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ffb3750
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The Institute had explored the behavior of a great variety of complex systems--corporations in the marketplace, neurons in the human brain, enzyme cascades within a single cell, the group behavior of migratory birds--systems so complex that it had not been possible to study them before the advent of the computer. The research was new, and the findings were surprising. It did not take long before the scientists began to notice that complex s..
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Michael Crichton |
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f12afcb
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The nasty little apes that call themselves human beings can do nothing except run and hide. For these same apes to imagine they can stabilize this atmosphere is arrogant beyond belief. They can't control the climate.
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Michael Crichton |
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4033768
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Is this what happened to the dinosaurs? Is this the true cause of their disappearance? We may never know. But it is no accident that human beings are so interested in dinosaur extinction. The decline of the dinosaurs allowed mammals - including us - to flourish. And that leads us to wonder whether the disappearance of the dinosaur is going to be repeated, sooner or later, by us as well. Whether at the deepest level the fault lies not in bli..
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science
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Michael Crichton |
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e137c5a
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Because, if you didn't know any physical chemistry, you could look at a crystal and ask all the same questions. You'd see those beautiful spars, those perfect geometric facets, and you could ask, What's controlling this process? How does the crystal end up so perfectly formed--and looking so much like other crystals? But it turns out a crystal is just the way molecular forces arrange themselves in solid form. No one controls it. It happens ..
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Michael Crichton |
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78baa06
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It suggests to us that behavior of complex animals can change very rapidly, and not always for the better. It suggests that behavior can cease to be responsive to the environment, and lead to decline and death. It suggests that animals may stop adapting. Is this what happened to the dinosaurs? Is this the true cause of their disappearance? We may never know. But it is no accident that human beings are so interested in dinosaur extinction. T..
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Michael Crichton |
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31682dc
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These forays into the real world sharpened his view that scientists needed the widest possible education. He used to say, "How can you design for people if you don't know history and psychology? You can't. Because your mathematical formulas may be perfect, but the people will screw it up. And if that happens, it means you screwed it up." He peppered his lectures with quotations from Plato, Chaka Zulu, Emerson, and Chang-tzu. But as a profe..
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specialists
jargon
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Michael Crichton |
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11d9e0b
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Heisenberg uncertainty principle: that whatever you studied you also changed. In the end, it became clear that all scientists were participants in a participatory universe which did not allow anyone to be a mere observer.
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Michael Crichton |
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76e00a4
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And it turns out, again and again, that living things seem to have a self-organizing quality. Proteins fold. Enzymes interact. Cells arrange themselves to form organs and the organs arrange themselves to form a coherent individual. Individuals organize themselves to make a population. And populations organize themselves to make a coherent biosphere. From complexity theory, we're starting to have a sense of how this self-organization may hap..
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Michael Crichton |
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f118d29
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After every major environmental change, a wave of extinctions has usually followed--but not right away. Extinctions only occur thousands, or millions of years later. Take the last glaciation in North America. The glaciers descended, the climate changed severely, but animals didn't die. Only after the glaciers receded, when you'd think things would go back to normal, did lots of species become extinct. That's when giraffes and tigers and mam..
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Michael Crichton |
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9335f4a
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The episode related here is based on a true story.
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Michael Crichton |
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05e9d6a
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Nature was not gentle or nice. There was no such thing as mercy in the natural world. You don't get any points for trying. You either survive or you don't.
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Michael Crichton |
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a75629e
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You have to realize, all these decisions are about power. Sexual harassment is about power, and so is the company's resistance to dealing with it.
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Michael Crichton |
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f2ad679
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Every human society expends tremendous time and energy teaching its children the right way to behave. You look at a simpler society, in the rain forest somewhere, and you find that every child is born into a network of adults responsible for helping to raise the child. Not only parents, but aunts and uncles and grandparents and tribal elders. Some teach the child to hunt or gather food or weave; some teach them about sex or war. But the res..
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Michael Crichton |
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e05cdb1
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the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science, consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consens..
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Michael Crichton |
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638551b
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Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough.
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Michael Crichton |
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a72a074
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The irony of the Information Age is that it has given new respectability to uninformed opinion.
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Michael Crichton |
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7eaa1d7
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You would think that people who had experienced injustice would be loath to inflict it on others, and yet they do so with alacrity. The victims become the victimizers with a chilling righteousness. This is the nature of fanaticism, to attract and provoke extremes of behavior. And this is why fanatics are all the same, whatever specific form their fanaticism takes.
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Michael Crichton |
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528a9a4
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But as a professor who was popular with his students--and who advocated general education--Thorne found himself swimming against the tide. The academic world was marching toward ever more specialized knowledge, expressed in ever more dense jargon.
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Michael Crichton |
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9efd630
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It's just theories. Human beings can't help making them, but the fact is that theories are just fantasies. And they change. When America was a new country, people believed in something called phlogiston. You know what that is? No? Well, it doesn't matter, because it wasn't real anyway. They also believed that four humors controlled behavior. And they believed that the earth was only a few thousand years old. Now we believe the earth is four..
