A distinguished researcher once commented to me that a real scientist is someone who can think about a subject while talking to his or her spouse about something else.

— Edward O. Wilson, Letters to a Young Scientist

The best we can do (we who are not gods) is, Kant wrote, comprehend its incomprehensibility.

— Martin Gardner, The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener

You are never entitled to your opinion. Ever! You are not even entitled to “I don’t know.” You are entitled to your desires, and sometimes to your choices. You might own a choice, and if you can choose your preferences, you may have the right to do so. But your beliefs are not about you; beliefs are about the world. Your beliefs should be your best available estimate of the way things are; anything else is a lie.

— Eliezer Yudkowsky, How to Actually Change Your Mind

In order to most smoothly navigate and benefit from the next act of the Digital Age, when these technologies will begin to enter the human body, we must realize that since the dawn of Homo sapiens we have been ‘steered organisms’ (a literal translation of ‘cyborgs’) – that is, steering ourselves through a series of ‘upgrades’, including language acquisition, education, and vaccination.

— Natasha Beranek, We Have Always Been Cyborgs

The best lessons I’ve learned weren’t rules, principles, or axioms, but were frameworks for how to think about problems.

— David Bryant Copeland, SOLID Is Not Solid