newton; simplemente era una forma nueva de tratar inmensos conjuntos de partículas. Esto no fue entendido bien por buena parte de sus contemporáneos, para los cuales era difícil aceptar que lo que hasta entonces se consideraban leyes fundamentales de la naturaleza, como el segundo principio de la termodinámica, pudieran tener una interpretación estadística, minando así su carácter estrictamente determinista.

Thus a familiar model connected to physical intuition, but constituting matter of some ill-understood sort of wave, confronted an abstract mathematics with seemingly bizarra variables, insistent about discontinuity and suspending space-time pictures. Unsurprisingly, the coexistence of alternative theories generated debate. The fact, soon demonstrated, of their mathematical equivalence did not resolve the interpretative dispute. For fundamentally different physical pictures were offer.

— Catheryn Carson, The origins of the quantum theory

Talk about an equimanicla problem of epic proportions. Here is your question today. You have to understand how all of the known elements in the universe fit together in a logical way. Good luck take care

— Matt Walker, The lex Fridman Podcast

Artist have more influence in the progress of technology than engineer.

—Matthew Pan, human robot interaction class

Gartner hype cycle

A lot of our training is like this: we learn how to do things that contribute in a very small way to a much larger mission but do absolutely nothing for our own career prospects. We spend our days studying and simulating experiences we may never actually have. It’s all pretend, really, but we are learning. And that, I think, is the point: learning.

— Chris Hadfield,An astronaut’s guide to life on earth

Getting things done means doing things you might not be interested in. No matter how exciting or appealing a project is, there are always boring tasks. Tedious tasks. Tasks that a less mature engineer may deem beneath their dignity or their job title.

—John Allspaw

Computers

It is time to give these users more control over their computers through education and supporting software, this will cause a massive surge in productivity and creativity, with a far-ranging impact that can barely be anticipated or imagined.

– Guido Van Rousell, Computer Programming for Everybody

I want to study not only what computer is doing for us, but what it is doing to us.

— Sherry Turkle

The creators of personal computer technology linked their innovations to ideologies or representations that explained and justified their designs. Those visions have become invisible, latent assumptions to the latter-day users of the personal computer, even as they shape these user’ activities and attitudes. It is my task here to make them visible once again.

—Thierry Bardin, bootstrapping Douglas Endelbart and the origins of Personal Computing

“To make it easy one must make coding comprehensible. Present notation have many disadvantages; all are incomprehensible to the novice, they are all different (one for each machine) and they are never easy to read. it is quite difficult to decipher coded programs even with notes and even if you yourself made the program several months ago” (quoted in Lubar 1993,359).

—Thierry Bardin, bootstrapping Douglas Endelbart and the origins of Personal Computing

This quote captures the problem of making code accesible and understandable, a problem that despite all the technological advances is one we are still facing today (written in 2021).

If we then ask ourselves where that intelligence is embodied we are forced to concede that it is elusively distributed throughout hierarchy of functional processesa hierarchy whose foundation extends down into natural processes below the depth of our comprehension. If there is any one thing upon which this intelligence depends it would seem to be organization

— Douglas Engelbart, Augmenting Human Intellect

The user is at first a virtuality to be invented by the designer and realized along with the technology. Or to put it the other way around, technological innovation initially entails a script that defines specific characters as its users, independent of any real actors who might take those parts.

—Thierry Bardin, bootstrapping Douglas Endelbart and the origins of Personal Computing

It started … when I began work … on the design of interactive systems to be used by office workers for document preparation. My observations of secretaries learning to use the text editors of that era soon convinced me that my beloved computers were, in fact unfriendly monsters, and that their sharpest fangs were the ever-present modes.(Tesler 1981, 90)

—Thierry Bardin, bootstrapping Douglas Endelbart and the origins of Personal Computing

The future often is seen in terms of yesterday’s questions, just as the past is seen in terms of what prevailed. But some of the yesterday’s questions remain unanswered about the future of the personal computer, and indeed, about the future of the person who used it. Clues to what those answers might be sometimes can be found by remembering and reevaluating what did not prevail.

