#complexity

We are glorious accidents of an unpredictable process with no drive to complexity, not the expected results of evolutionary principles that yearn to produce a creature capable of understanding the mode of its own necessary construction. ↗

— Stephen Jay Gould

#capable #complexity #construction #creature #drive

My father taught me Basic and rudimentary C, I learned everything else on my own, including studying computational complexity on my own. That's more a function of my age than anything else though - back when I was in school there were hardly any programming classes. ↗

— Bram Cohen

#any #anything #back #basic #classes

Anyone who is considered funny will tell you, sometimes without even your asking, that deep inside they are very serious, neurotic, introspective people. ↗

— Wendy Wasserstein

#humanity-complexity #humor #mind #funny

Really, each era has its own false nostalgia. We all put a picket fence up around something. For my generation it was the '50s, and for other generations it will be something else. Change is scary for everyone, as is complexity, contradiction, and an uncertain future. ↗

— Gary Ross

#change #complexity #contradiction #each #else

We need a President who is not afraid of complexity, who believes in an open and tolerant society, and who knows that the world can be made new again - and that President is Al Gore. ↗

— Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg

#again #al #al gore #believes #complexity

Dealing with complexity is an inefficient and unnecessary waste of time, attention and mental energy. There is never any justification for things being complex when they could be simple. ↗

— Edward de Bono

#attention #being #complex #complexity #could

If our brains were simple enough for us to understand them, we'd be so simple that we couldn't. ↗

— Ian Stewart

#science #science

Indeed, "brute force" solutions are often characteristic of advanced cultures, not primitive ones. The Romans and their predecessors spent a long time figuring out how to build arches... and virtually all our buildings today use post-and-lintel construction, precisely what the arch was devised to replace. We have better materials and more money, and given that, arches are usually not worth the extra complexity. ↗

— Henry Spencer

#brute-force #complexity #elegance #engineering #architecture

Complexity begets ambiguity, which yields in all ways to prejudice and avarice. Complication does not so much defeat Men as arm them with fancy. ↗

— R. Scott Bakker

#man #men

Insofar as we appreciate order, it is when we perceive it as being accompanied by complexity, when we feel that a variety of elements has been brought to order--that windows, doors and other details have been knitted into a scheme that manages to be at once regular and intricate. (p184) ↗

— Alain de Botton

#building #chaos #complexity #order #architecture