Paul Song

OpenAI had grown competitive, secretive, and insular, even fearful of the outside world under the intoxicating power of controlling such a paramount technology. Gone were notions of transparency and democracy, of self-sacrifice and collaboration. OpenAI executives had a singular obsession: to be the first to reach artificial general intelligence, to make it in their own image.

p. 14

Solon revealed that facial recognition software had been trained on millions of people's personal Flickr photos without their consent. What surprised me was not the findings… What surprised me was how much I'd come to view that as completely normal.

p. 103

extractivism is more than extraction… a mode of accumulation based on hyper-extraction with lopsided benefits and costs: concentrated mass-scale removal of resources, primarily for export, with benefits largely accumulating far from the sites of extraction.

p. 104

deep learning models are inherently prone to having discriminatory impacts because they pick up and amplify even the tiniest imbalance present in huge volumes of training data. It's not just a problem when a demographic is poorly represented, but when it's over-represented as well.

p. 108

each ChatGPT query is estimated to need on average about ten times more electricity than a typical search on Google… Developers and utility companies are now preparing for AI megacampuses that could soon require 1,000 to 2,000 megawatts of power. A single one could use as much energy per year as around one and a half to three and a half San Franciscos.

p. 275

"They came to intimidate us," says MOSACAT member Alejandra Salinas… "Think about it. They come offering us trees while drying out our earth."

p. 290

He is at once generous and self-serving, agreeable and threatening, a benefactor for so many people and the source of great personal pain for others… leaving many with an impression that they are part of a larger game of chess for which only he can see the full board, and the end game is to preserve his power as king.

p. 333

Cities are engines of creativity because we create in community. We are spurred by competition. We need to find the colleagues and the friends and the competitors and the antagonists who unlock our genius and add their own.

p. 27

Homeownership works for some because it cannot work for all… How do we ensure that housing is both appreciating in value for homeowners but cheap enough for all would-be homeowners to buy in? We can't.

p. 46

It holds that climate change reflects humanity's thrall to an impossible dream of endless growth. Rich countries must accept stasis, shuttering or scaling down major industries, and poor countries must grow more gently and prudently. (degrowth)

p. 58

In 100 or 200 years, everything will look radically different… folks will look back and be blown away by how we used energy today. They'll say, "Wait, you just burned it?" — Melissa Lott

p. 67

This is why China can build tens of thousands of miles of high-speed rail in the time it takes California to fail to build hundreds of miles of high-speed rail… That power leads to abuse and imperiousness. It also leads to high-speed rail.

p. 82

Liberals speak as if they believe in government and then pass policy after policy hamstringing what it can actually do. Conservatives talk as if they want a small state but support a national security and surveillance apparatus of terrifying scope… In the absence of that focus, absurdity reigns.

p. 105

Each individual decision is rational. The collective consequences are maddening. We hire skilled, dedicated people to do the public's work and then make it impossible for them to do that work well… And then we wonder why so many of them leave.

p. 112

How can we possibly account for this puzzle: more scientists, more money, more years of education, more knowledge, more technology, and more papers — but, in many fields, slower progress?… Jones called this escalating challenge "the burden of knowledge."

p. 143

Life was about serving the greater good, not seeking the greater glory.

p. 50

I think the way my kids have understood race in America is that things were bad, Martin Luther King Jr. came, and now everything is good… I really need to help them understand that that's not true — that race in America is a lot more complicated, and there's still a lot of work to do.

p. 202

It is easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission. — Grace Hopper

the website and the plumbing behind it are "just how you get your check"… but they are too often why you don't get your check… To the laid-off worker waiting months for unemployment benefits, the argument that those are merely delivery hiccups and not "inherently governmental" work is meaningless.

p. 119

Each time he got stuck, Kepler unleashed a fusillade of analogies… He eventually decided that celestial bodies pulled one another, and larger bodies had more pull. That led him to claim (correctly) that the moon influences tides on Earth. Galileo… mocked him for the ridiculous idea of "the moon's dominion over the waters."

p. 101

Sometimes I joke that I'm not interested in doing re-search, only search.

p. 274

Larry gave a passionate defense of the position I like to think of as digital utopianism: that digital life is the natural and desirable next step in cosmic evolution, and that if we let digital minds be free rather than trying to stop or enslave them, the outcome is almost certain to be good.

p. 32

To love friendship is to love the future.

