Sublime

The missing Ripple reminded him of a favorite thought experiment. “You have a close friend, Bob,” he explained. “He’s great. You love him. Bob is at a house party where someone gets murdered. No one knows who the murderer is. There are twenty people there. None are criminals. But Bob is less likely in your mind than anyone else to have killed someo

Your ethical duty to the person being interviewed is to present his position accurately.

Stevenson, who is known for going into jails and prisons and spending hours upon hours sitting with defendants, hearing their stories, affirming their humanity, and offering them dignity.

The underlying, unarticulated assumption of this political talk was that victims and criminals were two distinct categories of people with diametrically opposed interests.

Apart from a shared alarm at his recklessness, the members of the management team were not perfectly unified in their opinions of Sam. Tara had long since decided that he was dishonest and manipulative. Ben still thought him well-intentioned—but terrible at his job. But all felt themselves on a suicide mission.

And finally, as if to emphasize their emergence from academia into the world, they dressed and spoke with what one senior mathematician called “a deplorable excess of personality.”

was, in fact, a man of remarkable abilities, determination, and drive. Just as clearly, however, he could be quite ruthless, overbearing, and politically domineering. A true picture of the man can emerge only from an attempt to envision all facets of his complex life and personality, and that I have tried to do.

Paper may in their eyes become more important than what is written on it.