Anthropocentric Bias
“Human beings are the only creatures on earth that claim a God and the only thing that behaves like it hasn’t got one.” ― Hunter S. Thompson
Here’s a fun topic: anthropocentric bias. Basically, it’s our tendency to think humans are somehow the main characters of the universe’s story. It shows up in a bunch of ways: perceptual, descriptive, and normative. Perceptual anthropocentrism is pretty straightforward—we can only understand the world through our human senses, right? What we can see, hear, touch, taste, and smell. Descriptive anthropocentrism is when we try to explain everything in human terms (ever caught yourself thinking your dog is giving you the silent treatment?). And then there’s normative anthropocentrism, where we just assume humans are better than everything else, full stop.
“But I think that ideas are dangerous and powerful things, and that even philosophers have sometimes produced ideas.” ―Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations
“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.” ― Albert Einstein
“The art of discovery is therefore the art of correct generalization.” ―Hans Reichenbach, The Rise of Scientific Philosophy
“You lye, you are not sure; for I say, Woman, ’tis impossible to be sure of any thing but Death and Taxes“―Toby Guzzle, The Cobbler of Preston
“Any definition of complexity is necessarily context-dependent, even subjective.” ― Murray Gell-Mann, The Quark and the Jaguar
“But what does a particle care if we are observing it or not?” ― Carlo Rovelli, Helgoland
“You see things; you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‘Why not?” ― George Bernard Shaw, Back to Methuselah