2011-07-14 - Random Quotes

So the other day I decided I’d try and post at least one new post every week. That should give me 8 posts every two months which is good enough to archive. This decision seems to be problematic as I had a hard time actually getting myself to write this week. . So instead of trying to come up with something interesting I am going to find random quotes on Wikiquote and make comments about them.

“The evolution of the brain not only overshot the needs of prehistoric man, it is the only example of evolution providing a species with an organ which it does not know how to use.” Arthur Koestler

I find this to be a very interesting quote. It’s funny on a simple level because “ha ha people are dumb” but it also seems to have a deeper meaning. The weird thing is that people don’t really know how to use their brains. Think about it and then tell me how you made yourself think about it. The brain is a collection of neurons controlled by a series of chemical interactions. That part of the brain is fairly well understood but the mind itself created out of this is a mystery. The main issue with understanding the mind is that you have to use the mind in the process of understanding something. Now I’m not sure if that’s what he meant but it’s an interesting idea none the less.

“Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing.” Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia)

Wikipedia is a great place to learn about things and to spend hours looking up random things but it is not the ultimate repository of knowledge. For starters the vast majority of human knowledge is lost to time. One simply has to sit in on a debate about historical events to realize that we have forgotten a great many things. Some of them weren’t recorded, others were lost and still others were destroyed. You can’t have the sum of human knowledge because you don’t have access to all of it to record it. Secondly people have always had access to the knowledge that was there. It might have required a bit more work to go to a library or a museum to learn about things but there is nothing on Wikipedia that one could not learn from some other means. If it were the case that Wikipedia had knowledge that didn’t exist somewhere else then the writer couldn’t have learned it to record it.

“Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket: and do not pull it out and strike it, merely to show that you have one. “ Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th earl of Chesterfield

I like this quote. Wear your learning and keep it with you but don’t show it off just for the sake of it. There’s a time and a place for everything including a time and a place to share what you have learned. You may even want to share what you have learned on Wikipedia since that’s where the sum of all human knowledge is shared. Of course if you learned your knowledge on Wikipedia you may want to double check it before you go using it in public. It’s probably right but maybe you read that article on the one day someone put a silly update on it. It is also not advisable to hide what you have learned. If you know something and a situation could benefit from your sharing that knowledge then you should. Knowing what time it is can be helpful; knowing that you have a nice watch isn’t really.