“Distinguishing the signal from the noise requires both scientific knowledge and self-knowledge: the serenity to accept the things we cannot predict, the courage to predict the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” - Nate Silver
"We have confused knowing more with knowing better. The exponential growth of scientific knowledge made possible by trading breadth for depth is accompanied by the exponential growth of ignorance of how all scientific findings fit together into one known reality."
— Our War on Ourselves: Rethinking Science, Technology, and Economic Growth (p. 58) by Willem H. Vanderburg
"In science, being stuck can be a sign that you are about to make a great leap forward. The things that don’t make sense are, in some ways, the only things that matter."
— 13 Things That Don’t Make Sense by Michael Brooks
"In this world of abundance, knowledge is not a library but a playlist tuned to our present interests. It is not eternally truthful content but subject matter good enough for our current task. It is not a realm but a path that gets us where we’re going."
—
Ch 9 Building the New Infrastructure of Knowledge (p. 176)
Too Big To Know by David Weinberger
"Welcome to the life of knowledge once it has been taken down from its shelf. It is misquoted, degraded, enhanced, incorporated, passed around through a thousand degrees of misunderstanding, and assimilated to the point of invisibility. It was ever so. Now we can see it happening. When the process of knowing occurs online, in our midst, with a comment section and abundant links to other opinions, it’s no longer possible to separate knowledge-at-work from knowledge-as-it-is-understood."
—
Ch 6 Long Form, Web Form (p. 110)
Too Big To Know by David Weinberger
