“The importance of information is directly proportional to its improbability.”

—  Jerry Pournelle, book Lucifer's Hammer

Lucifer's Hammer (1985)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The importance of information is directly proportional to its improbability." by Jerry Pournelle?
Jerry Pournelle photo
Jerry Pournelle10
American science fiction writer and journalist 1933–2017

Related quotes

“It [knowledge] is clearly related to information, which we can now measure; and an economist especially is tempted to regard knowledge as a kind of capital structure, corresponding to information as an income flow. Knowledge, that is to say, is some kind of improbable structure or stock made up essentially of patterns — that is, improbable arrangements, and the more improbable the arrangements, we might suppose, the more knowledge there is.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1960s, Beyond Economics: Essays on Society, 1968, p. 142

David Allen photo

“Your ability to generate power is directly proportional to your ability to relax.”

David Allen (1945) American productivity consultant and author

Source: Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

Karl Marx photo

“The increase in value of the world of things is directly proportional to the decrease in value of the human world.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Source: Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844/The Communist Manifesto

John Desmond Bernal photo

“[The goal of efficiency was] a system in which all relevant information would be available to each research worker in an amplitude proportional to its degree of relevance.”

John Desmond Bernal (1901–1971) British scientist

Source: The Social Function of Science (1939), p. 249

Douglas Engelbart photo

“The rate at which a person can mature is directly proportional to the embarrassment he can tolerate.”

Douglas Engelbart (1925–2013) American engineer and inventor

Source: Computerworld 25th Anniversary edition, June 22, 1992, p 43, https://books.google.com/books?id=eiRpHBklEHQC&pg=RA1-PA42&lpg=RA1-PA42&dq=computerworld+%2B+a+person+matures+embarrassment&source=bl&ots=bMx50Sem4y&sig=hzsMesVv-vntfgEfrroBc0YrorQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi93rKcucDJAhVL22MKHTBvCDAQ6AEIHTAA#v=onepage&q=computerworld%20%2B%20a%20person%20matures%20embarrassment&f=false

Gregory Benford photo

“Passion was inversely proportional to the amount of real information available.”

Gregory Benford book Timescape

Source: Timescape (1980), Chapter 14 (p. 182, known as Benford's law of controversy)
Context: It was an example of what he thought of as the Law of Controversy: Passion was inversely proportional to the amount of real information available.

“In the Middle Ages, there was a scarcity of information but its very scarcity made it both important and usable.”

Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985)
Context: In the Middle Ages, there was a scarcity of information but its very scarcity made it both important and usable. This began to change, as everyone knows, in the late 15th century when a goldsmith named Gutenberg, from Mainz, converted an old wine press into a printing machine, and in so doing, created what we now call an information explosion.... Nothing could be more misleading than the idea that computer technology introduced the age of information. The printing press began that age, and we have not been free of it since.

Mwanandeke Kindembo photo

“Criticism is directly proportional to success. Therefore, it's almost impossible to wish for success without tasting the former attribute.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“The idea of knowledge as an improbable structure is still a good place to start. Knowledge, however, has a dimension which goes beyond that of mere information or improbability. This is a dimension of significance which is very hard to reduce to quantitative form. Two knowledge structures might be equally improbable but one might be much more significant than the other.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1960s, Beyond Economics: Essays on Society, 1968, p. 142

Bertrand Russell photo

“A man is rational in proportion as his intelligence informs and controls his desires.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: Sceptical Essays

Related topics