“If we want to have a predictable life... then we have to build in these... pockets of reducibility. If we were... existing in this irreducible world, we'd never be able to... know what's going to happen.”

— Stephen Wolfram

Stephen Wolfram: Fundamental Theory of Physics, Life, and the Universe (Sep 15, 2020)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 14, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "If we want to have a predictable life... then we have to build in these... pockets of reducibility. If we were... exist…" by Stephen Wolfram?

Stephen Wolfram 16

British-American computer scientist, mathematician, physici… 1959

Related quotes

“[W]e live... in the pockets of reducibility. ...I should have realized [that] very many years ago, but didn't... [I]t could very well be that everything about the world is computationally irreducible and completely unpredictable, but... in our experience of the world there is at least some amount of prediction we can make. ...[T]hat's because we have ...chosen a slice of ...how to think about the universe, in which we can... sample a certain amount of computational reducibility, and that's... where we exist. ...It may not be the whole story about how the universe is, but it is that part of the universe that we care about and ...operate in. ...In science, that's been ...a very special case ...science has chosen to talk a lot about places where there is this computational reducibility... The motion of the planets can be ...predicted. The... weather is much harder to predict. ...[S]cience has tended to concentrate itself on places where its methods have allowed successful prediction.”

Stephen Wolfram (1959) British-American computer scientist, mathematician, physicist, writer and businessman

Stephen Wolfram: Fundamental Theory of Physics, Life, and the Universe (Sep 15, 2020)

“[S]cience has become used to... using the little... pockets of computational reducibility ([A]n inevitable consequence of computational irreducibility... There have to be these pockets ...scattered around.) to be able to find those cases where you can jump ahead.”

Stephen Wolfram (1959) British-American computer scientist, mathematician, physicist, writer and businessman

Stephen Wolfram: Fundamental Theory of Physics, Life, and the Universe (Sep 15, 2020)

“On Elsewhere we fool ourselves into thinking we know what will be just because we know the amount of time we have left. We know this, but we never really know what will be. We never know what will happen…”

Gabrielle Zevin book Elsewhere

Source: Elsewhere

“If we had known we were going to win control of the Senate, we'd have run better candidates.”

Bob Dole (1923) American politician

Attributed to Bob Dole by Charlie Cook, "The Democrats' Wild Ride," Cook Political Report, (June 12, 2010)

“Cognitively we don’t know and will never discover what occasions the cause of our existence, we don’t know the purpose of our existence and we don’t know why we have to disappear from here once we have been placed here, I don’t know, why I have to live this fragmentary existence, which happened to be my lot, instead of a life that perhaps does exist somewhere. Why did I get this lot? This sex, this body, this awareness, this geographic setting, this fate, this language, this history, this rented room?”

Imre Kertész book Kaddish for an Unborn Child

Kaddish for a Child Not Born (1990)

“You and I want our lives to matter. We want our lives to make a real difference — to be of genuine consequence in the world. We know that there is no satisfaction in merely going through the motions in life, even if those motions make us successful or even if we have arranged to make those motions pleasant. We want to know we have had some impact on the world. In fact, you and I want to contribute to the quality of life. We want to make the world work.”

Werner Erhard (1935) Critical Thinker and Author

Source: The End of Starvation : Creating an Idea Whose Time Has Come, Werner Erhard, 1977, 3 http://www.wernererhard.net/thpsource.html,
Source: Also published in — The end of starvation: creating an idea whose time has come, 3, 1982, Werner Erhard http://books.google.com/books?id=4o4wAAAAMAAJ&q=%22be+of+genuine+consequence+in+the+world%22&dq=%22be+of+genuine+consequence+in+the+world%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=rpyFUvTMB6_MsQT0sYCwDQ&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAQ,
Source: Also quoted in — [The Answer : What do you mean I have to figure it out for myself?, 2001, Quila H. Creig] and — [The Spartan Life 2, Scott Westerman, ‎2012]

“We could no more have a universal world market than we could have a system in which everyone who wasn't a capitalist was somehow able to to become a respectable, regularly paid wage laborer with access to adequate dental care. A world like that has never existed and never could exist. What's more, the moment that even the prospect that this might happen begins to materialize, the whole system starts to come apart.”

David Graeber (1961) American anthropologist and anarchist

Source: Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), Chapter Eleven, "Age of the Great Capitalist Empires", p. 355

“We have to communicate: we don't want to force, even though we have a right to establish a building, because what we want is a peaceful situation.”

Antonius Subianto Bunjamin (1968) Indonesian catholic priest

Source: Indonesia Church leaders focus on dialogue, communication http://www.archivioradiovaticana.va/storico/2016/06/09/indonesia_church_leaders_focus_on_dialogue,_communication/en-1235906 (2016)

“What's he building in there? We have a right to know.”

Tom Waits (1949) American singer-songwriter and actor

"What's He Building in There", Mule Variations (1999).

“God wants us to know we are saved, for saved people are dangerous people, willing to face off with the world, unafraid of the consequences since they know that, whatever happens, they will have eternal life.”

Max Lucado (1955) American clergyman and writer

Source: Max on Life: Answers and Insights to Your Most Important Questions

“If we want to have a predictable life... then we have to build in these... pockets of reducibility. If we were... existing in this irreducible world, we'd never be able to... know what's going to happen.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Stephen Wolfram 16

Related quotes

Related topics