“Does anyone not have any problems with taking ideas seriously? I think I'm in this category because ideas like cryonics, the Singularity, [unfriendly artificial intelligence], and Tegmark's mathematical universe were all immediately obvious to me as ideas to take seriously, and I did so without much conscious effort or deliberation.”
In a discussion thread https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Q8jyAdRYbieK8PtfT/taking-ideas-seriously#Ym77AptKtD2h9bXXd on LessWrong, August 2010
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Wei Dai14
Cryptocurrency pioneer and computer scientistRelated quotes
“I would like to take you seriously but to do so would affront your intelligence.”
William F. Buckley Jr. (1925–2008) American conservative author and commentator
Steven Weinberg (1933) American theoretical physicist
1977
The First Three Minutes (1977; second edition 1993)
“Do you seriously entertain the idea that without the observer there is no reality?”
Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist
"On the Philosophical Problems in Quantizing Macroscopic Objects"(ca. 1962-1963) as quoted by Morinigo, Wagner, & Hatfield, Feynman Lectures on Gravitation (2002)
Context: This is all very confusing, especially when we consider that even though we may consistently consider ourselves to be the outside observer when we look at the rest of the world, the rest of the world is at the same time observing us, and that often we agree on what we see in each other. Does this then mean that my observations become real only when I observe an observer observing something as it happens? This is a horrible viewpoint. Do you seriously entertain the idea that without the observer there is no reality? Which observer? Any observer? Is a fly an observer? Is a star an observer? Was there no reality in the universe before 109 B. C. when life began? Or are you the observer? Then there is no reality to the world after you are dead? I know a number of otherwise respectable physicists who have bought life insurance.
Edmund Clerihew Bentley book Trent's Own Case
Source: Trent's Own Case (1936), Chapter XXI: "Aunt Judith Knits"
Donald Miller book Blue Like Jazz: nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality
Blue Like Jazz (2003, Nelson Books)
Richard Bertrand Spencer (1978) American white supremacist
23 November 2018 https://twitter.com/RichardBSpencer/status/1066238599253843968 regarding Andrew Yang, highlighted 11 March 2019 by Vox https://www.vox.com/2019/3/11/18256198/andrew-yang-gang-presidential-policies-universal-basic-income-joe-rogan and 10 April 2019 by Mother Jones https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/04/andrew-yang-4chan-alt-right/ <br class="br">2018