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Michael Crichton |
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d09edc4
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Beyond a fence, they came to the swimming pool, which spilled over into a series of waterfalls and smaller rocky pools. The area was planted with huge ferns. "Isn't this extraordinary?" Ed Regis said. "Especially on a misty day, these plants really contribute to the prehistoric atmosphere. These are authentic Jurassic ferns, of course." Ellie paused to look more closely at the ferns. Yes, it was just as he said: Serenna veriformans, a plant..
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Michael Crichton |
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48bdd61
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People who imagined that life on earth consisted of animals moving against a green background seriously misunderstood what they were seeing. That green background was busily alive. Plants grew, moved, twisted, and turned, fighting for the sun; and they interacted continuously with animals--discouraging some with bark and thorns; poisoning others; and feeding still others to advance their own reproduction, to spread their pollen and seeds. I..
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Michael Crichton |
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84600f2
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En el mundo moderno se considera mas grave matar a un tigre que a tus padres. Los tigres tienen abogados.
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Michael Crichton |
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525d205
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Uno no viene a un sitio lleno de pollos venenosos si no esta seguro de que los vehiculos responderan.
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Michael Crichton |
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680f227
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Pero la ausencia de pruebas no es prueba de ausencia.
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Michael Crichton |
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bbbd26f
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Como bien sabes, una cosa puede ser precisa o imprecisa, independientemente de tus opiniones.
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Michael Crichton |
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d3f50dd
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Unable to construct genuine nanoassemblers, Xymos was using bacteria to crank out their molecules. This was genetic engineering, not nanotechnology.
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Michael Crichton |
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a50258c
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There is no greater pleasure than to win what everyone desires
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Michael Crichton |
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7daced9
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And everybody on earth knows that innovation only occurs in small groups. Put three people on a committee and they may get something done. Ten people, and it gets harder. Thirty people, and nothing happens. Thirty million, it becomes impossible. That's the effect of mass media--it keeps anything from happening. Mass media swamps diversity. It makes every place the same. Bangkok or Tokyo or London: there's a McDonald's on one corner, a Benne..
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Michael Crichton |
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6883778
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After all, the trouble with what the scientists said was that they were always saying something different. This year one idea, next year something else. Scientific opinion was ever changing, like the fashions of women's dress, while the firm and fixed date 4004 BC invited the attention of those seeking greater verity.
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Michael Crichton |
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8ead006
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Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their 'beliefs.' The reason is that beliefs guide behavior, which has evolutionary importance among human beings. But at a time when our behavior may well lead us to extinction, I see no reason to assume we have any awareness at all.
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Michael Crichton |
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9ffe2f4
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theoretician, his reputation secured in probability-density functions
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Michael Crichton |
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649746e
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Each parasaur produced a large mound of straw-colored spoor. This was accompanied by low trumpeting from each animal in the herd--along with an enormous quantity of expelled flatus, redolent of methane.
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Michael Crichton |
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0ea78f2
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That's
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Michael Crichton |
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3ba2af4
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Los seres humanos acumulan informacion erronea, asi que es dificil saber a quien creerle. Entiendo como te sientes.
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Michael Crichton |
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a4fe095
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Si una cosa va mal, tiende a seguir mal. Eso se refleja en el dicho popular que afirma que las desgracias nunca vienen solas. La teoria de la complejidad revela que el dicho popular es acertado. Las desgracias se agrupan. Las cosas siempre van de mal en peor. Ese es el mundo real.
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Michael Crichton |
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78f68eb
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No te preocupes -dijo Sarah-. Ya pensaremos en algo. -Siempre contestas lo mismo -observo Kelly. -Porque siempre es la verdad -repuso Sarah
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Michael Crichton |
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8d6c66e
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But absence of proof is not proof of absence.
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Michael Crichton |
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e2e5fb3
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What don't you care about?
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Michael Crichton |
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e23be14
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Power is neither male nor female. Katharine Graham
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Michael Crichton |
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675c7a1
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Because raising children is, in a sense, the reason the society exists in the first place.
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Michael Crichton |
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84331fa
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But then, things never turn out the way you think they will.
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Michael Crichton |
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dd4aadc
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will drive you." Her car, he knew, was parked on the other side of the Seine. It seemed far to walk. But he just nodded numbly. "All right," he said. She was in no rush. They strolled arm in arm, like lovers, along the embankment. They passed the houseboat restaurants tied up to the side, brightly lit, still busy with guests. Above them, on the other side of the river, rose Notre Dame, brilliantly lit. For a while, this slow walk, with he..
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Michael Crichton |
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d181db5
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Los seres humanos nunca piensan por su cuenta, les resulta incomodo. En general, los miembros de nuestra especie se limitan a repetir lo que oyen y se desconciertan ante cualquier punto de vista.
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Michael Crichton |
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5fbec04
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El rasgo humano caracteristico no es la conciencia sino el conformismo, y el resultado caracteristico es la guerra religiosa. Otros animales luchan por el territorio o el alimento; los seres humanos, en cambio, son los unicos en el reino animal que luchan por sus "creencias"."
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Michael Crichton |