“
Just as you can pick out the voice of a loved one in the tumult of a noisy room, or spot your child's smile in a sea of faces, intimate connection allows recognition in an all-too-often anonymous world. This sense of connection arises from a special kind of discrimination, a search image that comes from a long time spent looking and listening. Intimacy gives us a different way of seeing, when visual acuity is not enough.
”
”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses)
“
Keeping the door that leads to your heart ajar is destructive as univited guests would move in and trample on your feelings, leaving you in great pains, but closing it always is a sure way to spot out the destructive and innovative guests.
”
”
Michael Bassey Johnson
“
Sanity, as the project of keeping ourselves recognizably human, therefore has to limit the range of human experience. To keep faith with recognition we have to stay recognizable. Sanity, in other words, becomes a pressing preoccupation as soon as we recognize the importance of recognition. When we define ourselves by what we can recognize, by what we can comprehend- rather than, say, by what we can describe- we are continually under threat from what we are unwilling and/or unable to see. We are tyrannized by our blind spots, and by whatever it is about ourselves that we find unacceptable.
”
”
Adam Phillips (Going Sane: Maps of Happiness)
“
Misfortune finds the weak spot.
”
”
Kālidāsa (The Recognition of Sakuntala)
“
Racism is the norm rather than an aberration. Feedback is key to our ability to recognize and repair our inevitable and often unaware collusion. In recognition of this, I try to follow these guidelines: 1. How, where, and when you give me feedback is irrelevant—it is the feedback I want and need. Understanding that it is hard to give, I will take it any way I can get it. From my position of social, cultural, and institutional white power and privilege, I am perfectly safe and I can handle it. If I cannot handle it, it’s on me to build my racial stamina. 2. Thank you. The above guidelines rest on the understanding that there is no face to save and the game is up; I know that I have blind spots and unconscious investments in racism. My investments are reinforced every day in mainstream society. I did not set this system up, but it does unfairly benefit me, I do use it to my advantage, and I am responsible for interrupting it. I need to work hard to change my role in this system, but I can’t do it alone. This understanding leads me to gratitude when others help me.
”
”
Robin DiAngelo (White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism)
“
You have to be grateful whenever you get to someplace safe and okay, even if it turns out it wasn’t quite where you were heading. The light you see when people are in the tunnel of deep trouble is domestic flashes of recognition and kitchen comforts, not Blake’s radiance, which would be my preference.
”
”
Anne Lamott (Small Victories: Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace)
“
You have to be grateful whenever you get to someplace safe and okay, even if it turns out it wasn’t quite where you were heading. The light you see when people are in the tunnel of deep trouble is domestic flashes of recognition and kitchen comforts, not Blake’s radiance, which would be my preference. The sky had shifted
”
”
Anne Lamott (Small Victories: Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace)
“
Armani froze to the spot, unable to move. Her breath tightened in her lungs, shivers of awareness ran down her spine, the sudden energy zipping through her body announcing the shimmer of recognition.
”
”
Suzan Battah (BaSatai: Outside In # 1)
“
It turned out that our choices of everything from food to mates result not from some mysterious free will, but rather from billions of neurons calculating probabilities within a split second. Vaunted ‘human intuition’ is in reality ‘pattern recognition’. Good drivers, bankers and lawyers don’t have magical intuitions about traffic, investment or negotiation – rather, by recognising recurring patterns, they spot and try to avoid careless pedestrians, inept borrowers and dishonest crooks.
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (21 Lessons for the 21st Century)
“
It turned out that our choices of everything from food to mates result not from some mysterious free will, but rather from billions of neurons calculating probabilities within a split second. Vaunted ‘human intuition’ is in reality ‘pattern recognition’.3 Good drivers, bankers and lawyers don’t have magical intuitions about traffic, investment or negotiation – rather, by recognising recurring patterns, they spot and try to avoid careless pedestrians, inept borrowers and dishonest crooks.
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (21 Lessons for the 21st Century)
“
Like anyone would fall in love that fast. It’s the whole clichéd love-at-first-sight bit, right?” Vince said.
