“Intelligence consists in ignoring things that are irrelevant.”
Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 78
“They think that intelligence is about noticing things are relevant (detecting patterns); in a complex world, intelligence consists in ignoring things that are irrelevant (avoiding false patterns)”
Last update June 3, 2021.
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W. Brian Arthur
(1946) American economist
"Coming from Your Inner Self", Conversation with W. Brian Arthur, Xerox PARC (16 April 1999) http://web.archive.org/web/20071011023150/http://www.dialogonleadership.org/Arthur-1999.html, by Joseph Jaworski, Gary Jusela, C. Otto Scharmer
Context: Complexity theory is really a movement of the sciences. Standard sciences tend to see the world as mechanistic. That sort of science puts things under a finer and finer microscope. In biology the investigations go from classifying organisms to functions of organisms, then organs themselves, then cells, and then organelles, right down to protein and enzymes, metabolic pathways, and DNA. This is finer and finer reductionist thinking.
The movement that started complexity looks in the other direction. It’s asking, how do things assemble themselves? How do patterns emerge from these interacting elements? Complexity is looking at interacting elements and asking how they form patterns and how the patterns unfold. It’s important to point out that the patterns may never be finished. They’re open-ended. In standard science this hit some things that most scientists have a negative reaction to. Science doesn’t like perpetual novelty.
John Leonard
(1939–2008) American critic, writer, and commentator
"Books of the Times" http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9506EFD61038F930A1575AC0A964948260&scp=62&sq=&st=nyt, The New York Times (23 September 1982)
Seed of Light (1959)
“For, among the world's incertitudes, this thing called arithmetic is established by a sure reasoning that we comprehend as we do the heavenly bodies. It is an intelligible pattern, a beautiful system, that both binds the heavens and preserves the earth. For is there anything that lacks measure, or transcends weight? It includes all, it rules all, and all things have their beauty because they are perceived under its standard.”
Haec enim quae appellatur arithmetica inter ambigua mundi certissima ratione consistit, quam cum caelestibus aequaliter novimus: evidens ordo, pulchra dispositio, cognitio simplex, immobilis scientia, quae et superna continet et terrena custodit. quid est enim quod aut mensuram non habeat aut pondus excedat? omnia complectitur, cuncta moderatur et universa hinc pulchritudinem capiunt, quia sub modo ipsius esse noscuntur.
Bk. 1, no. 10; p. 12.
Variae
“Intelligence rules the world, ignorance carries the burden…”
Marcus Garvey
(1887–1940) Jamaica-born British political activist, Pan-Africanist, orator, and entrepreneur
Source: Gather, Darkness! (1950), Chapter 10 (p. 106)
Zbigniew Brzeziński
(1928–2017) Polish-American political scientist
Spokespersons of US Right 'In Most Cases Stunningly Ignorant, Interview in Der Spiegel http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,733079,00.html, December 6, 2010.
“Irrelevant things may happen to you, but once they have happened they all become relevant.”
Mignon McLaughlin
(1913–1983) American journalist
The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified