People From Belfast

"Complexity theory is really a movement of the sciences. Standard sciences tend to see the world as mechanistic. That sort of science puts things under a finer and finer microscope. In biology the investigations go from classifying organisms to functions of organisms, then organs themselves, then cells, and then organelles, right down to protein and enzymes, metabolic pathways, and DNA. This is finer and finer reductionist thinking. The movement that started complexity looks in the other direction. It’s asking, how do things assemble themselves? How do patterns emerge from these interacting elements? Complexity is looking at interacting elements and asking how they form patterns and how the patterns unfold. It’s important to point out that the patterns may never be finished. They’re open-ended. In standard science this hit some things that most scientists have a negative reaction to. Science doesn’t like perpetual novelty."

"Our understanding of how markets and businesses operate was passed down to us more than a century ago by a handful of European economists — Alfred Marshall in England and a few of his contemporaries on the continent. It is an understanding based squarely upon the assumption of diminishing returns: products or companies that get ahead in a market eventually run into limitations, so that a predictable equilibrium of prices and market shares is reached. The theory was roughly valid for the bulk-processing, smokestack economy of Marshall’s day. And it still thrives in today’s economics textbooks. But steadily and continuously in this century, Western economies have undergone a transformation from bulk - material manufacturing to design and use of technology — from processing of resources to processing of information, from application of raw energy to application of ideas. As this shift has occurred, the underlying mechanisms that determine economic behavior have shifted from ones of diminishing to ones of increasing returns."

"Conventional economic theory is built is built on the assumption of diminishing returns. Economic actions engender a negative feedback that leads to a predictable equilibrium for prices and market shares. Such feedback tends to stabilize the economy because any major changes will be offset by the very reactions they generate. The high oil prices of the 1970s encouraged energy conservation and increased oil exploration, precipitating a predictable drop in prices by the early 1980s. According to conventional theory, the equilibrium marks the “best” outcome possible under the circumstances: the most efficient use and allocation of resources."

"This paper has attempted to go beyond the usual static analysis of increasing-returns problems by examining the dynamical process that 'selects' an equilibrium from multiple candidates, by the interaction of economic forces and random 'historical events'. It shows how dynamically, increasing returns can cause the economy gradually to lock itself in to an outcome not necessarily superior to alternatives, not easily altered, and not entirely predictable in advance."

"Paul Krugman's attack on Brian Arthur ("The Legend of Arthur") requires a correction of its misrepresentations of fact. Arthur is a reputable and significant scholar whose work is indeed having influence in the field of industrial organization and in particular public policy toward antitrust policy in hightech industries. Krugman admits that he wrote the article because he was "just pissed off," not a very good state for a judicious statement of facts, as his column shows."

"Our deepest hope as humans lies in technology; but our deepest trust lies in nature. These forces are like tectonic plates grinding inexorably into each other in one, long, slow collision. This collision is not new, but more than anything else it is defining our era. Technology is steadily creating the dominant issues and upheavals of our time."

"Where we observe the predominance of one technology or one economic outcome over its competitors we should thus be cautious of any exercise that seeks the means by which the winner's innate 'superiority' came to be translated into adoption."

"A technology that by chance gains an early lead in adoption may eventually 'corner the market' of potential adopters, with the other technologies becoming locked out."

"As we begin to understand , we begin to understand that we’re part of an ever-changing, interlocking, non-linear, kaleidoscopic world."

"Harbisson meets two apparently incompatible conditions: shyness and exhibitionism. He speaks softly, never utters a word higher than another and his body language is that of someone slightly retracted. However, he walks all over the world with a cyborg eye dangling over his forehead in a kind of antenna that seems to sprout from within his head. Along the way, people nudge each other and point at him. But non of that stops him, he remains impassive and continues on his way."

"Neil Harbisson is one of the world's first bona fide cyborgs."

"I had a very special encounter with him. Surreal and especially futuristic. He raises so many questions, so many lines of thought, that force you to think differently."

"Harbisson's antenna, hovering above his Henry V-meets-the-Monkees hairdo, is quite the lifestyle statement. I tell him he looks like a cross between an insect and a call-centre worker."

"If salads sounded like Justin Bieber, children would eat more vegetables."

"It's not the union between my head and the electronic eye what makes me feel 'cyborg', it's the union between the software and my brain."

"When you're a little weird, you aspire to be normal; when you're very weird, you aspire to be recognised for it."

"Life will be much more exciting when we stop creating applications for mobile phones and we start creating applications for our own body."

"There are no white skins, and there are no black skins. Humans skins are of different shades of orange."

"Technology is made by humans. If we modify our body with human creations we become more human."

"If I have problems perceiving a color I don't know who to go to – an opthamologist, a neurologist, or a computer programmer."

"Beware not to use the future as an excuse to ignore living in the present."

"Light is slow."

"I don't feel that I'm using technology, I don't feel that I'm wearing technology, I feel that I am technology."

"Frankly, Neil Harbisson, freaked me the fuck out. Both inspirational and terrifying. Like seeing a benevolent witch displaying her magic: even if you’re only using your powers to grow magic daffodils, it’s an ungodly talent that’s beyond human."

"...the Englishman [sic], George Best, who was an amazing footballer in his day but at the same time he was a bum and a drunk – a bohemian. Because of his soccer art though, he had a royal funeral."

"There have been a few players described as the new George Best over the years, but this is the first time it's been a compliment to me."

"In 1969 I gave up women and alcohol - it was the worst 20 minutes of my life."

"I've stopped drinking, but only while I'm asleep."

"He cannot kick with his left foot, he cannot head a ball, he cannot tackle and he doesn't score many goals. Apart from that he's all right."

