"The market can quickly seize up. Prices don't adjust in a smooth continuous fashion, but instead abruptly reconfigure themselves, like the earth's crust during an earthquake."

David Orrell Mathematics See all quotes by David Orrell →

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“Economists often talk about the benefits of choice, but rational economic man doesn't actually have much freedom to chose, because he is a slave to his own preferences.”

“To balance the economy, we need first to balance our priorities, and abandon rigid ideologies.”

“The economy is a nonlinear fractal system, where the smallest scales are linked to the largest, and the decisions of the central bank are affected by the gut instincts of the people on the street.”

“Advanced technology is great at tasks such as keeping an airliner flying several thousand feet in the air, but is easily crippled by social complications.”

“A society in which each person is hell bent on maximizing his or her own utility, may therefore have declining overall utility.”

“Perfect order is boring, perfect randomness is boring, but complex systems are interesting.”

Resonant Thoughts

"Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many others. They just don't dare express themselves as we did."

— Sophie Scholl

Politics1921–1943

#justice

"Every thing secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity."

— John Dalberg-Acton

Literature1834–1902

#justice

"For the only way one can speak of nothing is to speak of it as though it were something, just as the only way one can speak of God is to speak of him as though he were a man, which to be sure he was, …"

— Samuel Beckett

Literature1906–1989

#justice

"Scholes was playing tiki-taka football when nobody in England knew what it was. He was another of those players, like Denis Law or Bobby Moore, who at 15 probably looked as if he wouldn't make it. Too…"

— Paul Scholes

Sports1974

#justice