Arbitrariness Examples Quotes

We have considered the problem of mental fragmentation and arbitrariness that results when our contact with the world is mediated by representations: representations collapse the basic axis of proximity and distance by which an embodied being orients in the world and draws a horizon of relevance around itself. We noted the prominence of a design philosophy that severs the bonds between action and perception, as in contemporary automobiles that insulate us from the sensorimotor contingencies by which an embodied being normally grasps reality. The case of machine gambling gave us a heightened example of this kind of abstraction, and made clear how such a design philosophy can be turned to especially disturbing purposes in the darker precincts of "affective capitalism," where our experiences are manufactured for us. We saw that the point of these experiences is often to provide a quasi-autistic escape from the frustrations of life, and that they are especially attractive in a world that lacks a basic intelligibility because it seems to be ordered by "vast impersonal forces" that are difficult to bring within view on a first-person, human scale. I argued that all of this tends to sculpt a certain kind of contemporary self, a fragile one whose freedom and dignity depend on its being insulated from contingency, and who tends to view technology as magic for accomplishing this. For such a self, choosing from a menu of options replaces the kind of adult agency that grapples with thing ~ Matthew B. Crawford

We do not have to dig deep into history to understand the reality. The examples of Saddam Hussain, who was executed after a sham trial and the case of Muammar Gaddafi, who killed after surrendering in broad daylight, have given enough factual reality to understand the painful truth. ~ Nilantha Ilangamuwa

We should look at the lives of all as at a mirror, and take from others an example for ourselves. ~ Terence

Why is it the greatest champions of the white race always turn out to be the worst examples of it? You! Where the fuck is your chin? ~ Garth Ennis

I have been able to solve a few problems of mathematical physics on which the greatest mathematicians since Euler have struggled in vain ... But the pride I might have held in my conclusions was perceptibly lessened by the fact that I knew that the solution of these problems had almost always come to me as the gradual generalization of favorable examples, by a series of fortunate conjectures, after many errors. I am fain to compare myself with a wanderer on the mountains who, not knowing the path, climbs slowly and painfully upwards and often has to retrace his steps because he can go no further - then, whether by taking thought or from luck, discovers a new track that leads him on a little till at length when he reaches the summit he finds to his shame that there is a royal road by which he might have ascended, had he only the wits to find the right approach to it. In my works, I naturally said nothing about my mistake to the reader, but only described the made track by which he may now reach the same heights without difficulty. ~ Hermann Von Helmholtz

Learning to cook in the 1990s, I thought 'proper olives' meant black. The benchmark was Kalamata from Greece: purple-black with an almost mushroomy depth of flavour. Other fine examples were tiny Coquilles from Nice and plump round Tanches from Nyons. ~ Bee Wilson

Cruciferous vegetables Examples: broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower Servings: 1 Size: ½ cup Greens Examples: kale, spinach Swiss chard Servings: 2 Size: 1 cup raw, ½ cup cooked Other vegetables Examples: beets, peppers, carrots Servings: 2 Size: 1 cup leafy, ½ cup non-leafy, ½ cup juice Beans Examples: black beans, kidney beans, lentils Servings: 3 Size: ¼ cup dip, ½ cup cooked, 1 cup fresh Berries Examples: grapes, raisins, cherries Servings: 1 Size: ¼ dried, ½ cup fresh or frozen Other fruit Examples: apples, avocados, bananas Servings: 3 Size: 1 cup fruit, 1 medium, ¼ cup dried Flaxseeds Servings: 1 Size: 1 tbsp Nuts and seeds Examples: peanut butter, whole almonds, sunflower seeds Servings: 1 Size: ¼ cup or 2 tbsp butter Spices Examples: turmeric Servings: 1 Size: ¼ tsp Whole grains Examples: rice, quinoa, bread Servings: 3 Size: ½ cup cooked, 1 slice of bread Water Servings: 5 Size: 12 oz. Daily ~ Project Inspiration

Cataloguing is an ancient profession; there are examples of such "ordainers of the universe" (as they were called by the Sumerians) among the oldest vestiges of libraries. ~ Alberto Manguel

Ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transitions than we had in Darwin's time. ~ David M. Raup