My handwriting changed that week, growing curvier and more ornate, like the violent fury of graffiti tags. I got lost while searching for the right words. What was that thing we had learned in our rhetoric class, about Derrida's "deferral of meaning" and how words are merely signs that can never fully summon what they "mean"? Yet words are all we have, simultaneously bringing us closer, casting us farther away.

p. 157

Occasionally, I felt preemptively embarrassed about my private hysterics. I think the most depressing aspect of keeping a journal is thinking, or knowing, that one day I'll be sitting somewhere reading this — trying to relive some moments, but struck not by recaptured emotions, rather by how damn deep I tried to sound at some point in the past.

p. 186

Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches, and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue… I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth.

Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time… Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively… We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God… Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy.

it cannot be stressed enough that there's no certain independent date for any of the archaeological material from earliest Rome or the area round about, and that arguments still rage about the age of almost every major find.

p. 83

The word "king" almost certainly implies something much more formal and grander than we should be envisaging… after the dramatic fall of Tarquinius Superbus, kings were an object of hatred for the rest of Roman history. To be accused of wanting to be rex was a political death sentence for any Roman.

p. 94

a man of tall stature, of vigorous build, robust in body, the hair on his face scanty and turned white, with cats' eyes, possessed of dedicated energy, discernment, genius, and understanding, awe-striking, a butcher, just, resolute, an overthrower of enemies, intrepid, sanguinary, and cruel.

p. 6

the well-trained and tightly organized Mongol army would charge out of its Highland home and overrun everything from the Indus River to the Danube, from the Pacific Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea. In a flash, only 30 years… Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus would soon kneel before the dusty boots of illiterate young Mongol horsemen.

p. 86

Every Mongol soldier had to live his life as a warrior with the assumption that he was immortal… At the last moment of life, when all had failed and no hope remained, the Mongol warrior was supposed to look upward and back his fate by calling out the name of the eternal blue sky as his final earthly words.

p. 91

as Genghis Khan reportedly said, there is no good in anything until it is finished.

p. 92

…as the effects of the alcohol became stronger, the Christians gave up trying to persuade anyone with logical arguments and resorted to singing. The Muslims, who did not sing, responded by loudly reciting the Koran to drown out the Christians, and the Buddhists retreated into silent meditation. At the end of the debate, unable to convert or kill one another, they concluded the way most Mongol celebrations concluded — with everyone simply too drunk to continue.

p. 173

He won over the population by skillful manipulation of public opinion… He built a Chinese capital, took Chinese names, created a Chinese dynasty, and set up a Chinese administration. He won control of China by appearing more Chinese than the Chinese, or at least more Chinese than the Sung.

p. 195

Alexander and Caesar seem petty before him. — Nehru

p. 261

"Just now" does not exist.

p. 72

Mercury, the fleet-footed messenger of the gods, the god of the winged sandals, follows Einstein, not Newton.

p. 85

This rich and complex range of phenomena — bending of rays of light, modification of Newton's force, slowing down of clocks, black holes, gravitational waves, expansion of the universe, the Big Bang — all of this follows from understanding that space is not a fixed container but possesses its own dynamic, its own "physics," just like the matter and fields it contains.

p. 89

Our culture is foolish to keep science and poetry separated: they are two tools to open our eyes to the complexity and beauty of the world.

p. 105

Only someone in his twenties can take such delirious propositions seriously. You have to be a twentysomething to believe they can be turned into a theory of the world. And perhaps you have to be this young to understand, better than anyone else and for the first time, the deep structure of nature.

p. 119

The reality of scientific revolutions is thus more complex than a reorganization of observational data on a new conceptual basis. It is a continuous change at the margins and/or the foundations of our global thinking about the world.

p. 133

science is a process that builds continuously upon existing theories — that is, upon existing cumulated knowledge — but continuously revises this knowledge, keeping open the possibility of questioning any aspect of it, including the general rules of thinking that appear most certain.

p. 134

Solid certainties are the ones that survive questioning.

p. 158

In Durkheim's view, religion functions to structure society… "Religion is society worshiping itself." Another interpretation is Marx's: religion does not express the interests of society as a whole, but only of the ruling class, for whom it is a means of perpetuating oppression.

p. 178

The priest who says "I now pronounce you man and wife," the judge who says "guilty," the faculty that says "I bestow upon you the title of doctor"… these people do not just describe reality; they make something real by means of language. This space exists only inasmuch as human beings as a group recognize its reality and legitimacy.

p. 186

To see the sacredness of life and the world, we have no need of a god. We have no need of otherworldly guarantors to know that we have values, and even to be willing to die defending them… If the beauty and mystery of things leave us breathless, breathless we remain, moved and in silence.

p. 193

I prefer the path of uncertainty. It seems to me it teaches us more about the world; it is more worthy, more honest, more serious, and more beautiful.

