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THE COMPUTER IS JUST AN INSTRUMENT for doing faster what we already know how to do slower. All pretensions to computer intelligence and paradise-tomorrow promises should be toned down before the public turns away in disgust. And if that should happen, our civilization might not survive.

Gian-Carlo Rota

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Gian-Carlo Rota
Age: 66 †
Born: 1932
Born: April 27
Died: 1999
Died: April 18
Mathematician
Philosopher
University Teacher
Public
Mathematics
Pretension
Turns
Intelligence
Disgusting
Science
Computer
Promises
Away
Promise
Instrument
Happens
Civilization
Paradise
Toned
Might
Tomorrow
Survive
Pretensions
Already
Faster
Slower
Happen
Instruments
Disgust

More quotes by Gian-Carlo Rota

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Nature imitates mathematics.
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Stan Ulam was lazy, ... He talked too much ... He was self-centered ... . He had an overpowering personality.
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A mathematician's work is mostly a tangle of guesswork, analogy, wishful thinking and frustration, and proof, far from being the core of discovery, is more often than not a way of making sure that our minds are not playing tricks.
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There is something in statistics that makes it very similar to astrology.
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The pendulum of mathematics swings back and forth towards abstraction and away from it with a timing that remains to be estimated.
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Mathematicians also make terrible salesmen. Physicists can discover the same thing as a mathematician and say 'We've discovered a great new law of nature. Give us a billion dollars.' And if it doesn't change the world, then they say, 'There's an even deeper thing. Give us another billion dollars.'
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Very little mathematics has direct applications - though fortunately most of it has plenty of indirect ones.
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The lack of real contact between mathematics and biology is either a tragedy, a scandal or a challenge, it is hard to decide which.
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God created infinity, and man, unable to understand infinity, had to invent finite sets.
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Are mathematical ideas invented or discovered? This question has been repeatedly posed by philosophers through the ages and will probably be with us forever.
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If we have no idea why a statement is true, we can still prove it by induction.
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The progress of mathematics can be viewed as progress from the infinite to the finite.
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