No Implication Of Reasonableness

Very few scientists actually plunge into the murky waters of testing or challenging borderline or pseudo-scientific beliefs.  The chance of finding out something really interesting — except about human nature — seems small, and the amount of time required seems large.  I believe that scientists should spend more time in discussing these issues, but the fact that a given contention lacks vigorous scientific opposition in no way implies that scientists think it is reasonable.
—    Carl Sagan
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Back To First Principles

It is really wonderful how much resilience there is in human nature.  Let any obstructing cause, no matter what, be removed in any way, even by death, and we fly back to first principles of hope and enjoyment.
—     Bram Stoker
From his book:  “Dracula“
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A Sovereign Good

The inquiry of truth, which is the love-making, or wooing of it, the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it, and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature.
—     Francis Bacon
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Sometimes Human Nature Stays The Same

Perhaps the most telling email is a message from a then executive named Sam Lessin to Zuckerberg that epitomizes Facebook’s penchant for self-justification.  The company, Lessin wrote, could be ruthless and committed to social good at the same time, because they are essentially the same thing:  “Our mission is to make the world more open and connected and the only way we can do that is with the best people and the best infrastructure, which requires that we make a lot of money / be very profitable.”
The message also highlighted another of the company’s original sins:  its assertion that if you just give people better tools for sharing, the world will be a better place.  That’s just false.  Sometimes Facebook makes the world more open and connected;  sometimes it makes it more closed and disaffected.  Despots and demagogues have proven to be just as adept at using Facebook as democrats and dreamers.  Like the communications innovations before it — the printing press, the telephone, the internet itself — Facebook is a revolutionary tool.  But human nature has stayed the same.
—    Nicholas Thompson and Fred Vogelstein
From their article:  “15 Months of Fresh Hell Inside Facebook“
Appearing in:  Wired Magazine;  dtd:  May 2019
Online at:  https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-15-months-of-fresh-hell/
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Bakeries And Coffee Shops

Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?
––    Henry Ward Beecher
[And let us not forget the chocolate confectioner…  Just sayin’.    —   kmab]
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2017	And Second By Second
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2012	Got Sleep?
2011	Not Another Barren Corner

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