Borlaug was like a physicist who figures out how something should work on an idealized frictionless plane and then is startled when it doesn't function the same way in the real world of hills and valleys.

p. 444

We do not have to die to arrive at the gates of Heaven. In fact, we have to be truly alive.

I like the expression "resting in God." When you pray with all your heart, the Holy Spirit is in you, and as you continue to pray, the Holy Spirit continues in you. You do not need to do anything else. As long as the Holy Spirit is there, everything is fine. You are resting in God, and God will work in you. For transformation to take place, you only need to allow the Holy Spirit to stay in you.

p. 244

When the Buddha was asked, "Sir, what do you and your monks practice?" he replied, "We sit, we walk, and we eat." The questioner continued, "But, sir, everyone sits, walks, and eats," and the Buddha told him, "When we sit, we know we are sitting. When we walk, we know we are walking. When we eat, we know we are eating."

p. 265

faith is actually the opposite of unbelief, not reason.

p. 56

Growing up as a skeptic, I never thought of the biblical narrative as an eyewitness account. Instead, I saw it as something more akin to religious mythology — a series of stories designed to make a point.

p. 85

Let us imagine what a Jew… might put to Jesus: "Is it not true… that you fabricated the story of your birth from a virgin to quiet rumors about the true and unsavory circumstances of your origins?…" — Celsus, an anti-Christian critic 100 years after Jesus.

p. 25

Subject people knew how Roman armies operated; in words that Tacitus claims to quote from a defeated British general: "They make a desert and call it peace."

p. 30

Thomas Jefferson, for example, decided to "correct" the gospels by cutting these stories out of his own Bible with scissors… he created what others called the Jefferson Bible, a book with gaps visible in the pages where he cut out the miracles, now on display at his plantation home in Monticello.

p. 69

whatever else he may have done, Jesus did not celebrate rationality as a virtue. His tradition was not Greco-Roman philosophy, but popular Galilean Judaism… His mind was poetic, and his mental universe, filled as it was with invisible spirits… was mythological. — Dale Allison

p. 71

The goal… is not to establish one correct answer, but rather to open each person's understanding. — Eva Keller

p. 220

Christians involved with the gospels today tend to leave aside quarrels about whose church is "right"… people of different temperament and cultures incline toward different kinds of religious experience… None of these is prescribed, but none are excluded; and all agree that Christian faith requires practicing justice, mercy, and love.

p. 244

But everything else about him was nothing like Pop, was like Pop had been wrung out like a wet rag and then dried up in the wrong shape.

And it came about that owners no longer worked on their farms. They farmed on paper; and they forgot the land, the smell, the feel of it, and remembered only that they owned it, remembered only what they gained and lost by it.

p. 232

Then such a farmer really became a storekeeper, and kept a store… and then the dispossessed were drawn west… Carloads, caravans, homeless, and hungry; 20,000 and 50,000 and 100,000 and 200,000. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and restless — restless ants, scurrying to find work to do: to lift, to push, to pull, to pick, to cut — anything, any burden to bear, for food.

Our people are good people; our people are kind people. Pray God some day kind people won't all be poor. Pray God some day a kid can eat.

p. 239

In our time, mass or collective production has entered our economics, our politics, and even our religion, so that some nations have substituted the idea collective for the idea God.

p. 131

Kate inched over her thoughts like a measuring worm.

like the genie in the bottle they have this sort of vital, loving sense of play, of freedom, that common sense can't keep bottled up… Compared to those faceless hordes of people rushing through the train station, these crazy, preposterous stories of a thousand years ago are, at least to me, much more real. How that's possible, I don't know. It's pretty weird.

p. 57

but listening to the D Major, I can feel the limits of what humans are capable of. A certain type of perfection can only be realized through a limitless accumulation of the imperfect. And personally, I find that encouraging. Do you know what I'm getting at?

p. 112

in dreams begin responsibilities.

p. 132

Now I know exactly how dangerous the forest can be. And I hope I never forget it… the only plants I've ever really touched till now are the city kind — neatly trimmed and cared-for. But the ones living here are totally different. They have a physical power… Like deep-sea creatures rule the ocean depths, in the forest trees reign supreme. A healthy amount of fear and respect might be a good idea.

p. 134

I wanted to hear your voice, too… you're living in the real world, breathing real air, speaking real words. Talking with you makes me feel, for the time being, connected to reality. And that's really important to me now.

You can't choose where you're born, but where you die you can.

p. 291