Quote

Paradox is thus a much deeper and universal concept than the ancients would have dreamed. Rather than an oddity, it is a mainstay of the philosophy of science.

William Poundstone

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

William Poundstone
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: March 29
Author
Biographer
Journalist
Much
Concept
Would
Thus
Concepts
Mainstay
Deeper
Oddity
Universal
Oddities
Philosophy
Ancients
Rather
Dreamed
Science
Paradox

More quotes by William Poundstone

Image
In The Tricky Art of Co-Existing, Sandi Toksvig navigates life's little dilemmas with wit and not-so-common sense. You'll learn the strange history of common courtesy and the one true secret of social success: how to not drive everyone around you crazy.
William Poundstone
Image
The ultimate compound return rate is acutely sensitive to fat tails.
William Poundstone
Image
There were many at Bell Labs and MIT who compared Shannon's insight to Einstein's. Others found that comparison unfair - unfair to Shannon.
William Poundstone
Image
Samuelson, however, hedged his personal bets - by putting some of his own money in Berkshire Hathaway.
William Poundstone
Image
The story of the Kelly system is a story of secrets - or if you prefer, a story of entropy.
William Poundstone
Image
Average isn't so hot at the race track given those steep track takes. Average is pretty decent for stocks, something like 6 percent above the inflation rate. For a buy-and -hold investor, commissions and taxes are small.
William Poundstone
Image
There is a deep connection between Bernoulli's dictum and John Kelly's 1956 publication. It turns out that Kelly's prescription can be restated as this simple rule: When faced with a choice of wagers or investments, choose the one with the highest geometric means of outcomes.
William Poundstone
Image
The more improbable the message, the less compressible it is, and the more bandwidth it requires. This is Shannon's point: the essence is its improbability.
William Poundstone
Image
Carl Friedrich Gauss, often rated the greatest mathematician of all time, played the market. On a salary of 1,000 thalers a year, Euler left an estate of 170,587 thalers in cash and securities. Nothing is known of Gauss's investment methods.
William Poundstone
Image
Shannon's most radical insight was that meaning was irrelevant.
William Poundstone
Image
The assumption that anything true is knowable is the grandfather of paradoxes.
William Poundstone
Image
Your second ducat, like your second million, is never quite as sweet.
William Poundstone
Image
A bit is worth 10,000 basis points.
William Poundstone
Image
In real conversations, we are always trying to outguess each other.
William Poundstone
Image
Are there any mythical beasts which aren't simple pastiches of nature? Centaurs, minotaurs, unicorns, griffons, chimeras, sphinxes, manticores, and the like don't speak well for the human imagination. None is as novel as a kangaroo or starfish.
William Poundstone
Image
At a bare minimum, understanding entails being able to detect an internal contradiction: a paradox.
William Poundstone
Image
Kelly was aware that there is one type of favorable bet available to everyone the stock market.
William Poundstone
Image
Samuelson spotted a mistake in Bacheliers work. Bachelier's model had failed to consider that stock prices cannot fall below zero.
William Poundstone
Image
The engine driving the Kelly system is the law of large numbers. In a 1713 treatise on probability, Swiss mathematician Jakob Bernoulli propounded a law that has been misunderstood by gamblers (and investors) ever since.
William Poundstone
Image
The best paradoxes raise questions about what kinds of contradictions can occur-what species of impossibilities are possible.
William Poundstone