Assorted Quotes to Ponder


Here are some of my favorite quotes from this list.

Personally, I've been hearing all my life about the Serious Philosophical Issues posed by life extension, and my attitude has always been that I'm willing to grapple with those issues for as many centuries as it takes.



-- Patrick Nielsen Hayden

"If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you jump too?"
"Oh jeez. Probably."
"What!? Why!?"
"Because all my friends did. Think about it -- which scenario is more likely: every single person I know, many of them levelheaded and afraid of heights, abruptly went crazy at exactly the same time... ...or the bridge is on fire?"

-- Randal Monroe (XKCD)

You are not the king of your brain. You are the creepy guy standing next to the king going "a most judicious choice, sire".

-- Steven Kaas (Twitter)

A Bet is a Tax on Bullshit

-- Alex Tabarrok (Marginal Revolution)

It shouldn't be disrespectful to the complexity of the human condition to say that despair is also, often, just low blood sugar.

-- Alain de Botton

Ignorance killed the cat; curiosity was framed!

-- C.J. Cherryh

In some species of Anglerfish, the male is much smaller than the female and incapable of feeding independently. To survive, he must smell out a female as soon as he hatches. He bites into her, releasing an enzyme which fuses him to her permanently. He lives off her blood for the rest of his life, providing her with sperm whenever she needs it. Females can have multiple males attached. The morale is simple: males are parasites, women are sluts. Ha! Just kidding! The moral is don't treat actual animal behavior like a fable. Generally speaking, animals have no interest in teaching you anything.

-- Oglaf (comic)

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ‘merely relative,’ is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.

-- Roger Scruton

Cryonics is an experiment. So far the control group isn't doing very well.


-- Ralph Merkle

Charles II is said to have himself toyed with the philosophers, asking them to explain why a fish weighs more after it has died. Upon receiving various ingenious answers, he pointed out that in fact a dead fish does not weigh anything more.

-- Robert Pasnau (New York Times)

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