“So, you don’t believe in love at first sight?” I asked him.
“What, you do?” Shawn piped up.
I tapped my pen for a second. On the spot again. I could tell him my opinion on the matter was irrelevant, but I decided to pursue the question.
“I suppose that depends on a number of factors, not the least of which is knowing yourself well enough to understand what type of person you’re looking for,” I said. “If you know which qualities you admire most in someone, you’re more likely to recognize that person when you meet her…or him. I prefer to call it recognition at first sight.”
I avoided looking at Aubrey, but I had to meet her eyes as she posed another question.
“In your opinion, what are the other factors contributing to this recognition at first sight, Daniel?” she asked casually.
All eyes were on me. “Frame of mind, I suppose. There are times when you simply couldn’t fall in love if you tried because you’re not in the right place in your life. The conditions surrounding the actual meeting might also hold some sway. Certain circumstances seem to set the scene for emotional vulnerability, and you get swept away in the moment.
”
”
Georgina Guthrie (Better Deeds than Words (Words, #2))
“
He tells me of experiments his team is developing to monitor the spark of recognition in the brain as people look at online ads. The test focus on a brain wave called P300. (The U.S. Navy has run similar tests to see how pilots distinguish friends from foes in the air.) If a P300 wave heats up within a fraction of a second of a subject's seeing an ad, the Tacoda team will make the case that the viewer has not only looked at the spot but has processed it mentally. The next step? Figuring out which type of people process certain types of ads. Like other Numerati in a wide range of industries, Dave Morgan in scrutinizing humans and searching for hidden correlations. What do we do, he asks, that might predict what we'll do next?
”
”
Stephen Baker (The Numerati)
“
One learns of a victory either after the war is over, or at once, from the hilarious joy of one’s hall porter. One discovers the touch of genius in Berma’s acting a week after one has heard her, in the criticism of some review, or else on the spot, from the thundering acclamation of the stalls. But this immediate recognition by the crowd was mingled with a hundred others, all quite erroneous; the applause came, most often, at wrong moments, apart from the fact that it was mechanically produced by the effect of the applause that had gone before, just as in a storm, once the sea is sufficiently disturbed, it will continue to swell, even after the wind has begun to subside. No matter; the more I applauded, the better, it seemed to me, did Berma act
”
”
Marcel Proust (In Search Of Lost Time (All 7 Volumes) (ShandonPress))
“
Another motive [to commit fraud] may be the fraudster’s pathologically mistaken views on what science is about. The immunologist and Nobelist Sir Peter Medawar has argued, perhaps counter-intuitively, that scientists who commit fraud care too much about the truth, but that their idea of what’s true has become disconnected from reality. ‘I believe,’ he wrote, ‘that the most important incentive to scientific fraud is a passionate belief in the truth and significance of a theory or hypothesis which is disregarded or frankly not believed by the majority of scientists – colleagues who must accordingly be shocked into recognition of what the offending scientist believes to be a self-evident truth.’103 The physicist David Goodstein agrees: ‘Injecting falsehoods into the body of science is rarely, if ever, the purpose of those who perpetrate fraud,’ he suggests. ‘They almost always believe that they are injecting a truth into the scientific record … but without going through all the trouble that the real scientific method demands.’104
104. Medawar,
The Strange Case of the Spotted Mice
, p. 197.
103. David Goodstein,
On Fact and Fraud: Cautionary Tales from the Front Lines of Science
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010): p. 2.
”
”
Stuart Ritchie (Science Fictions)
“
It would appear that certain transcendent realities emit all around them a radiance to which the crowd is sensitive. So it is that when any great event occurs, when on a distant frontier an army is in jeopardy, or defeated, or victorious, the vague and conflicting reports which we receive, from which an educated man can derive little enlightenment, stimulate in the crowd an emotion by which that man is surprised, and in which, once expert criticism has informed him of the actual military situation, he recognises the popular perception of that ‘aura’ which surrounds momentous happenings, and which may be visible hundreds of miles away. One learns of a victory either after the war is over, or at once, from the hilarious joy of one’s hall porter. One discovers the touch of genius in Berma’s acting a week after one has heard her, in the criticism of some review, or else on the spot, from the thundering acclamation of the stalls. But this immediate recognition by the crowd was mingled with a hundred others, all quite erroneous; the applause came, most often, at wrong moments, apart from the fact that it was mechanically produced by the effect of the applause that had gone before, just as in a storm, once the sea is sufficiently disturbed, it will continue to swell, even after the wind has begun to subside. No matter; the more I applauded, the better, it seemed to me, did Berma act.
