“All novelty involves some degree of risk. The vast majority of biological mutations are said to be harmful. When, as in human affairs, enormous numbers of random possibilities are eliminated by rational choice, the chances of harm rather than good resulting are reduced, not eliminated.”

— Tom Burns

Source: The Management of Innovation, 1961, p. 21

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Tom Burns 8

British sociologist 1913–2001

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“It is possible that efforts to contemplate some risk area—say, existential risk—will do more harm than good. One might suppose that thinking about a topic should be entirely harmless, but this is not necessarily so. If one gets a good idea, one will be tempted to share it; and in so doing one might create an information hazard. Still, one likes to believe that, on balance, investigations into existential risks and most other risk areas will tend to reduce rather than increase the risks of their subject matter.”

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“Creationists insist that mutations are very rare and are usually, if not always harmful. But the fact is that the vast majority of mutations are completely neutral. They’d have to be because, according to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, there is an overall average of 128 mutations per human zygote! So apparently, in creationist terms, “very rare” means “more than a hundred per person right from the point of conception”. Because those are just the mutations we start out with. Our cells will mutate again 30 more times over the course of our lives, and some of these subsequent mutations can be passed on to our children too –usually with no more effect than those we recognize as family traits.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

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Source: "8th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TU-7d06HJSs, Youtube (March 22, 2008)

“One common strategy on which we should all be able to agree is to take steps to reduce the risk of human extinction when those steps are also highly effective in benefiting existing sentient beings. For example, eliminating or decreasing the consumption of animal products will benefit animals, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and lessen the chances of a pandemic resulting from a virus evolving among the animals crowded into today’s factory farms, which are an ideal breeding ground for viruses. That therefore looks like a high-priority strategy.”

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Source: The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically (2015), Chapter 15: Preventing Human Extinction (p. 177)

“Natural selection eliminates and maybe maintains, but it doesn't create… Neo-Darwinists say that new species emerge when mutations occur and modify an organism. I was taught over and over again that the accumulation of random mutations led to evolutionary change [which] led to new species. I believed it until I looked for evidence.”

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“It seems to me a core element of belief in God that a choice is a choice and it eliminates all other choices.”

Dave Sim (1956) Canadian cartoonist, creator of Cerebus

http://cerebusfangirl.com/artists/0306talk.php

“It is seen that continued shuffling may reasonably be expected to produce perfect "randomness" and to eliminate all traces of the original order. It should be noted, however, that the number of operations required for this purpose is extremely large.”

William Feller (1906–1970) Croatian-American mathematician

Source: An Introduction To Probability Theory And Its Applications (Third Edition), Chapter XV, Markov Chains, p. 407.

“I do want to reduce the income tax and if possible, eliminate the income tax…The first thing you do is balance the budget, then reduce the size of government.”

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“Our aim is to achieve a socialist system of society, which, by eliminating the division of mankind into classes, by eliminating all exploitation of man by man and nation by nation, will inevitably eliminate the very possibility of war.”

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“The theory of chance consists in reducing all the events of the same kind to a certain number of cases equally possible”

Pierre-Simon Laplace book Philosophical Essay on Probabilities

Philosophical Essay on Probabilities (1902)
Context: The theory of chance consists in reducing all the events of the same kind to a certain number of cases equally possible, that is to say, to such as we may be equally undecided about in regard to their existence, and in determining the number of cases favorable to the event whose probability is sought.<!--p.6

“If you eliminate all possible explanations, then the impossible is the answer.”

Jessica Bird book Lover Unbound

Source: Lover Unbound

“All novelty involves some degree of risk. The vast majority of biological mutations are said to be harmful. When, as in human affairs, enormous numbers of random possibilities are eliminated by rational choice, the chances of harm rather than good resulting are reduced, not eliminated.”

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