Soup.GroundPlane.org

“ Imatters of truth and justice, there is no difference between large and small problems, for issues concerning the treatment of people are all the same.

====

If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask, for once I know the proper question I could solve the problem in less than 5 minutes. ”

“ “What von Neumann contributed” was “this unshakable confidence that said: ‘Go ahead, nothing else matters, get it running at this speed and this capability, and the rest of it is just a lot of nonsense.’ . . . People ordinarily of modest aspirations, we all worked so hard and selflessly because we believed — we knew — it was happening here and at a few other places right then, and we were lucky to be in on it. . . . A tidal wave of computational power was about to break and inundate everything in science and much elsewhere, and things would never be the same.” ”

“ Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? ”

“ "Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity." ”

“ You can recognize a really good idea by the fact that its implementation seems impossible in the first place. ”

Reposted by

“

"As the world goes, the strong will do as they please and the weak will suffer what they must."

”

“ ... You may fly over a land forever; you may bomb it, atomize it, pulverize it and wipe it clean of life—but if you desire to defend it, protect it and keep it for civilization, you must do this on the ground, the way the Roman legions did, by putting your young men in the mud. ”

“ How do we prosper as a society? How can we define and achieve our ideals? What are the foundations of civil discourse? What is truth? What is right reason? How do we foster fair play and goodwill? ”

“ “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.” ”

Reposted by Lifeof

“ John Adams, "I must study politics and war, that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy . . . ," quoted in Seabury and Codevilla, War: Ends and Means, p. 3.
cited in Irfan Khawaja, “Victory: Means and End” ”

“ Like Plato, Strauss taught that within societies, "some are fit to lead, and others to be led," according to Drury. But, unlike Plato, who believed that leaders, which he called philosopher-kings, had to be people with such high moral standards that they could resist the temptations of power, Strauss thought that "those who are fit to rule are those who realise there is no morality and that there is only one natural right, the right of the superior to rule over the inferior."

Moral law was nonetheless indispensable Strauss' view because "it is necessary to keep internal order." It should be propagated through religion, which, like Karl Marx, Strauss considered to be "the opiate of the people," or in Strauss' own words, "a pious fraud." But religion is for the masses alone; the rulers need not be bound by it; indeed it would be absurd if they were, because they know there is no reality behind it. ”

“ The idea of democracy is a wider and fuller idea than can be exemplified in the state even at its best. To be realized, it must affect all modes of human association, the family, the school, industry, religion. And even as far as political arrangements are concerned, governmental institutions are but a mechanism for securing to an idea channels of effective operation. ... Regarded as an idea, democracy is not an altrenative to other principles of associated life. It is the idea of democracy itself." --John Dewey, "The Public and its Problems (1927; p. 143, 148) ”

“ even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds. And not only this, but, fourthly, the meaning of the doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost, or enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect on the character and conduct: the dogma becoming a mere formal profession, ”

“ History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.
Martin Luther King, Jr. ”

“ The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.

• Second Inaugural Address (20 January 1937)

”

“ Without the hard little bits of marble which are called 'facts' or 'data' one cannot compose a mosaic; what matters, however, are not so much the individual bits, but the successive patterns into which you arrange them, then break them up and rearrange them.

• The Act of Creation

”

“

Aim: Geiselman (1985) set out to investigate the effectiveness of the cognitive interview.

Method: Participants viewed a film of a violent crime and, after 48 hours, were interviewed by a policeman using one of three methods: the cognitive interview; a standard interview used by the Los Angeles Police; or an interview using hypnosis. The number of facts accurately recalled and the number of errors made were recorded.

Results: The average number of correctly recalled facts for the cognitive interview was 41.2, for hypnosis it was 38.0 and for the standard interview it was 29.4.  There was no significant difference in the number of errors in each condition.

Conclusion: The cognitive interview leads to better memory for events, with witnesses able to recall more relevant information compared with a traditional interview method.

”

“ "The definition of politics: In politics there are no right answers, only a continuous flow of compromises among groups resulting in a changing, cloudy, and ambiguous series of public decisions where appetite and ambition compete openly with knowledge and wisdom." (part of his presentation [MP3]) ”