”
”
Marcel Proust (In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower)
“
OUR ABILITY TO RECOGNIZE FAMILIAR THINGS
At first glance our ability to recognize familiar things may not seem so unusual, but brain researchers have long realized it is quite a complex ability. For example, the absolute certainty we feel when we spot a familiar face in a crowd of several hundred people is not just a subjective emotion, but appears to be caused by an extremely fast and reliable form of information processing in our brain. In a 1970 article in the British science magazine Nature, physicist Pieter van Heerden proposed that a type of holography known as recognition holography offers a way of understanding this ability. * In recognition holography a holographic image of an object is recorded in the usual manner, save that the laser beam is bounced off a special kind of mirror known as a focusing mirror before it is allowed to strike the unexposed film. If a second object, similar but not identical
* Van Heerden, a researcher at the Polaroid Research Laboratories in Cambridge, Massachusetts, actually proposed his own version of a holographic theory of memory in 1963, but his work went relatively unnoticed.
to the first, is bathed in laser light and the light is bounced off the mirror and onto the film after it has been developed, a bright point of light will appear on the film. The brighter and sharper the point of light the greater the degree of similarity between the first and second objects. If the two objects are completely dissimilar, no point of light will appear. By placing a light-sensitive photocell behind the holographic film, one can actually use the setup as a mechanical recognition system.7 A similar technique known as interference holography may also explain how we can recognize both the familiar and unfamiliar features of an image such as the face of someone we have not seen for many years. In this technique an object is viewed through a piece of holographic film containing its image. When this is done, any feature of the object that has changed since its image was originally recorded will reflect light differently. An individual looking through the film is instantly aware of both how the object has changed and how it has remained the same. The technique is so sensitive that even the pressure of a finger on a block of granite shows up immediately, and the process has been found to have practical applications in the materials testing industry.
”
”
Michael Talbot (The Holographic Universe)
“
With training or experience, people can encode patterns deep in their memories in vast number and intricate detail—such as the estimated fifty thousand to one hundred thousand chess positions that top players have in their repertoire.20 If something doesn’t fit a pattern—like a kitchen fire giving off more heat than a kitchen fire should—a competent expert senses it immediately. But as we see every time someone spots the Virgin Mary in burnt toast or in mold on a church wall, our pattern-recognition ability comes at the cost of susceptibility to false positives. This, plus the many other ways in which the tip-of-your-nose perspective can generate perceptions that are clear, compelling, and wrong, means intuition can fail as spectacularly as it can work.
”
”
Philip E. Tetlock (Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction)
“
Humans, however, were evolved for many things with pattern recognition being one of the foremost. If there was a pattern out there and you set a human to find it, odds on they’d succeed. Of course, if there wasn’t a pattern, they’d probably find one anyway. Evolution had erred on the side of false positives, since spotting a tiger that wasn’t there was a lot better than missing one that was. In this case, however, the tiger was there.
