The Genius Plague Quotes

“Inefficiency is imagination. It’s singing in the rain and vaudeville shows and sandcastles and whimsy and falling in love and yearning for our dreams to come true. Inefficiency is the best part of who we are.”
― David Walton, Genius Plague

“Mushrooms are only a small part of fungal anatomy. A mushroom is just how a fungus has sex.” Maisie’s slim eyebrows arched high. “Oh, really,” she said. “It’s true. A single fungus in a forest like this can go on for miles, underground, wrapping itself around tree roots. The mushrooms are just its reproductive parts. Fungi are some of the largest living things on Earth. Each tendril is nearly microscopic, but put together they can weigh far more than any California redwood or blue whale.”
― David Walton, Genius Plague

“There's a lot more to being human than being smart.”
― David Walton, The Genius Plague

“Nobody knows: they just believe, and then because everyone else believes it, too, it feels like it couldn’t possibly be wrong. But consensus doesn’t mean truth. In fact, it means a lack of critical thinking, a blind following of the status quo. Humans are really good at doing that, too.”
― David Walton, Genius Plague

“There was no question of the United States winning this fight. It was just a question of how much of Brazil would be flattened in the process.”
― David Walton, Genius Plague

“There were always stereotypes,” I said. “Americans are fat; Americans only care about money; Americans don’t care about their families. And everyone thinks America wants to rule the world.” “Don’t you?” Celso asked. I glanced at him to see if he was joking. “We don’t want to rule,” I said. “We just vigorously advance our own interests.” “Seriously,” he said. “The United States is powerful. You control all the oceans and all the shipping lanes. You tell other countries where they can sail their navies, when they’re allowed to trade, and when they’re allowed to fight with their neighbors. Of course people hate you.”
― David Walton, Genius Plague

“How much did a degree and a neat resume really prepare someone for a job? The Alan Turings and Claude Shannons of the world had been eccentric, inventive, forceful people. Rule breakers. The people at Bletchley Park and Room 40 didn’t stop to check boxes; they got the job done no matter what the cost.”
― David Walton, Genius Plague

“I couldn’t tell what I really thought until I explained it aloud to someone and heard what I said.”
― David Walton, Genius Plague

“Humans are driven by emotion. Much of our so-called logic is merely the rationalization of choices that make us feel good.”
― David Walton, Genius Plague

“We don't get to choose the world we live in," she said, her words slow and tired. "To tell you the truth, the one I've been living in so far isn't that great most of the time. The fungus has unlocked a vulnerability in the human mind. The genie is out of the bottle, and there's no putting it back. It will be used, and it will be used for evil, I have no doubt. But I can't solve all the world's problems. I can't even solve my own family's most of the time. All I can do is the best I can with my limited knowledge and the tools at hand.”
― David Walton, The Genius Plague

“It's like the guy in the Apollo 13 movie who says, 'Power is everything.' The kind of computers you're talking about, the ones that rival the human brain for processing nodes, consume on the order of four million watts of power. The chunk of meat in your head - which is not a computer, by the way - uses twenty watts. Not twenty million. Just twenty. Our brains are efficient thermodynamic systems, designed to help us produce valuable work from the potential energy around us in the world. Computers are simply extensions of our minds - tools we use that heighten that production value.”
― David Walton, The Genius Plague

“We've taken a small part of how our brain works - the patterns of dendrites and axons and synapses - and we've built computer architectures around them. But that's all it is - a symbolic machine inspired by the human brain. Real brains are biological pieces of meat inextricably connected to the bodies that host them and the environments they inhabit in a million essential ways. A computer is a complex tool, but it's not a brain. It requires the human operator to be its body, to be its environment, by writing its algorithm and feeding it data. If we really want to make an artificial construct that can think like we do, we have to start over with a completely different concept.”
― David Walton, The Genius Plague

“The problem with computers," she said, "is that they can't forget things. They can't generalize. You recognize my face, not because you have an exact mapping of it in three-dimensions, but because you unconsciously forget all the parts that don't matter and hang on to those tiny bits that do. You couldn't articulate what it is about my face that makes it unique, but your brain knows.”
― David Walton, The Genius Plague

“Intelligence ultimately isn’t Boolean. It isn’t about logic. It’s physical. It’s a continuous chemical give-and-take with everything around it.”
― David Walton, Genius Plague

“What if, besides streamlining our neural pathways, the fungus was hacking our emotions? It would be the perfect way for a non-intelligent creature to influence an intelligent one.”
― David Walton, Genius Plague

“Having trouble with the help?” I asked. “Trying to weed out those who kiss other asses to cover their own,” she said. “There are people who get things done, and people who just get in the way.”
― David Walton, Genius Plague

“Their governments are totally, philosophically opposed to each other.” “You’re preaching to the choir. Nothing we think we know is holding true anymore. But this is what’s happening.”
― David Walton, Genius Plague

“Think, his eyebrows would say. Dig deeper. There’s more to discover.”
― David Walton, Genius Plague