—Thierry Bardin, bootstrapping Douglas Endelbart and the origins of Personal Computing

The great success of the internet is not technical, but in human impact. Electronic mail may not be a wonderful advance in Computer science but it is a whole new way fo people to communicate

— David Clark, RFC 1336

As the Open Source Software (OSS) model continues to grow and expand into new domains, and the dependency graph for many popular projects continues to expand over time, dependency management is perhaps becoming the most important problem in software engineering policy. We are no longer disconnected islands built on one or two layers outside an API. Modern software is built on towering pillars of dependencies; but just because we can build those pillars doesn’t mean we’ve yet figured out how to keep them standing and stable over time.

— The Software Engineering at Google book (“SWE Book”)

La refactorización es el comportamiento por defecto de una persona novata

Freddy Vega

Unix philosophy, with three major tenets: ‘write programs that do one thing and do it well’. ‘write programs that work together’. ‘write programs that handle text streams because that is a universal interface’

— Steven Weber, The success of open source

Mechatronics

Clearly, an automobile with 30–60 microcontrollers, up to 100 electric motors, about 200 pounds of wiring, a multitude of sensors, and thousands of lines of software code can hardly be classified as a strictly mechanical system. The automobile is being transformed into a comprehensive mechatronic system.

— Robert H. Bishop and M. K. Ramasubramanian, What is Mechatronics

No matter how well an individual subsystem or component (electric motor, sensor, power amplifier, or DSP) performs, the overall performance can be degraded if the designer fails to integrate and optimize the electromechanical system.

—Sergey Edward Lyshevski, The Mechatronics handbook

Modeling, simulation, analysis, virtual prototyping, and visualization are critical and urgently important aspects for developing and prototyping of advanced electromechanical systems.

—Sergey Edward Lyshevski, The Mechatronics handbook

Robotics can be defined as “the art of integration”

— Francisco Martín Rico, A Concise Introduction to Robot Programming with ROS2

ROS2 is not a communications middleware, but a robot programming middleware

— Francisco Martín Rico, A Concise Introduction to Robot Programming with ROS2

Startups

While an ideal time to begin a company handbook is at inception, the next best time is today.

— gitlab Handbook

People who’ve done great things tend to seem as if they were a race apart. And most biographies only exaggerate this illusion, partly due to the worshipful attitude biographers inevitably sink into, and partly because, knowing how the story ends, they can’t help streamlining the plot till it seems like the subject’s life was a matter of destiny, the mere unfolding of some innate genius.

— Paul Graham

So here’s the brief recipe for getting startup ideas. Find something that’s missing in your own life, and supply that need—no matter how specific to you it seems. Steve Wozniak built himself a computer; who knew so many other people would want them? A need that’s narrow but genuine is a better starting point than one that’s broad but hypothetical.

— Paul Graham Why not not to start a start up

If you want to build a ship don’t drum up people to collect wood don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.

— Antoine de Saint Exupéry

I’ve had detailed conversations with many professors and it was apparent that most of them had themselves never applied concepts they were teaching. Their knowledge is restricted to the textbook and questions they have been asking for years in their exams.

Of a 168-hour week, 56 hours are typically spent sleeping and 40 hours earning money. That leaves 72 hours every week to watch cat videos on YouTube  -  this we call spare time.

— Alex Winkler

you can filter all your team members into broad categories based on skillfulness, determination, focus, kindness+integrity

Education and learning

The sheer magnitude of human knowledge renders its coverage by education an impossibility, rather. The goal of education is better conceived as helping students develop the intellectual tools and learning strategies needed to adquiere the knowledge that allows people to think productively.

— John D. Bransford, Ann L. Brown y Rodney R. Cocking, How people learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School

The complexity of social life requires that the same problems be studied many times before basic uniformities can be found differentiated from transitory social occurrences.

— The people’s choice: How the Voter Makes Up His Mind in a Presidential Campaign

Every individual carries around with him germs of observations and half-forgotten experiences.

— The people’s choice: How the Voter Makes Up His Mind in a Presidential Campaign

Aunque el mundo en conjunto progrese, la juventud tiene que volver a empezar por el principio y pasar, como individuo, por las épocas de la cultura de la humanidad

— Goethe

If you really want to lean and get better at anything … you’ll have to be willing to be uncomfortable because thinking takes effort it involves fighting through confusion.

— Dereck Muller - Veritasium

Un mundo le es dado al hombre; su gloria no es soportar ni despreciar este mundo, sino enriquecerlo construyendo otros universos.

