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On Individuals, Stimuli, and Sensations
"If two people stand at the same place and gaze in the same direction, we must,
under pain of solipsism, conclude that they receive closely similar stimuli. But
people do not see stimuli; our knowledge of them is highly theoretical and abstract.
Instead they have sensations, and we are under no compulsion to suppose that the
sensations of our two viewers are the same... Among the few things that we know about
it with assurance are: that very different stimuli can produce the same sensations;
that the same stimulus can produce very different sensations; and, finally, that
the route from stimuli to sensation is in part conditioned by education."
-- Kuhn, T.S.
(1970). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed., University of Chicago Press,
Chicago, IL, pp. 192-93.
http://businesstech.com/btfreefoundation.html
Information is "Improbability"
"The surprise effect of messages, news information will be greater the less
probable they are, the less we expect them, the more they come about by chance...
The information is greater the less probable it is. In this sense information is
'improbability.'"
-- Fuchs, W.R. (1971).
Cybernetics for the Modern Mind, New York: The MacMillan Company.
On "Yet Another Committee"
"A committee is a group of the unprepared, appointed by the unwilling, to do
the unnecessary." (F. Allen)
-- Peter, L.J. The Peter Prescription:
How to Make Things Go Right, Bantam, NY, 1972.