”
”
Evan Currie (Legion in Exile (Imperium of Terra Book 2))
“
Racism is a multilayered system embedded in our culture. • All of us are socialized into the system of racism. • Racism cannot be avoided. • Whites have blind spots on racism, and I have blind spots on racism. • Racism is complex, and I don’t have to understand every nuance of the feedback to validate that feedback. • Whites are / I am unconsciously invested in racism. • Bias is implicit and unconscious; I don’t expect to be aware of mine without a lot of ongoing effort. • Giving us white people feedback on our racism is risky for people of color, so we can consider the feedback a sign of trust. • Feedback on white racism is difficult to give; how I am given the feedback is not as relevant as the feedback itself. • Authentic antiracism is rarely comfortable. Discomfort is key to my growth and thus desirable. • White comfort maintains the racial status quo, so discomfort is necessary and important. • I must not confuse comfort with safety; as a white person, I am safe in discussions of racism. • The antidote to guilt is action. • It takes courage to break with white solidarity; how can I support those who do? • I bring my group’s history with me; history matters. • Given my socialization, it is much more likely that I am the one who doesn’t understand the issue. • Nothing exempts me from the forces of racism. • My analysis must be intersectional (a recognition that my other social identities—class, gender, ability—inform how I was socialized into the racial system). • Racism hurts (even kills) people of color 24-7. Interrupting it is more important than my feelings, ego, or self-image.
”
”
Robin DiAngelo (White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism)
“
We often want to be misled. We collude with the lie, unwittingly, because we have a stake in not knowing the truth. It may not be in the interest of a mother with a number of very young children to catch her mate’s lies that conceal his infidelity. Everyone but she may know what is happening. Or, the parents of a preadolescent using hard drugs may unwittingly strive to avoid spotting the lies that would force them to deal with a possible failure as parents, and which would bring about a terrible struggle. The targets of lies may also collusively want to believe the liar to avoid recognition of impending disaster. Which explains why the businessman who mistakenly hired an embezzler continues to miss the signs of the embezzlement. Rationally speaking, the sooner he discovers the embezzlement the better, but psychologically, this discovery will mean he must face not only his company’s losses but his own mistake in having hired such a rascal.” —Paul Ekman, Telling Lies
”
”
Douglas E. Richards (Veracity)
“
The rituals of Demeter and Persephone at Eleusis were practiced for some 2000 years, from the fifteenth century B.C.E. to the end of the fourth century C.E. Demeter and Persephone are Goddesses of the agricultural cycle, Goddesses of the death and rebirth of the seed crops, Goddesses whose rites were later spiritualized to symbolize the death and rebirth of the soul. The rites of Demeter and Persephone are said to derive from agricultural rituals for women only known as the Thesmophoria. In classical times the rituals of Demeter and Persephone at Eleusis were among the most important in all Greece.
We go to Eleusis because we too want to celebrate the mysteries of mother and daughter. For those of us who are reared on myths and stories of fathers and sons, it is healing to know that once the deepest mysteries of the universe were symbolized in a story about the relationship of mother and daughter. The story of Demeter and Persephone resonates with echoes of the powerful but little-celebrated relationship we have had with our mothers and daughters.
Our rituals at Eleusis in the summers of 1981 to 1986, are among the first to have been celebrated there in conscious recognition of the Goddesses since the forced closing of the ancient temples about 400 C.E. These rituals have been among the most powerful experiences of my life. It seems as if there is an enormous energy dammed up on the site waiting to be released. Whether that power is the natural energy of the place (all the Greek temple sites are at naturally powerful spots, as Vincent Scully has shown) or the cumulative energy of worshippers, or the power of the Goddess, I do not know.
From "Eleusinian Mysteries" featured in The Goddess Celebrates: an Anthology of Women's Rituals, Edited by Diane Stein, published in 1991.
”
”
Carol P. Christ, Ph.D.
“
Now, it’s easy to admit in principle that you have blind spots. But humility will cause this recognition to make a noticeable difference in your actual interactions with people. It will lead to more clarifying questions, more pursuit of common ground, more appreciation of rival concerns, more delay in arriving at judgments. In life and theology, it is usually not sheer ignorance that causes the most intractable problems but ignorance about ignorance: not the unchartered territory but the stuff that is completely off your map. This is one reason why humility is so important. Humility teaches us to navigate life with sensitivity to the distinction between what we don’t know and what we don’t know that we don’t know. This encourages us to engage in theological disagreement with careful listening, a willingness to learn, and openness to receiving new information or adjusting our perspective. Pride makes us stagnant; humility makes us nimble.