— Mario Bunge, La ciencia su método y su filosofía

if a lion could speak, we would not be able to understand him

— Lugwig Wittgenstein

Context has a key role in communication

On one hand information wants to be expensive because it’s so valuable. The right information in the right place, just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting each other.

— Stewart Brand

it always appeared logically and aesthetically simpler to assume constancy instead of variability.

— Milic Capek, The philosophical impact of contemporary physics

The path of true learning is a strewn with rocks not roses.

— Mortimer Adler

I remember in high school during first period a guy would come to me with a puzzle … I wouldn’t stop until i figure the damn thing out it would take me 15 or 20 minutes but during the day other guys would come to me and I’d do it for them in a flash. So for a guy, to do it took me 20 minutes while there were five who thought I was a super genius

— Surely you’re joking mr. Feynman

“Is there a way to see it”. ALL the time you’re saying to yourself “I could do that but I won’t” which is just another way of saying that you can’t

— Surely you’re joking mr. Feynman

The efective motivation to continue learning can be fostered only by leading students to experience the pleasure inherent in solving a problem seen and chosen as one’s own.

— A constructivist approach to teaching, Ernst von Glasersfeld

One dimension of acquiring greater competence appears to be the increased ability to segment the perceptual field (learning how to see)…

Sometimes, however students can solve set of practice problems but fail to conditionalize their knowledge because they know which chapter the problems came from ad so automatically use this information to decide which concepts and formulas are relevant.

— John D. Bransford, Ann L. Brown y Rodney R. Cocking, How people learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School

Thinking an expert as “someone who knows all the answers” is very hurtful because it place severe constraints on new learning and create the tendency to worry about looking competent rather than publicly acknowledging the need for help in certain areas.

— John D. Bransford, Ann L. Brown y Rodney R. Cocking, How people learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School

The ability to recognize the limits of one’s current knowledge, then take steps to remedy the situation, is extremely important for learners at all ages.

— John D. Bransford, Ann L. Brown y Rodney R. Cocking, How people learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School

Learners of all ages are more motivated when they can see the usefulness of what they are learning and when they can use that information to do something that has an impact on others

— John D. Bransford, Ann L. Brown y Rodney R. Cocking, How people learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School

There is a risk of giving people the illusion of understanding math .. unless they solve a problem that requires struggle … I don’t have a lot of faith that actual learning took place.

— Grant Sanderson (three blue on brown), Showmakers podcast

La educación se ve obligada a proporcionar las cartas náuticas de un mundo complejo y en perpetua agitación y, al mismo tiempo, la brújula para poder navegar por él.

— Jackes Delors, Los cuatro pilares de la educación

The idea that information can be store in a changing world without an overwhelming depreciation in its value is false

— Norbert Wiener, The Human use of Human beings

Los conocimientos adquiridos de forma prematura como inconciliables con los conocimientos ya poseídos, carecían de valor porque quien está siendo instruido percibe una contradicción entre lo que sabe y lo que le ha sido anunciado. Solo por eso esperar alguna revelación desde las estrellas proveniente de los seres por encima de nosotros, ya sean estas noticias de salvación o de perdición, es una quimera.

— Stanislaw Lem, Golem XIV

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world

—Arthur Schopenhauer

Economy

El producido se divide en 3 partes la renta, los salarios y los beneficios del capital

— Adam Smith, La riqueza de las naciones

Ellos cuyo ingreso no les cuesta ni trabajo ni preocupaciones; puede decirse que acude a sus manos espontáneamente, sin que ellos elaboren plan ni proyecto alguno con tal objetivo. Esa indolencia que es el efecto natural de su posición tan cómoda y segura, los vuelve con mucha frecuencia no solo ignorantes sino incapaces del ejercicio intelectual necesario para prever y comprender las consecuencias de cualquier reglamentación publica.

— Adam Smith, La riqueza de las naciones

Haciendo una critica al modelo mercantilista Adam Smith, pensando en el oro y la plata (dinero) como un instrumento de intercambio y no como la fuente de la riqueza, los compara con ollas y sartenes expresando que su acumulación no genera ningún valor pues:

Fácilmente se comprende sin embargo, que el numero de esto utensilios esta limitado en cualquier lugar por el uso que se pueda hacer de ellos… debería comprenderse de forma igualmente inmediata que la cantidad de oro y plata esta limitado en cualquier país por el uso que se pueda hacer de ellos.

