#singular

May we agree that private life is irrelevant? Multiple, mixed, ambiguous at best - out of it we try to fashion the crystal clear, the singular, the absolute, and that is what is relevant; that is what matters. ↗

— May Sarton

#agree #ambiguous #best #clear #crystal

Losing a child is probably the singular most horrible thing. ↗

— Laura Schlessinger

#horrible #losing #most #probably #singular

Some of the fantasy objects arising from cybernetic totalism (like the noosphere, which is a supposed global brain formed by the sum of all the human brains connected through the internet) happen to motivate infelicitous technological designs. For instance, designs that celebrate the noosphere tend to energize the inner troll, or bad actor, within humans. ↗

— Jaron Lanier

#trolls #design

Movies will end up being this esoteric art form, where only singular people will put films out in a small group of theaters. ↗

— M. Night Shyamalan

#art form #being #end #esoteric #films

The residence of the Plymouth settlers in the Netherlands, and the later conquest of the Dutch colonies, had brought the Americans into contact with the singularly wise and free institutions of the Dutch. ↗

— Albert Bushnell Hart

#colonies #conquest #contact #dutch #free

Imagine - a thousand Eleanors ruling under a thousand suns. ↗

— David Marusek

#imagination

Imagine, Bishop, that you have a beloved cat, but that your cat is not with you. If you close your eyes and further imagine you are petting your cat, the same neurons in your brains are activated as if you were petting the actual cat. Our minds may know the difference between its models and reality itself, but it prefers its models. So much so that we apprehend reality through our models, rather than directly via the sense. When I'm speaking to you, I have a little bishop in my head, and though I speak out load, I'm speaking to my little bishop. When you answer, I can only perceive you through my model of you. Mentars also make models, but they don't apprehend reality through them. They end up, not with little people in their minds, but with highly complex rule sets. They relate to their models in the same way we relate to weather models, as things to consult, but not to conflate with external reality. ↗

— David Marusek

#perception #reality #singularity #imagination

The total absence of humor from the Bible is one of the most singular things in all literature. ↗

— Alfred North Whitehead

#bible #humor #literature #most #singular

But this was the real world wasn't it? Miracles must happen in some parallel universe. ↗

— Clyde Dsouza

#science-vs-religion #singularity #transhumanism #religion

During this time I had the singular good fortune of being able to discuss the problem constantly with Einstein. Some experiments done at Einstein's suggestion yielded no decisively new result. ↗

— Walther Bothe

#being #constantly #decisively #discuss #done