”
”
Gavin Ortlund (Finding the Right Hills to Die on: The Case for Theological Triage)
“
Tim Graham
Tim Graham has specialized in photographing the Royal Family for more than thirty years and is foremost in his chosen field. Recognition of his work over the years has led to invitations for private sessions with almost all the members of the British Royal Family, including, of course, Diana, Princess of Wales, and her children.
Diana had none of the remoteness of some members of royal families. Along with several of my press colleagues, I felt I came to know her quite well. She was a superstar, she was royal, but she was also very approachable. I have had various sessions with members of the Royal Family over the years, but those with her were more informal. I remember photographing Prince William at Kensington Palace when he was a baby. I was lying on the floor of the drawing room in front of the infant prince, trying to get his attention. Not surprisingly, he didn’t show much interest, so, without prompting, Diana lay down on the floor close to me and, using one of those little bottles of bubbles, starting blowing bubbles at him. Perfect. As he gazed in fascination at his mother, I was able to get the picture I wanted. I can’t think of many members of the Royal Family who would abandon protocol and lie on the carpet with you in a photo session!
Funnily enough, it wasn’t the only time it happened. She did the same again years when she was about to send her dresses to auction for charity and we were sifting through prints of my photographs that she had asked to use in the catalog. She suggested that we sit on the floor and spread the photographs all around us on the carpet, so, of course, we did.
I donated the use of my pictures of her in the various dresses to the charity, and as a thank-you, Diana invited me to be the exclusive photographer at both parties held for the dresses auction--one in London and the other in the United States.
The party in New York was held on preview night, and many of the movers and shakers of New York were there, including her good friend Henry Kissinger. It was a big room, but everyone in it gravitated to the end where the Princess was meeting people. She literally couldn’t move and was totally hemmed in. I was pushed so close to her I could hardly take a picture. Seeing the crush, her bodyguard spotted an exit route through the kitchen and managed to get the Princess and me out of the enthusiastic “scrum.” As the kitchen door closed behind the throng, she leaned against the wall, kicked off her stiletto-heeled shoes, and gasped, “Gordon Bennett, that’s a crush!” I would have loved to have taken a picture of her then, but I knew she wouldn’t expect that to be part of the deal. You should have seen the kitchen staff--they were thrilled to have an impromptu sight of her but amazed that someone of her status could be so normal. She took a short breather, said hi to those who had, of course, stopped work to stare at her, and then glided back into the room through another door to take up where she had left off. That’s style!
”
”
Larry King (The People's Princess: Cherished Memories of Diana, Princess of Wales, From Those Who Knew Her Best)
“
Tim Graham
Tim Graham has specialized in photographing the Royal Family for more than thirty years and is foremost in his chosen field. Recognition of his work over the years has led to invitations for private sessions with almost all the members of the British Royal Family, including, of course, Diana, Princess of Wales, and her children.
I donated the use of my pictures of her in the various dresses to the charity, and as a thank-you, Diana invited me to be the exclusive photographer at both parties held for the dresses auction--one in London and the other in the United States.
The party in New York was held on preview night, and many of the movers and shakers of New York were there, including her good friend Henry Kissinger. It was a big room, but everyone in it gravitated to the end where the Princess was meeting people. She literally couldn’t move and was totally hemmed in. I was pushed so close to her I could hardly take a picture. Seeing the crush, her bodyguard spotted an exit route through the kitchen and managed to get the Princess and me out of the enthusiastic “scrum.” As the kitchen door closed behind the throng, she leaned against the wall, kicked off her stiletto-heeled shoes, and gasped, “Gordon Bennett, that’s a crush!” I would have loved to have taken a picture of her then, but I knew she wouldn’t expect that to be part of the deal. You should have seen the kitchen staff--they were thrilled to have an impromptu sight of her but amazed that someone of her status could be so normal. She took a short breather, said hi to those who had, of course, stopped work to stare at her, and then glided back into the room through another door to take up where she had left off. That’s style!