— Adam Smith, La riqueza de las naciones

cuando hay grandes propiedades hay grandes desigualdades. Por cada hombre muy rico debe haber por lo menos 500 pobres, y la opulencia de unos pocos supone la indigencia de muchos. La abundancia de los ricos aviva la indignación de los pobres, que son conducidos por necesidad y alentados por la envidia a atropellar sus posesiones. El dueño de toda propiedad valiosa no puede dormir seguro ni una sola noche si no se halla bajo la protección de un magistrado civil. Todo el tiempo se ve rodeado por enemigos desconocidos a quienes nunca a provocado pero a quienes nunca puede apaciguar jamás.

— Adam Smith, La riqueza de las naciones

Ahorrar, ahorra sin cesar, acumular para acumular, producir para producir; ese es el lema capitalista burgués; el proletariado no es más que una maquina que produce plusvalia, el capitalista es una maquina que capitaliza esta plusvalia.

— Karl Marx, El capital

The economy’s not a car, there’s no engine to stall, no expert can fix it, there’s not it at all. The economy is us we don’t need a mechanic put away the wrenches the economy is organic.

Fight of the Century: Keynes vs. Hayek - Economics Rap Battle Round Two

If I say that the first industrial revolution, the revolution of the ‘dark Satanic mills’, was the devaluation of the human arm by the competition of machinery there is not rate of pay at which the United States pick an shovel laborer can live which  is low enough to compete with the work of a steam shovel as an excavator.

The modern industrial revolution is similarly bound to devalue the human brain at least in its simpler or more routine decisions. Of course, just as the skilled carpenter, the skilled mechanic, the skilled dressmaker have in some degree survived the first industrial revolution, so the skilled scientist and the skilled administrator may survive the second. However, taking the second revolution as accomplished, the average human being of mediocre attainments or less has nothing to sell that it is worth anyone’s money to buy.

The answer, of course, is to have a society based on human values other than buying or selling. To arrive at this society, we need a good deal of planning and a good deal of struggle

— Robert Wiener, Cybernetics

The history of industrial automation is characterized by periods of rapid change in popular methods. Either as a cause or, perhaps, an effect, such periods of change in automation techniques seem closely tied to world economics

—- John Craig

it is fascinating to see how an indicator of economic prosperity has shifted from production to consumption

Interpersonal relationships

When you miss me remember that it wasn’t enough when we were together

Disconnection happens very slowly and then all at once

—James Sexton, The Lex Fridman podcast

A person who adores an idol and a person who destroys an idol are both idolist

—James Sexton, The Lex Fridman podcast

you can’t save those you love

Because getting to know a person also means to get to know their shortcomigs, their flaws, their internal obstacles that are holding them back, or negatively impact their lives in other way… In situation like these, it hard to ignore the urge to step in … but the thing about trying to help in this way is that, more often than not depending on what exactly is going on, the part that we are trying to change is not so much the external situation of the person in trouble but rather their interior, something inside their character. You know, if only they would let us erase their bad habits, unburden them from their traumas, if only they would let us fix what is broken, then they would be saved, they would be happy again.

…

For it is true, we can seldom help those closest to us. Either we don’t know what part of ourselves to give or, more often than not the part we have to give is not wanted.

…

No one truly suffers alone. Stading by, watching helpessly as someone close to us slips away, it is not easy.

…

We rely so much on those who are closest to us, but in the end, there is a part, an essence to them that we cannnot reach, that is theirs alone. And that is ok. Because even though they may not be ours to save, as Norman Maclean’s father concluded, they will always be ours to love.

…

And so it is those we live with and shoul know, who elude us. But we can still love them, we can love completely without complete understanding.

