Brian Christian Quotes
To see what happens in the real world when an information cascade takes over, and the bidders have almost nothing but one another’s behavior to estimate an item’s value, look no further than Peter A. Lawrence’s developmental biology text The Making of a Fly, which in April 2011 was selling for $23,698,655.93 (plus $3.99 shipping) on Amazon’s third-party marketplace. How and why had this—admittedly respected—book reached a sale price of more than $23 million? It turns out that two of the sellers were setting their prices algorithmically as constant fractions of each other: one was always setting it to 0.99830 times the competitor’s price, while the competitor was automatically setting their own price to 1.27059 times the other’s. Neither seller apparently thought to set any limit on the resulting numbers, and eventually the process spiraled totally out of control.
Brian Christian
Quotes to Explore
I constantly remind people that crime isn't solved by technology; it's solved by people.
Patricia Cornwell
I would watch anything with Meryl Streep in it.
Olivia De Havilland
When people are like, 'What do you think of this vampire craze?' - well, I don't really feel like it ever ended, personally, 'cause I've always been into them, like 'Underworld.'
Kat Graham
The claim that the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacked because fundamentalists hate our prosperity and freedom is a ridiculous lie.
L. Neil Smith
You'll hear 'Hippie,' or, 'Get a haircut.' I like it. I think it's funny because they think we've never heard that before. So, like, good one.
Jacob deGrom
If you're going to give people authority and hold them responsible and ultimately accountable for their performance, you've got to get out of the way.
Randy Lerner
You could make a case that women addicted men to their sexuality and then withdrew their sexuality until we provided them with a source of income.
Warren Farrell
There are a lot of people who will tell you I'm very ruthless. I'm very fierce. If I feel I'm right, if I feel I've been violated, then I am like a warrior from hell!
George C. Wolfe
The message of guidance that neither politics nor philosophy nor religion now seems able to provide, we look for in modern literature.
Irving Howe
When Michael Frere came to see Elizabeth about her autobiography All the Dogs of My Life she found him ‘such a boring little man. But it is because we are all growing old, and the bones of our inadequate minds come through the flesh that hid them.’ She hadn’t always found him boring, and Love, one of her best novels, is largely based on their romance.
Elizabeth von Arnim
New Zealanders have conventions and pleasantries, but we are direct. We are encouraged to be transparent with our behavior and not to employ passive aggression.
Daniel Gillies
In great matters, men behave as they are expected to; in little ones, as they would naturally
Sébastien-Roch Nicolas
I've got this theory that human beings are innately religious; we have a belief system. It doesn't have to be a theist form, necessarily. But we need a belief system, some framework on which to hang our behavior.
Tana French
Money can buy you a fine dog, but only love can make him wag his tail.
Kinky Friedman
To see what happens in the real world when an information cascade takes over, and the bidders have almost nothing but one another’s behavior to estimate an item’s value, look no further than Peter A. Lawrence’s developmental biology text The Making of a Fly, which in April 2011 was selling for $23,698,655.93 (plus $3.99 shipping) on Amazon’s third-party marketplace. How and why had this—admittedly respected—book reached a sale price of more than $23 million? It turns out that two of the sellers were setting their prices algorithmically as constant fractions of each other: one was always setting it to 0.99830 times the competitor’s price, while the competitor was automatically setting their own price to 1.27059 times the other’s. Neither seller apparently thought to set any limit on the resulting numbers, and eventually the process spiraled totally out of control.
Brian Christian
