“The boundary between these 2 classes [the Eloi & Morlocks] is more porous than I’ve made it sound. I’m always running into regular dudes—construction workers, auto mechanics, taxi drivers, galoots in general—who were largely aliterate until something made it necessary for them to become readers and start actually thinking about things. Perhaps they had to come to grips with alcoholism, perhaps they got sent to jail, or came down with a disease, or suffered a crisis in religious faith, or simply got bored. Such people can get up to speed on particular subjects quite rapidly. Sometimes their lack of a broad education makes them over-apt to go off on intellectual wild goose chases, but, hey, at least a wild goose chase gives you some exercise.”
--Neal Stephenson, In the Beginning Was… the Commandline
The last project that I worked on with [Richard Feynman] was in simulated evolution. I had written a program that simulated the evolution of populations of sexually reproducing creatures over hundreds of thousands of generations. The results were surprising in that the fitness of the population made progress in sudden leaps rather than by the expected steady improvement. The fossil record shows some evidence that real biological evolution might also exhibit such “punctuated equilibrium,” so Richard and I decided to look more closely at why it happened. He was feeling ill by that time, so I went out and spent the week with him in Pasadena, and we worked out a model of evolution of finite populations based on the Fokker Planck equations. When I got back to Boston I went to the library and discovered a book by Kimura on the subject, and much to my disappointment, all of our “discoveries” were covered in the first few pages. When I called back and told Richard what I had found, he was elated. “Hey, we got it right!” he said. “Not bad for amateurs.”
I would like to upvote the Feynman quote. I am not interested in upvoting the Stephenson quote. I think it would be better if these quotes were in separate comments, as recommended in the post.
This reminds of how two high school classmates of mine eluded the prohibition from voting for themselves as class representatives by voting for each other.
I would like to upvote the Feynman quote. I am not interested in upvoting the Stephenson quote.
I would like to upvote the Stephenson quote, and not the Feynman quote.
You two talk between yourselves so that only one of you upvote the entire comment.
Or, you both downvote the conglomerate and each write a comment expressing objection to the combination, approval of the desired quote and indifference to the other.
(I downvoted the conglomerate on the principle “I wish to see less quote-comments that people believe should be separate, especially when said quotes are verbose anyway”. There is an implied ”...and would upvote both comments if they were split to encourage trivial improvements in response to feedback”.)
--Neal Stephenson, In the Beginning Was… the Commandline
From “Richard Feynman and The Connection Machine”
I would like to upvote the Feynman quote. I am not interested in upvoting the Stephenson quote. I think it would be better if these quotes were in separate comments, as recommended in the post.
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I would like to abstain from voting on them, but to do so in separate posts.
You two talk between yourselves so that only one of you upvote the entire comment.
This reminds of how two high school classmates of mine eluded the prohibition from voting for themselves as class representatives by voting for each other.
Or, you both downvote the conglomerate and each write a comment expressing objection to the combination, approval of the desired quote and indifference to the other.
(I downvoted the conglomerate on the principle “I wish to see less quote-comments that people believe should be separate, especially when said quotes are verbose anyway”. There is an implied ”...and would upvote both comments if they were split to encourage trivial improvements in response to feedback”.)