Like Stories of Old

Meaning

The world is a fascinating place, but we only get to live inside the boundary of what we know, therefore I justify my existence by expanding this horizon and being amazed and amused by all what there is out there.

me

Lo que necesito es una compensación; de lo contrario, desaparece. Y no una compensación en cualquier parte, en el infinito, sino aquí abajo, una compensación que yo pueda ver. Yo he creído, y quiero ser testigo del resultado, y si entonces ya he muerto, que me resuciten. Seria muy triste que todo ocurriese sin que yo lo percibiera. No quiero que mi cuerpo, con sus sufrimientos y sus faltas, sirva tan solo para contribuir a la armonía futura en beneficio de no se quien. Quiero ver con mis propios ojos a la cierva durmiendo junto al león, a la victima besando a su matador. Sobre este deseo reposan todas las religiones y yo tengo fe. Quiero estar presente cuando todos se enteren del porque de las cosas.

— Fiodor Dostoievski, Los hermanos Kramazov - Rebeldia

La vida no es lo que uno vivió sino la que uno recuerda y cómo la recuerda para contarla.

— Gabriel Garcia Marquez, vivir para contarla

Still couldn’t accept that meaning and solace aren’t to be found on the heavens but in the tranches of everyday living

— exurb2, And then we’ll be ok

We are recording things about the world, we are learning things and writing stories and preserving that, is truly what I think is the essence of being a human, we are autobiographers of the universe.

— Michel Stevens (Vsauce), The artificial intelligence podcast

Toda una serie de pacientes disipulos se convirtieron en su momento en los maestro dogmáticos de la siguiente generación servil.

— Carl Sagan, el mundo y sus demonios

En una vida corta e incierta parece cruel hacer algo que pueda privar a la gente del consuelo de la fe cuando la ciencia no puede remediar su angustia.

— Carl Sagan, el mundo y sus demonios

He oído alguna vez a un escéptico que se creyera superior y despreciativo? Sin duda. A veces incluso he oído ese ton desagradable y me aflige recordarlo en mi propia voz.

— Carl Sagan, el mundo y sus demonios

May be I don’t have enough to do. May be I have time to think too much.

—Ray Bradbury, The veldt

It is not good for a man to be cognizant of his physical and spiritual mechanisms. Complete knowledge reveals limits to human possibilities and the less a man is by nature in his purposes, the less he can tolerate limits.

— Stanislaw Lem, Fiasco

The fact that you are not happy has nothing to do with what you have or don’t have. the fact that you are not happy is your life doesn’t match the way you think it should be. And you have some idea how you think it should be.

Un mundo le es dado al hombre; su gloria no es soportar o despreciar este mundo, sino enriquecerlo construyendo otros universos

— Mario Bunge, La ciencia su método y su filosofía

du wirst immer das zentrum deines eigenen kleinen univerzum sein

— Kurzgesagt, Du bist nicht da, wo du denkst

One painful duty fulfilled makes the next plainer and easier

— Hellen Keller, Story of my life

If Tomorrow Starts Without Me read by Tom O’Bedlam

Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

John Danaher at the Lex Fridman Podcast

The God of the gaps

Time by Pink Floyd

I heard this story about a fish. He swims up to this older fish and says, “I’m trying to find this thing they call the ocean.” “The ocean?” says the older fish, “that’s what you’re in right now.” “This?” says the younger fish, “This is water. What I want is the ocean.”

Movie: Soul

“What you need,” the Savage went on, “is something with tears for a change. Nothing costs enough here.”

…

“But I like the inconveniences.”

“We don’t,” said the Controller. “We prefer to do things comfortably.”

“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”

“In fact,” said Mustapha Mond, “you’re claiming the right to be unhappy.”

“All right then,” said the Savage defiantly, “I’m claiming the right to be unhappy.”

“Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen to-morrow; the right to catch typhoid: the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.” There was a long silence.

“I claim them all,” said the Savage at last.

— Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

No hay en esto certidumbre lógica. Tampoco hay probabilidad experimental todo lo que puedo decir es que, en efecto, sobrepasa mi medida si no dedusco de ello una negación, por lo menos no quiero fundamentar nada en lo incomprensible. Quiero saber si puedo vivir con lo que sé y con eso solamente. Me dicen también que la razón debe inclinarse. Pero si reconozco los límites de la razón no lo niego por lo mismo, pues reconozco sus poderes relativos.

— Albert Camus, El mito de Sísifo

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

— if, Rudyard Kipling

God exists, if only in the form of a meme with high survival value, or infective power, in the enviroment provided by human culture

— Richard Dawkins, the selfish gene

Very provocative comment

if you don’t have a coherent story, if you don’t know who you are, and are being vague or overly reclusive about yourself because of it, people will likely find it more difficult to connect with you

— Like Stories of Old

Absolute failure is

— Buzz Williams,Spare Parts

Miscellaneous

Y finalmente el lo hizo … y ella quedo … hablando con el silencio tenue y oscuro de una pantalla que anunciaba su partida repentina pero anunciada.