”
”
Larry King (The People's Princess: Cherished Memories of Diana, Princess of Wales, From Those Who Knew Her Best)
“
Intuition is the result of nonconscious pattern recognition,” Dane tells me. However, his research shows that, while logging hours of practice helps us see patterns subconsciously, we can often do just as well by deliberately looking for them. In many fields, such pattern hunting and deliberate analysis can yield results just as in the basketball example—high accuracy on the first try. And that’s where, like the dues-paying presidents or overly patient programmers, what we take for granted often gets in the way of our own success. Deliberate pattern spotting can compensate for experience. But we often don’t even give it a shot. This explains how so many inexperienced companies and entrepreneurs beat the norm and build businesses that disrupt established players. Through deliberate analysis, the little guy can spot waves better than the big company that relies on experience and instinct once it’s at the top. And a wave can take an amateur farther faster than an expert can swim. It also explains why the world’s best surfers arrive at the beach hours before a competition and stare at the ocean. After years of practice, a surfer can “feel” the ocean, and intuitively find waves. But the best surfers, the ones who win championships, are tireless students of the sea. O’Connell says, “One of the main things that you do when you learn to compete is learn how to pick out conditions. Know that the tide is getting higher. Counting waves, how many waves come into a particular area that fit your eye that you want to ride.
”
”
Shane Snow (Smartcuts: The Breakthrough Power of Lateral Thinking)
“
I weave through LA's famous Farmers Market, which is really more of an outdoor food court, and now I'm a few minutes late. And the place is packed and there's still the uncertainty about where to meet when I look down and realize I'm wearing yellow pants. Yellow pants. Really? Sometimes I don't know what I'm thinking. They're rolled at the cuff and paired with a navy polo and it looks like maybe I just yacht my yacht, and I'm certain to come off as an asshole.
I thin about canceling, or at least delaying so I can go home and change, but the effort that would require is unappealing, and this date is mostly for distraction. And when I round the last stall--someone selling enormous eggplants, more round than oblong, I see him, casually leaning against a wall, and something inside my body says there you are.
'There you are.'
I don't understand them, these words, because they seem too deep and too soulful to attach to the Farmers Market, this Starbucks or that, a frozen yogurt place, or confusion over where to meet a stranger. They're straining to define a feeling of stunning comfort that drips over me, as if a water balloon burst over my head on the hottest of summer days. My knees don't buckle, my heart doesn't skip, but I'm awash in the warmth of a valium-like hug. Except I haven't taken a Valium. Not since the night of Lily's death. Yet here is this warm hug that makes me feel safe with this person, this Byron the maybe-poet, and I want it to stop. This--whatever this feeling is--can't be a real feeling, this can't be a tangible connection. This is just a man leaning against a stall that sells giant eggplants. But I no longer have time to worry about what this feeling is, whether I should or shouldn't be her, or should or should't be wearing yellow pants, because there are only maybe three perfect seconds where I see him and he has yet to spot me. Three perfect seconds to enjoy the calm that has so long eluded me.
'There you are.'
And then he casually lifts his head and turns my way and uses one foot to push himself off the wall he is leaning agains. We lock eyes and he smiles with recognition and there's a disarming kindness to his face and suddenly I'm standing in front of him.
'There you are.' It comes out of my mouth before I can stop it and it's all I can do to steer the words in a more playfully casual direction so he isn't saddled with the importance I've placed on them. I think it comes off okay, but, as I know from my time at sea, sometimes big ships turn slowly.
Byron chuckles and gives a little pump of his fist. 'YES! IT'S! ALL! HAPPENING! FOR! US!'
I want to stop in my tracks, but I'm already leaning in for a hug, and he comes the rest of the way, and the warm embrace of seeing him standing there is now an actual embrace, and it is no less sincere. He must feel me gripping him tightly, because he asks, 'Is everything okay?'
No. 'Yes, everything is great, it's just...' I play it back in my head what he said, the way in which he said it, and the enthusiasm which only a month had gone silent.
'You reminded me of someone is all.'
'Hopefully in a good way.'
I smile but it takes just a minute to speak. 'In the best possible way.'
I don't break the hug first, but maybe at the same time, this is a step. jenny will be proud. I look in his eyes, which I expect to be brown like Lily's but instead are deep blue like the waters lapping calmly against the outboard sides of 'Fishful Thinking.'
