Teo

“We climbed this hill. Each step up we could see farther, so of course we kept going. Now we’re at the top. Science has been at the top for a few centuries now. And we look out across the plain and we see this other tribe dancing around above the clouds, even higher than we are. Maybe it’s a mirage, maybe it’s a trick. Or maybe they just climbed a higher peak we can’t see because the clouds are blocking the view. So we head off to find out—but every step takes us downhill. No matter what direction we head, we can’t move off our peak without losing our vantage point. So we climb back up again. We’re trapped on a local maximum. But what if there is a higher peak out there, way across the plain? The only way to get there is to bite the bullet, come down off our foothill and trudge along the riverbed until we finally start going uphill again. And it’s only then you realize: Hey, this mountain reaches way higher than that foothill we were on before, and we can see so much better from up here. But you can’t get there unless you leave behind all the tools that made you so successful in the first place. You have to take that first step downhill.”
― Peter Watts, Echopraxia

“When after hearing or reading instructions on how to set the mind on an object of meditation, you initially draw the mind inside and try to put it there, it may be that you will not be able to keep your mind on the object and will be subject to a waterfall of thoughts, one after another. If so, you are on the first level. You may even have so many thoughts that it seems as if trying to meditate makes them increase, but you are just noticing the previously unidentified extent of your own ramblings. Your attempts at mindfulness are causing you to notice what is happening.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, How to See Yourself As You Really Are

“Everything you wanted to say required a context. If you gave the full context, people thought you a rambling old fool. If you didn’t give the context, people thought you a laconic old fool.”
― Julian Barnes, Staring at the Sun

“There is voluminous evidence that exclusive reliance on heuristic processing tendencies of Type I sometimes results in suboptimal responding (Baron, 2008; Evans, 2007a; Gilovich, Griffin, & Kahneman, 2002; Johnson-Laird, 2006; Kahneman & Tversky, 1973, 1996, 2000; Koehler & Harvey, 2004; Nickerson, 2004, 2008; Nisbett & Ross, 1980; Tversky & Kahneman, 1974, 1983, 1986) and that such thinking errors are not limited to the laboratory (Ariely, 2008; Åstebro, Jeffrey, & Adomdza, 2007; Baron, 1998; Baron, Bazerman, & Shonk, 2006; Belsky & Gilovich, 1999; Berner & Graber, 2008; Camerer, 2000; Chapman & Elstein, 2000; Croskerry, 2009a, 2009b; Dawes, 2001; Hilton, 2003; Kahneman & Tversky, 2000; Lichtenstein & Slovic, 2006; Lilienfeld, Ammirati, & Landfield, 2009; Myers, 2002; Prentice, 2003; Reyna et al., 2009; Stewart, 2009; Sunstein, 2002, 2005; Taleb, 2001, 2007; Tavris & Aronson, 2007; Tetlock, 2005; Thaler & Sunstein, 2008; Ubel, 2000).”
― Keith E. Stanovich, Rationality and the Reflective Mind