— Alejandra Arias

Pero las horas caen y el tiempo los atrapa, alejandonos … quiza en otro punto de esto que llamamos tiempo puedan reencontrarse para volver a ser victimas de un adios que se delieta separando lo que en un momento en un instante del ya mencionado tiempo, parecia eterno.

— Alejandra Arias

But I wanted to jump, I wanted to give it a try. But I wasn’t sure, because one thing I am sure about, it wouldn’t feel right if you don’t want to jump with me.

— Me

Reading old writings bring a smile to my face, somehow some of the ideas and question are still persistent in my head.

— Me

“I am just a fleeing thought in this stream of consciousness” were the last words of a dear old friend before willingly surrendering to the dark abyss of nothingness. It was a scream of a tortured soul, someone who was suffering from a violent attack. It was a Tuesday night like any other, it was late he already laying in his bed. In that moment before falling asleep while dreaming about the future, he suddenly saw the unavoidable trap that laid in front of him. He could clearly see his executioner approaching to rip apart from him what he held dear the most. In front stood an impasse, those professional goals he wanted, could no longer be. Neither would he ever feel the sweet touch of a loving hand. His destiny was set, to go quietly into the night to perish and be forgotten. He knew it well, his time had come, like many before him, but that did not make it any easier to rest assure and be content of all the things he would not get to experience. Before accepting his fate, he traversed inside his room, which had become empty, distant and alienating. Digging into the recesses of this labyrinth he got to bury a drowned scream before being struck and succumbing to Morfeo for a new being to arise renewed.

— Me

Infeliz de mí, dice uno, porque tal cosa me aconteció. No, al contrario: Dichoso yo porque habiéndome ocurrido esto, continúo sin pena alguna, ni quebrantado por lo presente ni amedrentado por lo venidero. Una semejante desgracia hubiera podido ocurrir a cualquier otro; y éste no hubiera sabido continuar, como yo, sin apenarse.

— Marco Aurelio, Meditaciones

The currency used in the casion of evolution is survival

— Richard Dawkins, the selfish gene

As my colleague N. K. Humprhey neatly summed up in an earlier draft of this chapter ’ … memes should be regarded as living structures, not just metaphorically but techincally. When you plant a fertile meme in my mind you literally parasitize my brain, turning it inta a vehicle for the meme’s propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell. And this isn’t just a way of talking – the meme for, say, “belief in life after death” is actually realized physically, millions of times over, as a strucutre in the nervous system of indidual men the world over’

— Richard Dawkins, the selfish gene

Sayings

Meaning is a jumper that you have to knit yourself

El sueño de la razón produce monstros

— Francisco de Goya

What a delightful crap bag life is

— Jason Scott, Jason Scott talks his way out podcast

Engañar esta mal aunque el diablo sea la victima

— Isaac Asimov

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is

—Benjamin Brewster, earliest Known appearance

Instant gratification is our society’s motto

Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don’t

— bill Nye

If you are not paying for the product you are the product

El azar nunca es azar, ya que solo favorece a los ojos preparados

What do you fear? the unstoppable marching of time that is slowly guiding us all towards an inevitable death

80% of success is showing up

— Woody Alen

When a measure becomes a target it ceases to be a good measure

We’re just in a long attentional free fall, with no clear destination and all manner of strange things flashing past.

— Katheyn Schulz, The New Yorker

Si uno esta en un barco que naufrago pensara en naufragios.

— George Orwell

It is very sad to me that some people are so intent on leaving their mark on the world that they don’t care if that mark is a scar

— Hank Green

revolutions before they happen seem impossible afterwards it is inevitable

Writing novels is hard. Reading novels isn’t

— Paul Graham

if I had had more time, I would have written a shorter letter

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by

—Douglas Adams

Peace and focus are intimate related and distraction is the enemy of peace and focus

—Andrew Huberman, The Lex Fridman podcast

equality always feels like a loss to the people who were previously unfairly ahead

El gran artista es ante todo un gran viviente