"If you'd given me the choice of going out and beating four men and smashing a goal in from thirty yards against Liverpool or going to bed with Miss World, it would have been a difficult choice. Luckily, I had both."

"I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered."

"I used to go missing a lot... Miss Canada, Miss United Kingdom, Miss World."

"You've spoken about British rule of Ireland, and ending British rule in Ireland. I want to ask you this. Do you see Northern Ireland remaining part of the United Kingdom for the foreseeable future? Isn't that the truth of it, it's going to? Everybody knows it's going to. So why don't you level with your supporters and with the Irish people and say, 'it is going to remain part of the United Kingdom for the foreseeable future and now let's talk about how it can be made into a just society.' Why don't you face up to reality?"

"I've been listening to a phrase, Internment Without Trial. And I keep thinking of the people that were murdered without trial. I'm not talking about the police, I'm not talking about the army. I'm talking about people that were shot dead on their doorsteps, through windows, in the presence of their children, their parents and their wives. These people in their graves are crying out for retribution and it's not going to come anymore. And there are people who are not in their graves. They're in hospitals. They're in wheelchairs. There are girls who thought they were going to grow up, and never will. And young women who thought they were going to get married, and they never will, and they'd rather they were dead. And there are people too that... they don't want to be dead because their brains are destroyed, they're vegetables and they're going to be vegetables forever. And you are morally responsible for that! Morally, you are a murderer! And not only are you a murderer, but now you add the extra dimension by saying 'I want peace' and you're a hypocrite as well!"

"I have no involvement in terrorist activity."

"There haven't been any attacks by the IRA on Protestants."

"I was a released internee; I was off the run. One of the reasons I had been chosen to be on the republican delegation for the talks was because I wasn't a wanted man... I played very little part in the meeting myself."

"The only complaint I have heard from nationalists or anti-unionists is that he was not shot 40 years ago."

"The Brighton bombing was an inevitable result of the British presence in this country. Far from being a blow against democracy it was a blow for democracy."

"That ageing geriatric whizz-kid seems intent on starting World War III."

"The hon. Member must remember that in the South they boasted of a Catholic State. They still boast of Southern Ireland being a Catholic State. All I boast of is that we are a Protestant Parliament and a Protestant State. It would be rather interesting for historians of the future to compare a Catholic State launched in the South with a Protestant State launched in the North and to see which gets on the better and prospers the more. It is most interesting for me at the moment to watch how they are progressing. I am doing my best always to top the bill and to be ahead of the South."

"I am an Orangeman first and a politician and member of this parliament [Stormont] afterwards."

"John S. Bell (1928–1990, right) and I at in Bell’s office 10 years after the neutrino experiment. We were the quasi-official theorists of that experiment. We did not do very well, all things considered, because of inexperience and ignorance. After the experiment, in 1963, we both went to SLAC, where I wrote my computer program and he developed his famous inequalities. We also discussed other things, even wrote a paper together that was never published. He considered his work on the fundaments of quantum mechanics as a hobby, mainly to be done in the evening, at home. He told me that he intended to do away definitely with this nonsense of hidden variables, and so he did. Later he drifted more and more into this subject, and as I consider it as some sort of foolishness not good for anything having to do with the real world, I once asked him: “Why are you doing this? Does it make the slightest difference in the calculations such as I am doing?” To which he answered: “You are right, but are you not interested and curious about the interpretation?” He was right too, up to a point. While his work became very important, as it could be verified by experiment, often in this branch of physics the discussions are on the level of finding out how many angels can dance on the point of a needle. But even so: there are interesting things there."

"It was John Bell who investigated quantum theory in the greatest depth and established what the theory can tell us about the fundamental nature of the physical world. Moreover, by stimulating experimental tests of the deepest and most profound aspects of quantum theory, Bell's work led to the possibility of exploring seemingly philosophical questions, such as the nature of reality, directly through experiments. And this was just Bell's "hobby"."

"The idea that elimination of coherence, in one way or another, implies the replacement of 'and' by 'or', is a very common one among solvers of the 'measurement problem'. It has always puzzled me."

"The first charge against 'measurement', in the fundamental axioms of quantum mechanics, is that it anchors there the shifty split of the world into 'system' and 'apparatus'. A second charge is that the word comes loaded with meaning from everyday life, meaning which is entirely inappropriate in the quantum context."

"The orthodox approaches, whether the authors think they have made derivations or assumptions, are just fine FAPP — when used with the good taste and discretion picked up from exposure to good examples."

"The concepts 'system', 'apparatus', 'environment', immediately imply an artificial division of the world, and an intention to neglect, or take only schematic account of, the interaction across the split. The notions of 'microscopic' and 'macroscopic' defy precise definition. So also do the notions of 'reversible' and 'irreversible'."

"I expect that mathematicians have classified such s. Certainly they have been much used by physicists. But is there not something to be said for the approach of Euclid? Even now that we know that is (in some sense) not quite true? Is it not good to know what follows from what, even if it is not necessarily FAPP? Suppose for example that quantum mechanics were found to resist precise formulation. Suppose that when formulation beyond FAPP was attempted, we find an unmovable finger obstinately pointing outside the subject, to the mind of the observer, to the Hindu scriptures, to God, or even only Gravitation? Would that not be very, very interesting?"

"Einstein said that it is theory which decides what is . I think he was right—'observation' is a complicated and theory-laden business. Then that notion should not appear in the formulation of fundamental theory. Information? Whose information? Information about what? On this list of bad words from good books, the worst of all is 'measurement'. It must have a section to itself."