Poetry of flush

Basta guardare molto da vicino. Se si guarda molto da vicino ci si accorge che l’acqua del cesso non è ferma: tra le spesse pareti di porcellana della tazza, l’acqua del cesso pulsa, e, sia pure quasi impercettibilmente, essa si alza e si abbassa, influenzata dalla potenza or del risucchio or della spinta di maree sotterranee immaginabili solo dal piú devoto dei pellegrini mattutini.

DFW, La scopa del sistema.

Theology of boxing

In fondo quell'esperienza [di lotta], di un'estasi, di una trascendenza quasi completa di una persona cosciente, era affine a un genere di esperienze perdute, già note ai mistici di tutte le religioni, e quindi si poteva in qualche maniera considerare come il surrogato moderno di eterne esigenze, un cattivo surrogato, ma pur sempre un surrogato; sicché la boxe e altri sport analoghi, che lo introducono in sistema razionale, sono una specie di teologia, anche se non si può pretendere che ciò venga universalmente riconosciuto.

R.Musil

There's no data like more data

the inability of individuals—human or otherwise—to assign causal probabilities to all sets of events that occur around them will often force them to lump causal associations with non-causal ones. From here, the evolutionary rationale for superstition is clear: natural selection will favour strategies that make many incorrect causal associations in order to establish those that are essential for survival and reproduction.

The Evolution of Superstitious and Superstition-like Behaviour, Kevin R. Foster & Hanna Kokko

No need to be nervous about errors

Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things. In a
world where we are so certain to incur them in spite of all
our caution, a certain lightness of heart seems healthier
than this excessive nervousness on their behalf.
—WILLIAM JAMES, “THE WILL TO BELIEVE”

Relevance of data

The key is that we are dealing with uncertainty rather than with risk: even with an abundance of financial data, the dynamics of financial markets are such that only a small proportion of the available data may actually be relevant to the current economic conditions. And, when relevant data are sparse, the variance term tends to dominate the bias term and thus increase the overall prediction error of complex models.

HANSJÖRG NETH and GERD GIGERENZER

Between two scissor blades

Human rational behavior is shaped by a scissor whose two blades are the structures of task environments and the computational capabilities of the actor
Herbert Simon, Invariants of human behavior, 1990

Familiar Folly and perturbing Folly

“The reason a person who believes he sees a
woman when in reality he is looking at a gourd is called
crazy is because this is something beyond usual
experience, [...]. However, when a person thinks
his wife, who is enjoyed by many, to be an ever-faithful
Penelope, he is not called insane at all, because people know that this is a common thing in marriage.”

Desiderius Erasmus, The Praise of Folly

Words and philosophy

If words are more than mere means for conveying ideas, if they interpose themselves already in the process by which ideas are formed, then the question of how to limit improper speech can no longer be confined to handbooks of oratorical practice; rather, it becomes the business of philosophy itself.

Zachary Sng, The rhetoric of error form Locke to Kleist