Sublime

We can simplify this discussion by defining the maximum amount of knowledge and knowhow that a human nervous system can accumulate as a fundamental unit of measurement. We call this unit a personbyte, and define it as the maximum knowledge and knowhow carrying capacity of a human.

Stories of great breakthroughs tend to coalesce around one person, one genius, and often one moment. Those stories are fun to tell and easy to digest. Occasionally they are true. More often, they contain a kernel of truth, but omit a much richer and more interesting picture. Isaac Newton, for example, is often celebrated for discovering universal g

Existia um “teorema” da hereditariedade; ele só estava à espera de ser descoberto. Qualquer sociedade que desvendasse o teorema e impusesse suas combinações prescritivas poderia garantir a produção das crianças mais aptas, desencadeando uma espécie de eugenia numerológica:

Turing’s genius: he discovered that if two machines had been initialized in the same way, it introduced a slight bias in the distribution of letters, so that the two messages were slightly more likely to resemble each other.