Brains are survival engines, not truth detectors.
Peter Watts, Blindsight.
“What's the survival value of obsessing on a sunset?”
“If the rest of your brain were conscious, it would probably regard you as the pointy-haired boss from Dilbert”
“After four thousand years we cant even prove that reality exists beyond the mind of the first-person dreamer.”
“Once there were three tribes. The Optimists, whose patron saints were Drake and Sagan, believed in a universe crawling with gentle intelligencespiritual brethren vaster and more enlightened than we...”
“You cant turn a sunset into a string of grunts without losing something.”
“The most altruistic and sustainable philosophies fail before the brute brain stem imperative of self-interest.”
“I am insane, does that surprise you? Ha! I think my mind is crumbling, just like crackers. If I had written five minutes earlier I would have wept, if I had written ten minutes earlier I would have...”
“When we think we're multitasking we're actually multiswitching. That is what the brain is very good at doing - quickly diverting its attention from one place to the next. We think we're being produ...”
“Learn to deal with the fact that you are not a perfect person but you are a person that deserves respect and honesty.”