Quotes (with reference to the mind, brain, and science)…
Random
When people ask how I got into human-computer interaction, I tell them, "Well, originally I wanted to be a graphic designer, but a few serendipitous events changed my course. The first is that on my first day at college, in line at the computer store, I got into a conversation with a young guy with blue hair. It turned out he was a professor\! He offered me a work-study job in his lab, and that opened my eyes to cognitive science. From there, one thing led to another…"
— Scott Klemmer, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Stanford (the blue-haired professor being me)
Intelligence
It is a popular fact that nine-tenths of the brain is not used and, like most popular facts, it is wrong. Not even the most stupid Creator would go to the trouble of making the human head carry around several pounds of unnessary gray goo if its only real purpose was, for example, to serve as a delicacy for certain remote tribesmen in unexplored valleys. It is used. And one of its functions is to make the miraculous seem ordinary and turn the unusual into the usual.
— Terry Pratchett, Small Gods
It's not generally realized that camels have a natural aptitude for advanced mathematics, particularly where they involve ballistics.
— Terry Pratchett, Pyramids
Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.
— Terry Pratchett, Hogfather
Stupid men are often capable of things the clever would not dare to contemplate…
— Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
— Douglas Adams (1952-2001), Last Chance to See
because your brain is constructed something like a chessboard.
— "Marketplace" commentator K.C. Cole on why we can't comprehend the meaning of one trillion. (FYI I am still not sure what she is talking about).
Memory
How is education supposed to make me feel smarter? Besides, every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain. Remember when I took that home winemaking course, and I forgot how to drive?
— Matt Groening, The Simpsons
David Starr Jordan, an ichthyologist and one of the early Presidents of Stanford University apparently decided that in order to be a good President he needed to learn the names of all the students he could. But he found, to his dismay, that every time he learned the name of a student he forgot the name of a fish.
— various
Evolution
… the existence of a badly put-together watch proved the existence of a blind watchmaker. You only had to look around to see that there was room for improvement practically everywhere.
— Terry Pratchett, Small Gods
For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks.
— Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites
The scientific name for an animal that doesn't either run from or fight its enemies is lunch.
— Michael Friedman
Statistics
Besides almost all dogs don't talk. Ones that do are merely a statistical error, and therefore can be ignored. — Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms
It could not be happening because this sort of thing did not happen. Any contradictory evidence could be safely ignored.
— Terry Pratchett, Jingo
Perceptual Experience
If you could see an eighth distinct color just for a while, and then describe it back in the seven-colored world, it'd have to be… 'something like a sort of greenish-purple'. Experience did not cross over well between species.
— Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms
Seeing, contrary to popular wisdom, isn't believing. It's where belief stops, because it isn't needed any more.
— Terry Pratchett, Pyramids
"My gut feeling, and it's nothing more than that," he says, "is that there's a 20 percent chance we're living in a computer simulation."
— Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at Oxford University (as quoted in a NYT article by John Tierney, 8/14/07)
The truth may be out there, but the lies are inside your head.
— Terry Pratchett, Hogfather
Face Recognition
I shouldn't know you again if we did meet, Humpty Dumpty replied in a discontented tone… You're so exactly like other people.
The face is what one goes by, generally, Alice remarked in a thoughtful tone.
That's just what I complain of, said Humpty Dumpty. Your face is the same as everybody has ? the two eyes, so ? (marking their places in the air with his thumb) nose in the middle, mouth under. It's always the same. Now if you had the two eyes on the same side of the nose, for instance? or the mouth at the top? that would be some help.
— Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
Middle age is when you've met so many people that every new person you meet reminds you of someone else.
— Ogden Nash (1902-1971)
a set of stimuli composed of three rounded parts - a base, body, and head - one on top of the other, with protrusions that are readily labelled penis, nose, and ears. Unfortunately, these rounded, bilaterally symmetrical creatures closely resemble humanoid characters, such as the Yoda (in Return of the Jedi).
— Biederman, I., & Kalocsai, P. (1997). Neurocomputational bases of object and face recognition. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 352(1358), 1203-1219.
Cognition
Why is it that our memory is good enough to retain the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not good enough to recollect how often we have told it to the same person?
— Francois de La Rochefoucauld (1613 - 1680)
Social Cognition
It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things.
— Terry Pratchett, Jingo
"Good grief!" groaned the ones who had stars at the first.
"We're still the best Sneetches and they are the worst.
But, now, how in the world will we know," they all frowned,
"If which kind is what, or the other way round?"
— Dr. Seuss, The Sneetches
Philosophy
On my bad days, I sometimes wonder what philosophers are for.
— Jerry Fodor, TLS Review of Adapting Minds by David J. Buller
One of the recurring philosophical questions is:
'Does a falling tree in the forest make a sound when there is no one to hear?'
Which says something about the nature of philosophers , because there is always someone in a forest. It may only be a badger, wondering what that cracking noise was, or a squirrel a bit puzzled by all the scenery going upwards, but someone.
— Terry Pratchett, Small Gods
Seeing, contrary to popular wisdom, isn't believing. It's where belief stops, because it isn't needed any more.
— Terry Pratchett, Pyramids
General Science
Every good scientist is half B. F. Skinner and half P. T. Barnum.
— Principal Skinner, The Simpsons
There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty. The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass!
— Terry Pratchett, The Truth
This isn't right. It's not even wrong.
— Wolfgang Pauli
In science, if an idea is not falsifiable, it is not that it is wrong, it is that we cannot determine if it is wrong, and thus it is not even wrong.
— Michael Shermer, Wronger Than Wrong in Scientifican American, Nov 2006
Susan Borman recalls being told by a NASA official, "You know, Susan, I think we’ve got a good 50-50 chance of getting them back," to which she replied, "Oh, thank you, because that’s a lot better than what I was thinking."
— As reported in a Discovery Channel special on the the Apollo Moon Program
