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Peter Watts

Peter Watts Quotes

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Famous Peter Watts Quotes

“Every concert pianist knows that the surest way to ruin a performance is to be aware of what the fingers are doing. Every dancer and acrobat knows enough to let the mind go, let the body run itself. Every driver of a manual vehicle arrives at destinations with no recollection of the stops and turns and roads traveled in getting there. You are all sleepwalkers, whether climbing creative peaks or slogging through some mundane routine for the thousandth time. You are all sleepwalkers.”

KnowsWayMindEnoughBodyRunningTurnsCreativePerformancesFingersRuinsDancerDestinationDriversRoutineClimbingConcertsVehicleTraveledMundaneRecollectionManualsPianistRoads Traveled
Book:Blindsight
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“Perfect hexagonal tubes in a packed array. Bees are hard-wired to lay them down, but how does an insect know enough geometry to lay down a precise hexagon? It doesn't. It's programmed to chew up wax and spit it out while turning on its axis, and that generates a circle. Put a bunch of bees on the same surface, chewing side-by-side, and the circles abut against each other - deform each other into hexagons, which just happen to be more efficient for close packing anyway.”

KnowsDoeHardEnoughHappensSidesPerfectLaysSurfaceCirclesBunchEfficientBeesPreciseInsectsGeometrySpitTubesAxesChewingPacking
Book:Firefall
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“Computers bootstrap their own offspring, grow so wise and incomprehensible that their communiqués assume the hallmarks of dementia: unfocused and irrelevant to the barely-intelligent creatures left behind. And when your surpassing creations find the answers you asked for, you can't understand their analysis and you can't verify their answers. You have to take their word on faith.”

LeftGrowsAnswersBehindsWiseCreationCreaturesComputerIntelligentAssumingAnalysisIrrelevantLeft BehindOffspringHallmarkDementiaVerifySurpassingBootstraps
Book:Firefall
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