Looking Glass Quotes

“The next time you get into a political discussion, stop and ask yourself what amount of evidence would change your mind. If the answer is none, then realize you’re actually in a religious discussion, one more zealot arguing with another.”
― Andrew Mayne, Looking Glass

“When no amount of evidence can convince you that your worldview might be inaccurate, then we’ve exited the realm of reason and entered religious territory. This is why I laugh at the notion of reconciling faith and science. Science is based on the premise that logic and reason can tell us the true nature of reality. Religion is based on the idea that when logic and reason don’t support a predetermined view of reality, they are at fault.”
― Andrew Mayne, Looking Glass

“As my hero Richard Feynman would say, “It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is; it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.”
― Andrew Mayne, Looking Glass

“He doesn’t realize that brilliance is a kind of binary thing. You either got it or you don’t. If you do, a 130 IQ and a 170 aren’t that different, so long as you know how to apply what you got. Richard Feynman, my personal hero and one of the greatest physicists who ever lived, scored a 128 on his army IQ test. That wouldn’t have gotten him into Mensa. Meanwhile, the guy with the highest IQ on record is a bouncer at a nightclub and spends his free time reading fantasy novels. Tell me that guy is smarter than the man who corrected Stephen Hawking’s science papers.”
― Andrew Mayne, Looking Glass

“I’d point out that by that logic, every living thing that manages to be born is a miracle—and if we’re all miracles, then nobody is, because the word has lost its meaning. Life works or it doesn’t.”
― Andrew Mayne, Looking Glass

“suspect I could build a computer profile that could guess your occupation with a better-than-random outcome based upon posture and eye gaze. Doctors tend to look around you, kind of like a farmer sizing up a heifer. Scientists look into the space next to you as they think about your words or, more likely, their own precious thoughts. Cops look right at you. They don’t look away when you make eye contact. They maintain the dominance stare because they’ve got a gun and a license from society to intimidate you. If you stare back and threaten that dominance, they’re only one radio call from a bunch more cops with guns.”
― Andrew Mayne, Looking Glass

“more evidence so I don’t look like a conspiracy-theory crackpot when I try to point out that not only was the real Toy Man not killed a few days ago in a Brazilian prison before he could be extradited, he’s actually a war criminal living as a minister in Georgia.”
― Andrew Mayne, Looking Glass

“The real danger is that the good guys will blindly keep doing bad things that they don’t see as bad. It’s why people who would give the shirt off their back to help the poor and the hungry will then march against genetically modified food, even if such food products could save millions of children from blindness or starvation.”
― Andrew Mayne, Looking Glass

“And homicides in Chicago are responsible for fifty percent of the increase in the United States’ murder rate in the last year. Do you think the problem is deep-dish pizza or that it’s become a shitty place to live?”
― Andrew Mayne, Looking Glass

“They’ve met a thousand liars and heard a million lies. Yours ain’t gonna fly. They won’t tell you that you’re full of crap—they’ll keep you talking, getting you to lie about a bunch of things, making notes in their head while you tell yourself that you’re the most persuasive motherfucker on the planet. They want you to walk away thinking you got away with it, or so panicked you screw up in front of them.”
― Andrew Mayne, Looking Glass

“They give you the chance to tell small lies so they can see how you handle the bigger ones. There’s a reason lawyers tell you to shut up when a cop talks to you. If you’re lucky, that’s the first and last time a cop ever”
― Andrew Mayne, Looking Glass

“I’m still not ready to throw away my moral compass, even if I can’t read it.”
― Andrew Mayne, Looking Glass

“We exchange knowing nods, aware that this won’t really end the pain, but killing monsters never does. It’s just something you have to do when you see them for what they are.”
― Andrew Mayne, Looking Glass

“one of the gifts of science: when you discover a new truth, you also gain a new way of looking at things that can change your perspective.”
― Andrew Mayne, Looking Glass

“How do you weigh the known versus the unknown? You can’t. It all comes down to what statistics you choose to believe.”
― Andrew Mayne, Looking Glass

“Scanning through the bar graphs and readouts of the first DNA sequence e-mailed to me from the lab, I can see the messy, haphazard collection of instructions that make up a human life. While some would argue that the fact that this almost random pattern is proof of a miracle, I’d point out that by that logic, every living thing that manages to be born is a miracle—and if we’re all miracles, then nobody is, because the word has lost its meaning. Life works or it doesn’t.”
― Andrew Mayne, Looking Glass

“DNA wasn’t a simple recipe book that could be readily understood.”
― Andrew Mayne, Looking Glass

“The real danger isn’t what the Atlantic articles or the New York Times editorials would have you believe: that good guys become bad guys. The real danger is that the good guys will blindly keep doing bad things that they don’t see as bad. It’s why people who would give the shirt off their back to help the poor and the hungry will then march against genetically modified food, even if such food products could save millions of children from blindness or starvation. It’s when people who want democracy in the Middle East find themselves building military bases instead of schools and hospitals.”
― Andrew Mayne, Looking Glass

“The next time you get into a political discussion, stop and ask yourself what amount of evidence would change your mind. If the answer is none, then realize you’re actually in a religious discussion, one more zealot arguing with another. Have I mentioned I’m not on Facebook?”
― Andrew Mayne, Looking Glass

“What amount of evidence would convince you that you are wrong? For the truthers, moon-landing hoaxers, and extremists on both sides of any issue, the answer is simple: nothing. When no amount of evidence can convince you that your worldview might be inaccurate, then we’ve exited the realm of reason and entered religious territory. This is why I laugh at the notion of reconciling faith and science. Science is based on the premise that logic and reason can tell us the true nature of reality. Religion is based on the idea that when logic and reason don’t support a predetermined view of reality, they are at fault.”
― Andrew Mayne, Looking Glass

“I’ve spent a few hours learning the finer arts of handcuff escape from a guy in Austin who makes YouTube videos on the topic.”
― Andrew Mayne, Looking Glass

“Neuroscientists say they can predict an action our mind has decided to take moments before our conscious mind has even decided what we think we’re going to do. The function of consciousness, they argue, isn’t to make decisions, but to rationalize them after the fact. It’s our brain’s way of explaining why we did things—a kind of public-relations office that turns our id into a rational actor and not some lizard monkey acting out of fear.”
― Andrew Mayne, Looking Glass

“Every murder has at least five important factors: a victim, a means of death, a location, a time, and a murderer. Solving for one or more of them can lead you to a solution, much like an equation, assuming they’re not all random.”
― Andrew Mayne, Looking Glass

“coming”
― Andrew Mayne, Looking Glass

“He’s a particular kind of sociopath. The kind that makes a great politician. He makes you think he loves you until you stand in his way. And then when he does something to fuck you over, he makes you think it’s your fault.” “And you know this from experience?”
― Andrew Mayne, Looking Glass

“I understand guilt. I know pain. The only antidote I have is brutal honesty.”
― Andrew Mayne, Looking Glass

“The real danger is that the good guys will blindly keep doing bad things that they don’t see as bad.”
― Andrew Mayne, Looking Glass

“while the hunt for Osama bin Laden was still ongoing, there were serious talks about engineering a particular strain of flu virus that would target only him.”
― Andrew Mayne, Looking Glass

“Most belief systems that don’t have a central text like the Koran or the Old Testament become extremely pragmatic, adopting whatever else is around if it fits. New Orleans voodoo has a lot of French Catholicism embedded in it, while Brazilian forms have incorporated some of the indigenous beliefs from there.”
― Andrew Mayne, Looking Glass

“threat, as well as a trillion-dollar biotechnology industry that keeps coming up with new ways to scare us.”
― Andrew Mayne, Looking Glass