Seife Quotes & Sayings

Where there is the Infinite there is joy. There is no joy in the finite. - THE CHANDOGYA UPANISHAD — Charles Seife

We have the Noble Desire to help others and benefit the world, without expecting any return or recognition. What makes us great is not our knowledge, skill, money, or power. What makes us great is not our knowledge, skill, money, or power. What makes us truly great is this noble desire, this passion that transcends all separation, goes beyond one's limitations, and wants to hug others and embrace the whole world. This is not something that we need to learn, because we already have it. It just needs to be acknowledged and awakened. — Ilchi Lee

There is something very intriguing about, for example, the sense of accomplishment that a small child has, which you might be able to reduce to aggression and libido, but which might also have some independent existence. — Peter Gay

I found my grandmother dead. It shook me up. I got up to make her breakfast, and I knew it was strange that she wasn't stirring. I went in to wake her, and she was laying in rigor mortis, and I'm done. I called next door, and the kid picked up the phone, and I was so wild, he dropped it. — Gil Scott-Heron

Contrary to what our brains are telling us, there's no mystical force that imbues a winner with a streak of luck, nor is there a cosmic sense of justice that ensures that a loser's luck will turn around. The universe doesn't care one whit whether you've been winning or losing; each roll of the dice is just like every other. — Charles Seife

If you want to get people to believe something really, really stupid, just stick a number on it. — Charles Seife

Bad information is a disease that attacks the brain. It messes with your head, making you do things that you shouldn't, causing you to make wrong decisions. Just as a potent virus co-opts your cells' machinery, bad information can co-opt your behavior. It can alter the way you interact with the world and, as a result, it can change the world. — Charles Seife

There are many ways to generate numerical falsehoods from data, many ways to create proofiness from even valid meaurements. Causuistry distorts the relationships between two sets of numbers. Randumbness creates patterns where none are to be found. Regression to the moon disguises nonsense in mathematical-looking lines or equations or formulae, making even the silliest ideas seem respectable. Such as the one described by this formula:
Callipygianness=(S+C)x(B+F)/T-V)
Where S is shape, C is circularity, B is bounciness, F ir firmness, T is texture, and V is waist-to-hip ratio. This formula was devised by a team of academic psychologists after many hours of serious research into the female derriere. Yes, indeed. This is supposed to be the formula for the perfect butt.

It fact, it's merely a formula for a perfect ass — Charles Seife

I hurt just like them white women. Just 'cause I wasn't hooping and hollering before didn't mean I wasn't feeling pain. What'd they think? That just 'cause I knowed how to have a baby with no fuss that my behind wasn't pulling and aching like theirs? — Toni Morrison

We protect virtue so that virtue will protect us. — Ajahn Chah

If you want to convince the world that a fish can sense your emotions, only one statistical measure will suffice: the p-value. — Charles Seife

The body, the house of the spirit, is under the power of pleasure and pain," explains a god. "And if a man is ruled by his body then this man can never be free. — Charles Seife

We tend to shy away from data that challenges our assumptions, that erodes our preconceptions. Getting rid of our wrong ideas is a painful and difficult process, yet it's that very process that makes data truly useful. A fact becomes information when it challenges our assumptions. These challenges are the raw material that forces our ideas to evolve, our tastes to change, our minds to grow. — Charles Seife

Banishing zero also solves the infinity problems in general relativity. If you imagine a black hole as a string, no longer do objects fall through a rip in the fabric of space-time. Instead, a particle loop approaching a black-hole loop stretches out and touches the black hole. The two loops tremble, tear, and form one loop: a slightly more massive black hole. (Some theorists believe that the act of merging a particle to a black hole creates bizarre particles such as tachyons: particles with imaginary mass that travel backward in time and move faster than light. Such particles might be admissable in certain versions of string theory.) — Charles Seife

Just as it's important to take the changing value of a dollar into account when comparing spending over time, it's important to take doctors' changing diagnoses into account when looking at disease trends — Charles Seife

See appendix A for a proof that Winston Churchill was a carrot. — Charles Seife