Quote Of The Week

Quote of the Week 35 " We can know more than we can tell. " ―  Michael Polanyi  ( Polanyi's paradox ) Triggered by a reference to the paradox in a recent presentation at ICML 2023 by Prof. Subbarao Kambhampati :  Avenging Polanyi's Revenge: Exploiting the Approximate Omniscience of LLMs in Planning without Deluding Yourself In the Process

Quote of the Week 34 " The liar cares about the truth and attempts to hide it; the bullshitter doesn't care if what they say is true or false. " ― Harry G. Frankfurt (" On Bullshit ")  Triggered by the ongoing discussion of trustworthiness of Large Language Models' (LLMs) output. Under this definition LLMs are bullshitters, not liars. But liars can use them to amplify their lies. Full quote : "The liar cares about the truth and attempts to hide it; the bullshitter doesn't care if what they say is true or false, but rather only cares whether or not their listener is persuaded." Related : „It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction.“ „Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstance require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about.“

Quote of the Week 33 " You always own the option of having no opinion. " ― Marcus Aurelius     Triggered by the use of the quote in a recent Daily Stoic   tweet : “You always own the option of having no opinion.” — Marcus Aurelius — Daily Stoic (@dailystoic) August 12, 2023 See also:  10 Stoic Rules From Marcus Aurelius RULE 5: You always own the option of having no opinion. There is never any need to get worked up or to trouble your soul about things you can't control. These things are not asking to be judged by you. Leave them alone.

Quote of the Week 32 " It takes a long time to become young. " ―  Pablo Picasso   Triggered by John Maeda's compilation of Picasso quotes  including " One starts to get young at 60, and then it’s too late . " See also:  https://joemckeever.com/wp/it-takes-a-long-time-to-become-young/ In his book by this title, Garson Kanin , a well-known playwright, told how Pablo Picasso walked into a hall where a massive display of his paintings was being exhibited. The artist strode into the gathering with a beautiful young woman on each arm and a smile on his countenance. Someone approached him and after the greeting, said, “Sire, I have a question. There is something about your painting that puzzles me.” The man pointed out that in Picasso’s first paintings, done when he was a young man, the scenes are dark and formal and according to all the standards. But, he said, “The paintings of your latter years are alive and colorful and so youthful! How do you explain that?” Picass...

Quote of the Week 31 " The higher you climb, the smaller your world becomes. " ― Esther Crawford   Triggered by Esther's tweet about working with Elon Musk at Twitter: Like seemingly everyone on this app I have plenty of opinions about Twitter > X and figure now is a good time to open up a bit about my experience at the company. I tweeted for years into the void for the love of it like many of you, but after selling my startup to Twitter in… pic.twitter.com/bw7CHhk0Xg — Esther Crawford ✨ (@esthercrawford) July 26, 2023

Quote of the Week 30 " The only definition of a leader is someone who has followers. " ― Peter F. Drucker   Triggered by a discussion about leadership on Wednesday last week where I claimed that "Someone is a true leader when people follow the person voluntarily." just to find out that Peter Drucker has expressed a similar thought well before I ever did: " The only definition of a leader is someone who has followers. To gain followers requires influence but does not exclude the lack of integrity in achieving this ."

Quote of the Week 29 " What goes up must come down. " ― Old adage  (sometimes attributed to Isaac Newton )   Triggered by a report on the declining interest in ChatGPT.    

Quote of the Week 28 " The unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible. " ― Stephen King  (variation of a quote by Oscar Wilde)   " The unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable. " ― Oscar Wilde     Triggered by King's tweet last week reflecting on the positive consumer reaction to Meta Thread vs. X Twitter.   Musk vs. Zuckerberg reminds me of what Oscar Wilde had to say about fox hunting: the unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible. — Stephen King (@StephenKing) July 7, 2023    

Quote of the Week 27 " You can’t control what happens to you, but you can control how you react to it. " ― Ryan Holiday ( The Daily Stoic ) A variation of: " You don’t control the situation, but you control what you think about it. " ― Ryan Holiday   See also: “You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control your attitude  toward what happens to you, and in that, you will be mastering change rather  than allowing it to master you.”  ―  Brian Tracy " It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters. " ―  Epictetus Triggered by the use of a variant of the quote in a recent Daily Stoic  tweet : You don’t control the situation, but you control what you think about it. — Daily Stoic (@dailystoic) June 29, 2023 Related: " Between stimulus and response lies a space. In that space lie our freedom and power to choose a response. In our response lies our growth and our happiness. " ― Viktor Frankl  

Quote of the Week 26 " So GPT-4 is actually 8 expert raccoons in a trenchcoat. " ― Sasha Luccioni   Triggered by the citation of Luccioni's tweet in the article " GPT-4's Secret Has Been Revealed " by Alberto Romero. So GPT-4 is actually 8 expert raccoons in a trenchcoat 😂 https://t.co/eRWhcZoJ5l — Dr. Sasha Luccioni 💻🌎🦋✨🤗 (@SashaMTL) June 20, 2023 Image created with Microsoft Bing Image Creator (powered by DALL-E):