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It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of think
by sanxiyn 6y ago
It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.
Alfred North Whitehead (1911)
- Aerroon 6y agoIt is repeated because the advancement of civilization has enabled us not to think about the intermediary steps. It's a reminder to sometimes think about the process itself. It can lead to discoveries that can improve the entire process. The 'erroneous truism' is like the saying "Don't judge a book by its cover." The meaning of the saying isn't that you must ignore the cover and judge every book by its content. Picking out a book to read from the library would be impossible. We still need to make decisions based on heuristics. The saying is simply a reminder that sometimes a poor outward appearance can have a gem hidden underneath.
- incrudible 6y agoThis statement does not age well. Some of the worst disasters of the twentieth century relied on masses of people not stopping to think what they were doing.
- raspyberr 6y agoJust have a look at the immediate news-headline issues happening around the world. I reckon a good number of them wouldn't be issues if people did some "thinking" and not relying on "the algorithm" to tell what's happening.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y agoThere’s a lot baked into that. It’s great that I don’t need to think about manual memory management. It’s a different class of operation than OP is talking about. I suppose google search is somewhere in the middle.