'Is frozen yogurt okay?'
'Frozen yogurt is perfect.
”
”
Steven Rowley (Lily and the Octopus)
“
A master of spin, Hermes escorted dead souls into the underworld. The ancients worshipped him as the god of travel, speech, roads, boundaries, sleep, dream, and the nameless places that fall between here and there. Two of those in-between spots deserve special recognition: the shadowy realm between wakefulness and sleep, and the transition between life and death.
”
”
Rae Orion (Astrology For Dummies)
“
A monarch butterfly has top brand recognition, an excellent recall quotient, and highly favorable demographics. Associate your candidate with famous lepidoptera, and use these filmed spots early and often.
”
”
Michael Davidow (Split Thirty)
“
Sometimes people lie because we have a false sense of self. We want to be someone that we are not. We see ourselves much differently than we truly are. We don’t want to accept our flaws, and we see that others who are prettier, smarter or more successful than us get more recognition, so we may lie in order for other people to like us and for us to like ourselves. People may also lie to and for each other in order to keep secrets or to maintain their privacy from others.
”
”
W. Kenn (100 Ingenious Ways To Detect Lies: How to Spot a Liar Like a Pro)
“
The thing about the Surveillance State is that it doesn’t work very well; cameras break down, recognition algorithms give false positives or false negatives. But it works just well enough, if you have enough processing power, to spot you and Ben together in Dortmund and in Amsterdam.
”
”
Dave Hutchinson (Europe at Dawn (The Fractured Europe Sequence #4))
“
didn’t see many feedback sandwiches. Instead, I saw them separate the two into different processes. They handled negatives through dialogue, first by asking if a person wants feedback, then having a learning-focused two-way conversation about the needed growth. They handled positives through ultraclear bursts of recognition and praise. The leaders I spent time with shared a capacity for radiating delight when they spotted behavior worth praising. These moments of warm, authentic happiness functioned as magnetic north, creating clarity, boosting belonging, and orienting future action.
”
”
Daniel Coyle (The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups)
“
Between 2017 and 2020, the Nanjing Economic and Technological Development Zone plans to put at least 3 billion RMB (around $450 million) into AI development. That money will go toward a dizzying array of AI subsidies and perks, including investments of up to 15 million RMB in local companies, grants of 1 million RMB per company to attract talent, rebates on research expenses of up to 5 million RMB, creation of an AI training institute, government contracts for facial recognition and autonomous robot technology, simplified procedures for registering a company, seed funding and office space for military veterans, free company shuttles, coveted spots at local schools for the children of company executives, and special apartments for employees of AI startups.
”
”
Kai-Fu Lee (AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order)
“
Here’s a short list of things that strong strategic thinkers do habitually. → Systems thinking: Construct—and constantly tinker with—mental models about how their business works to solve problems and spot new opportunities. → Scanning and pattern recognition: Perpetually scan for new data points and insights from a wide range of sources—including those beyond their industry. → Challenge own assumptions: Invite other people to challenge their thinking as well as their underlying thought processes. → Balance future and present orientation: Consider the future and the present needs of their business at the same time, without conflict.
”
”
Chris Ertel (Moments of Impact: How to Design Strategic Conversations That Accelerate Change)
“
A crowd of Gammas and their new allies rush toward the Snowball to celebrate the pilot and his prophetic maneuver against the torchShip. From a distance, they think it was me and not the small human by my side. As they see our faces, they slow and then stop, gathering in a sort of wary perimeter. Their faces are young and old, all sunburnt. They hold antique rifles, household pistols, even slingBlades. A ripple of recognition goes through them when they spot Pax and Electra. Then understanding as they see the pilot halo Pax wears. It isn’t disbelief on their faces when he takes it off. It is fulfillment. As if they believed in something once, grew to laugh at the naïveté of their own conviction, only to see that they were right all along. I sense the weight of the moment, and it chills me.
”
”
Pierce Brown (Dark Age (Red Rising Saga #5))