Jaron Lanier Quotes
The wisdom of crowds works when the crowd is choosing the price of an ox, when there's a single numeric average. But if it's a design or something that matters, the decision is made by committee, and that's crap. You want people and groups who are able to think thoughts before they share.
Quotes to Explore
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If only one in 1,000 people that I talk to goes on to write a good book, that's one more good book that I've helped along... and maybe it will be a book I love myself five or 10 years down the line.
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It's a luxury to not have to just be performing with other people to have my music heard.
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I am kind of the front man for a team of people behind the scenes who are working just as hard as me and are putting in just as much time to make this all happen. I'm not trying to be humble. I just want everyone to get credit where credit is due.
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I think there is an enormous sea change happening in the global workforce. It has a lot to do with globalization. I think that people used to have a hope for a career or meaningful employment, and its been reduced to internships, part-time work or just grossly underpaid work.
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I retire every time I'm done with a movie. Then I go back. You know, I enjoy sleep. But I love to work; it's fun for me. As long as it continues to be fun, and I'm tolerated by the people around me, I will do it.
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I worked as a telemarketer for an SAT-prep company. That was the worst of it, because I had to call people in post-Katrina New Orleans and offer them this very, very expensive SAT class. And I'm not even a good salesman.
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I feel like I'm a natural-born playwright, but the prose thing has always mystified me. How to keep it going? How do people do it, for years and years?
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Reporters tend to find in others what they are suited to find, so there is a whole school of reporting where they are cynical about the world, and everything reinforces that. Whereas I tend to be optimistic and be amused by people and like them, even rather bad people.
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People in Sweden talk a lot about the weather - how much we hate it. But Finns get more depressed.
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My dad died, I think, at 87. So I'll be lucky if I make 87. But in a lot of cases, the younger people live longer than their parents. And they know more. My dad used to tell me he ate the hog from his rooter to his tooter. So do I when I'm not trying to lose weight.
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Life is about timing.
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Helping people boost themselves out of poverty is the best way to make a lasting positive difference in a person's life.
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I like to take pictures of lots of things: people-such as my nephews, my dogs, and just interesting objects that I see. For instance, I might take a picture of flowers by the side of the road, an old sign or a fence.
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Black people were very angry with me for writing the book. A lot of people didn't believe me, or didn't want to believe me, and that used to really bother me. It was a very painful and difficult time.
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I used to always run off at the mouth and talk about people. I just didn't know that it would make a living for me.
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You can go into Mark Twain's material and prove anything you want. He was against war. He was for war. He was against rich people and he was for them. He was a kaleidoscope.
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I've met Michael Keaton, John Favreau, Marisa Tomei - they're all really amazing people and really, really professional. I've learned so much from just watching them operate on set.
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Bankruptocracy is as much a European predicament as it is an American 'invention.' The difference between the experience of the two continents is that at least Americans did not have to labour under the enormous design faults of the eurozone.
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The usefulness of a meeting rises with the square of the number of people present.
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A large fraction of the most interesting scientists have read a lot of SF at one time or another, either early enough that it may have played a part in their becoming scientists or at some later date just because they liked the ideas.
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I have an amazing 1930s dress I picked up in Toronto at Cabaret on Queen West. It's a red knee-length tea dress, and it's absolutely beautiful. It makes me happy every time I put it on.
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I used to hate, with a capitol H, making videos. It was nothing but a chore. It was something you had to do to have your music accepted in the visual medium.
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To write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say, and to finish without knowing what you have written.
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The wisdom of crowds works when the crowd is choosing the price of an ox, when there's a single numeric average. But if it's a design or something that matters, the decision is made by committee, and that's crap. You want people and groups who are able to think thoughts before they share.
