Rebel poetry.

"Rebellion is perhaps among the deepest roots of science: the refusal to accept the present order of things."

"Perhaps poetry is another of science's deepest roots: the capacity to see beyond visible."

Carlo Rovelli, The Order of Time

Photo: Dejan

Unite.

"We cannot allow what divides us as individuals to continue to undermine what unites us as a people, what brings us together as Americans***."

*** Substitute the last word with the name of any community we are part of, smallest to largest.

Homeland, Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa

Photo: China Embassy in Slovenia

Live.

"And there are so many reasons to live! As a sentient being, you have the potential to flourish. You can refine your faculty of reason itself by learning and debating. You can seek explanations of the natural world through science, and insight into the human condition through the arts and humanities. You can make the most of your capacity for pleasure and satisfaction, which allowed your ancestors to thrive and thereby allowed you to exist. You can appreciate the beauty and richness of the natural and cultural world. As the heir to billions of years of life perpetuating itself, you can perpetuate life in turn. You have been endowed with a sense of sympathy—the ability to like, love, respect, help, and show kindness—and you can enjoy the gift of mutual benevolence with friends, family, and colleagues. And because reason tells you that none of this is particular to you, you have the responsibility to provide to others what you expect for yourself. You can foster the welfare of other sentient beings by enhancing life, health, knowledge, freedom, abundance, safety, beauty, and peace. History shows that when we sympathize with others and apply our ingenuity to improving the human condition, we can make progress in doing so, and you can help to continue that progress."


Steven Pinker - Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightenment_Now

Photo: Dejan

Unquestionable answers.

“I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned.” ― Richard Feynman (supposedly)

Photo: Dejan

Design for everyone. Including You.

It began with the fact that the Elon Musk greatly warned of the danger when artificial intelligence would seriously enter the war industry. The latest step is a collective call to ban the killer robots. (Which might be too late anyhow.)

But then, Caroline Sinders comes to what Elon has forgotten before that and how most (including his) technology contributes to discrimination.

In one sentence: "You should worry about who has a say over the future - the whole world is not D.C. or Silicon Valley - so how do we design for everyone?"

Including You, the reader of this post.

Here is yet her another article about how data is processed (in)correctly, on the basis of which we and artificial intelligence (mis)understand the world. And You.

Photo: Dejan

Disagree. Healthy.

"Note further that in science, conformity is anathema to success. The persistent accusations that we are all trying to agree with one another is laughable to scientists attempting to advance their careers. The best way to get famous in your own lifetime is to pose an idea that is counter to prevailing research and which ultimately earns a consistency of observations and experiment. This ensures healthy disagreement at all times while working on the bleeding edge of discovery." Neil deGrasse Tyson

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/neil-degrasse-tyson/what-science-is-and-how-and-why-it-works_b_8595642.html

Photo: Dejan

Persist.

Tourism is one of the most persistent human activities.
http://www.delo.si/mnenja/turizem-je-ena-najbolj-trdozivih-cloveskih-aktivnosti.html

Respond.

"We’re only here for a short while. And I think it’s such a lucky accident, having been born, that we’re almost obliged to pay attention. In some ways, this is getting far afield. I mean, we are — as far as we know — the only part of the universe that’s self-conscious. We could even be the universe’s form of consciousness. We might have come along so that the universe could look at itself. I don’t know that, but we’re made of the same stuff that stars are made of, or that floats around in space. But we’re combined in such a way that we can describe what it’s like to be alive, to be witnesses. Most of our experience is that of being a witness. We see and hear and smell other things. I think being alive is responding." Mark Strand (1934–2014)

Photo: Dejan

http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/01/28/mark-strand-creativity/?mc_cid=f2a44c2b67&mc_eid=8a631ce51e
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/30/nyregion/mark-strand-80-dies-pulitzer-winning-poet-laureate.html?_r=0

Books to recommend.

"It is really hard to say which books one should recommend. The best is if they are somehow intriguing, kind of not the obvious choices. Books that open a new way of thinking, a new culture, present a person´s world that one is not so familiar with."
Pekka Metso

http://metinalista.si/i-like-the-books-tell-a-good-story-that-stays-in-my-head-pekka-metso/

Photo: Dejan

What are you thinking right now?

The final question/answer of the video are worth waiting.
Via DailyBits.

Limited?

Michael Witbrock's tweet:

at iCiS workshop "No single human can synthesize data from 100 million scientific articles and 1,000 data sources" -> no set of humans can

Photo: Dejan

Open your mind.

A mind is like a parachute. It doesn't work if it's not open. (Frank Zappa)

Via: Nena and RTV SLO

Desire to create.

"We must not forget that greatest creations - whether in art or in science - occurred spontaneously, without specific needs, pressures, deadlines. They emerged as a result of great desire to create and of great dedication to the idea."

Assoc. prof. dr. Borut Likar, MBA, Faculty of Management Koper, director of the Institute for Innovation and Technology

Article in Slovene.

Photo: Dejan

Hard workers wanted.

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it. (Henry Ford)

Via Janja Seljak.

Photo: Dejan

my SEENs

Forgive me for all SEENs I have not done.

From now on - online: dejan-seens.blogspot.com

Photo: Dejan

Fun Theory.

How to evolve? With the help of fun!
Thanks, iAlja, for this great video and post.

Only tools and mechanisms.

Technology is only a tool. Market is only a mechanism that separates effective from ineffective.

How we use technology (for nuclear weapons or nuclear power stations) and how much wilderness we leave on market - this depends on us only.

Blaž Kos

Photo: Dejan

Plan.

Plan to be surprised.

From Dan in Real Life (2007)

Photo: Dejan

What cripples kids?

Taras Kermauner gives precise description of briliant father character in Bogdan Novak's novel Niki: "Reader is disgusted while following his deformed behaviour, moralistic violence of archaic authoritarianism, which cripples children, instead of rising them through love and solidarity into free people."

Slovene original: "Sijajen je lik očeta - gradbenika; bralcu se upira, ko sledi njegovemu deformiranemu značaju, moralističnemu nasilju arhaične avtoritarnosti, ki otroke pohablja, namesto, da bi jih vzgajal v ljubezni in solidarnosti v svobodne ljudi."

Photo: Dejan

Top-notch or only good?

"Kaplan has taught me that wise man has plenty of ideas and the only thing that differentiates top-notch of only good is the way how idea is carried out, how it becomes reality."

A Life Decoded by J. Craig Venter

Photo: Dejan