Popular culture bombards us with examples of animals being humanized for all sorts of purposes, ranging from education to entertainment to satire to propaganda. Walt Disney, for example, made us forget that Mickey is a mouse, and Donald a duck. George Orwell laid a cover of human societal ills over a population of livestock. ~ Frans De Waal

The road to learning by precept is long, but by example short and effective. ~ Seneca The Elder

Let's press ahead a little further by sketching out a few variations among short shorts:

ONE THRUST OF INCIDENT. (Examples: Paz,
Mishima, Shalamov, Babel, W. C. Williams.) In these short shorts the time span is extremely brief, a few hours, maybe even a few minutes: Life is grasped in symbolic compression. One might say that these short shorts constitute epiphanies (climactic moments of high grace or realization) that have been tom out of their contexts. You have to supply the contexts yourself, since if the contexts were there, they'd no longer be short shorts.

LIFE ROLLED UP. (Examples: Tolstoy's 'Alyosha the Pot,' Verga's 'The Wolf,' D. H. Lawrence's 'A Sick Collier.') In these you get the illusion of sustained narrative, since they deal with lives over an extended period of time; but actually these lives are so compressed into typicality and paradigm, the result seems very much like a single incident. Verga's 'Wolf' cannot but repeat her passions, Tolstoy's Alyosha his passivity. Themes of obsession work especially well in this kind of short short.

SNAP-SHOT OR SINGLE FRAME. (Examples: Garda Marquez, Boll, Katherine Anne Porter.) In these we have no depicted event or incident, only an interior monologue or flow of memory. A voice speaks, as it were, into the air. A mind is revealed in cross-section - and the cut is rapid. One would guess that this is the hardest kind of short short to write: There are many pitfalls such as tiresome ~ Irving Howe

I have blogged previously about the dangerous and deadly effects of science denialism, from the innocent babies unnecessarily exposed to deadly diseases by other kids whose parents are anti-vaxxers, to the frequent examples of how acceptance of evolution helps us stop diseases and pests (and in the case of Baby Fae, rejection of evolution was fatal), to the long-term effects of climate denial to the future of the planet we all depend upon. But one of the strangest forms of denialism is the weird coalition of people who refuse to accept the medical fact that the HIV virus causes AIDS. What the heck? Didn't we resolve this issue in the 1980s when the AIDS condition first became epidemic and the HIV virus was discovered and linked to AIDS? Yes, we did - but for people who want to deny scientific reality, it doesn't matter how many studies have been done, or how strong the scientific consensus is. There are a significant number of people out there (especially among countries and communities with high rates of AIDS infections) that refuse to accept medical reality. I described all of these at greater length in my new book Reality Check: How Science Deniers Threaten our Future. ~ Donald R. Prothero

In 1960, for example, the Committee for Long Range Studies of the Brookings Institution prepared a report for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration warning that even indirect contact - i.e., alien artifacts that might possibly be discovered through our space activities on the moon, Mars or Venus or via radio contact with an interstellar civilization - could cause severe psychological dislocations. The study cautioned that "Anthropological files contain many examples of societies, sure of their place in the universe, which have disintegrated when they have had to associate with previously unfamiliar societies espousing different ideas and different life ways; others that survived such an experience usually did so by paying the price of changes in values and attitudes and behavior. ~ Stanley Kubrick

We are each given a block of marble when we begin a lifetime, and the tools to shape it into sculpture. We can drag it behind us untouched, we can pound it to gravel, we can shape it into glory. Examples from every other life are left for us to see, lifeworks finished and unfinished, guiding and warning. Near the end our sculpture is nearly finished, and we can smooth and polish what we started years before. We can make our progress then, but to do it we must see past the appearances of age. ~ Richard Bach

You could think of extraordinary examples to the contrary: The Grapes of Wrath ... and even into the 70s. ~ Charlton Heston

If you've ever signed up for a website and given a fake zip code or a fake birthday, you have violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Any child under thirteen who visits newyorktimes.com violates their Terms of Service and is a criminal - not just in theory, but according to the working doctrine of the Department of Justice.1 The examples I've laid out are extreme, sure, but the laws involved are so broadly written as to ensure that, essentially, every Internet-using American is a tort-feasing felon on a lifelong spree of depraved web browsing. ~ Christian Rudder

