Waffles > Waffles's Quotes

“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
― George Carlin

“Morning, noon & bloody night,
Seven sodding days a week,
I slave at filthy WORK, that might
Be done by any book-drunk freak.
This goes on until I kick the bucket.
FUCK IT FUCK IT FUCK IT FUCK IT”
― Philip Larkin, Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica

“Turns out that when something gets cheaper, or more efficient, we just end up using so much more of the stuff that the savings disappear under a wave of increased consumption.

They call it the “Jevons Paradox”, and it applies to pretty much any human resource. Halve the price of computer memory, we'll increase demand by a factor of four. Increase solar efficiency by ten times, we'll suck back twenty times as much of the stuff. And you just know that if we resort to geoengineering to buy time—use stratospheric sulfates to compensate for ongoing carbon emissions, for example—people will just be that much less inclined to cut those emissions any time soon. We are not wired for restraint; let us off the leash, and we will devour whatever is available.”
― Peter Watts, Peter Watts Is An Angry Sentient Tumor: Revenge Fantasies and Essays

“Of course, no one’s immune to these biases; I’ve caught myself cherry-picking data on more than one occasion. To that extent we all live in glass houses. But there are ways of error-checking yourself, if you care to use them. The scientific method, at its heart, is a set of tools explicitly designed to break through bias and shine a light on the empirical information underneath. Recognizing our prejudices, we can overcome them. But one thing we cannot do—and it has taken me so very long to realize this—is reason successfully with those who reject such tools. Logic doesn’t matter to a Jehovah’s Witness. Fossils mean nothing to a creationist. All the data in the world will not change the mind of a true climate-change denier. You cannot reason with these people. You cannot take them seriously. It is a waste of energy to even try.”
― Peter Watts, Peter Watts Is An Angry Sentient Tumor: Revenge Fantasies and Essays