…two kinds of complexity: Essential complexity is the kind that is inherent in the problem domain. Incidental complexity is the kind that is introduced solely by the solution.

— Jamie Allen, Reactive Design Patterns

…it places the very angels of Heaven and devils of Hell on an equal footing; confronted by angels pleading for brotherly love and devils bent on human pain and misery, the pure moral relativist would have to juggle the benefits of brotherly love with those of demonic torment. (After all, millions of sadistic, bloodthirsty demons are entitled to their viewpoint as well!)

— Christopher Michael Langan, The Art of Knowing

…the problem is the one-eyed following the blind: these self-described members of the “intelligentsia” can’t find a coconut on Coconut Island, meaning they aren’t intelligent enough to define intelligence, hence fall into circularities—their main skill is a capacity to pass exams written by people like them, or to write papers read by people like them.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game

The arts offer bridges to seeing human diversity as joyful, funny, tragic, delightful, not as a horrible fate to be shunned

— Martha Nussbaum, The Monarchy of Fear

In 1985, David Deutsch, one of the pioneers of this area, published a landmark paper in quantum computation, “Quantum theory, the Church-Turing principle and the universal quantum computer.” In this paper he described quantum computers and how they differed from conventional computers. The question was whether quantum computers were more computationally powerful than traditional computers. It took some time, but the conclusion was that they were not.

— Chris Bernhardt, Turing’s Vision