Similarly, if we ask "What have philosophers ever done for us?" we get involved in the following dialogue:
"Well, their examples help us to decide what we think about issues we haven't thought about before."
"Oh, yeah, well, that goes without saying, doesn't it?"
"And their examples help us discover whether we really believe what we say we believe, or not."
" Yeah, all right. I'll grant you that their examples help us to work out what we think, and to think better. But apart from helping us to work out what we think, clarifying our views, and helping us to solve hard problems, what do philosophers ever do for us?"
"Well, their examples are amusing."
James Taylor, "Why is a Philosopher Like a Python? ~ Gary L. Hardcastle

If gun laws in fact worked, the sponsors of this type of legislation should have no difficulty drawing upon long lists of examples of criminal acts reduced by such legislation. That they cannot do so after a century and a half of trying - that they must sweep under the rug the southern attempts at gun control in the 1870-1910 period, the northeastern attempts in the 1920-1939 period, the attempts at both Federal and State levels in 1965-1976 - establishes the repeated, complete and inevitable failure of gun laws to control serious crime. ~ Orrin Hatch

It is easy to acknowledge, but almost impossible to realize for long, that we are mirrors whose brightness, if we are bright, is wholly derived from the sun that shines upon us. ~ C.S. Lewis

When I began reflecting on this law, I saw that it applied again and again to examples of people successfully acquiring more control in their careers. To understand this, notice that the definition of "willing to pay" varies. In some cases, it literally means customers paying you money for a product or a service. But it can also mean getting approved for a loan, receiving an outside investment, or, more commonly, convincing an employer to either hire you or keep writing you paychecks. Once you adopt this flexible definition of "pay for it," this law starts popping up all over. Consider, ~ Cal Newport

Christ was on display early in my childhood. Both my mother and father were living examples of what it meant to live for Christ and have Him be the focal point of decisions, actions, thoughts and words. It was a blessing but not entirely unexpected when very young I also came to the faith. ~ Aaron Kampman

It's a special person - and personality - who can lead a start-up to soaring success and sustain that success for the long term. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg are star examples. ~ Marcus Buckingham

One of the regrets of my life is that I did not study Latin. I'm absolutely convinced, the more I understand these eighteenth century people, that it was that grounding in Greek and Latin that gave them their sense of the classic virtues: the classic ideals of honor, virtue, the good society, and their historic examples of what they could try to live up to. ~ David McCullough

People sometimes pay with their lives for saying aloud what they think. In fact, one can even get killed for giving me information. I am not the only one in danger. I have examples that prove it. ~ Anna Politkovskaya

The big secret to winning elections is to get more votes than your opponent. My friend Representative Robin Hayes is a good example to study. ~ Jesse Helms

The way to self-love and admiration is to behave like someone whom you love and admire. ~ Aspen Matis

People who run for office and are defeated aren't rejected in the usual sense of the word. They're just defeated because they couldn't get enough votes that one time. It doesn't mean the public despises them. It's a preference for somebody else for that particular office at that particular moment, that's all. The examples I've given have shown that when those men were passed up, they were still highly thought of and were still great men. There were a good many like that. You take the Adams family. After John Quincy Adams passed on, there were Adams descendants in Lincoln's cabinet. They wrote important histories and things of that kind. Even in the states, some good men are governors who have been defeated previously in elections, even in previous tries for governor. If they don't become pessimists and decide to lay down and take it, if they get up and start over again, why, they don't have any trouble. ~ Harry Truman

So OK, it's your special big Four-O birthday But don't expect me to be obsequious and fawning You, being you, can't possibly be a good example So do try, at least, to serve as a warning ~ John Walter Bratton

Examples would indeed be excellent things were not people so modest that none will set, and so vain that none will follow them. ~ Augustus Hare

I gave examples from my clinical practice of how love was not wholly a thought or feeling. I told of how that very evening there would be some man sitting at a bar in the local village, crying into his beer and sputtering to the bartender how much he loved his wife and children while at the same time he was wasting his family's money and depriving them of his attention. We recounted how this man was thinking love and feeling love
were they not real tears in his eyes?
but he was not in truth behaving with love. ~ M. Scott Peck