William Duggan’s research in Strategic Intuition: The Creative Spark in Human Achievement asserts that when you completely let go, of even trying to solve the problem, the brain recategorizes and re-sorts all apparently unrelated information into new innovative solutions.

— Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman, and Kaley Klemp, The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership

…usually, when things suck, it’s because they suck in a way that’s a Nash equilibrium.

— Eliezer Yudkowsky, Inadequate Equilibria

…simple design is an imprecise discipline. It relies on judgment and experience. Done well, it is the first indication that separates an apprentice who knows the rules from a journeyman who understands the principles.

— Robert C. Martin, Clean Craftsmanship

There is a hole at the bottom of math, a hole that means we will never know everything with certainty. There will always be true statements that cannot be proven.

— Veritasium, Math’s Fundamental Flaw

Science is often presented in schools and museums as just another form of occult magic, with exotic creatures and colorful chemicals and eye-popping illusions. Foundational principles, such as that the universe has no goals related to human concerns, that all physical interactions are governed by a few fundamental forces, that living bodies are intricate molecular machines, and that the mind is the information-processing activity of the brain, are never articulated, perhaps because they would seem to insult religious and moral sensibilities.

— Steven Pinker, Rationality