#quantity

There are at least two ways to believe in the idea of quality. You can believe there's something ineffable going on within the human mind, or you can believe we just don't understand what quality in a mind is yet, even though we might someday. Either of those opinions allows one to distinguish quantity and quality. In order to confuse quantity and quality, you have to reject both possibilities. The mere possibility of there being something ineffable about personhood is what drives many technologists to reject the notion of quality. They want to live in an airtight reality that resembles an idealized computer program, in which everything is understood and there are no fundamental mysteries. They recoil from even the hint of a potential zone of mystery or an unresolved seam in one's worldview. This desire for absolute order usually leads to tears in human affairs, so there is a historical reason to distrust it. Materialist extremists have long seemed determined to win a race with religious fanatics: Who can do the most damage to the most people? ↗

— Jaron Lanier

#personhood #quality #quantity #religion #religion

That's a problem. I mean, like any sort of growing startup organization, we are sort of overwhelmed by our growth. And that means we're getting enormous quantity of whistleblower disclosures of a very high caliber, but don't have enough people to actually process and vet this information. ↗

— Julian Assange

#any #caliber #disclosures #enormous #enough

I consider it top priority to improve water quality and increase water quantity in my community. ↗

— Joe Baca

#consider #i #improve #increase #priority

To say that most of us today are purely expansive is only another way of saying that most of us continue to be more concerned with the quantity than with the quality of our democracy. ↗

— Irving Babbitt

#another way #concerned #continue #democracy #expansive

An American of the present day reading his Sunday newspaper in a state of lazy collapse is one of the most perfect symbols of the triumph of quantity over quality that the world has yet seen. ↗

— Irving Babbitt

#collapse #day #his #lazy #most

Number is different from quantity. ↗

— Gregory Bateson

#number #quantity

Rather, for all objects and experiences, there is a quantity that has optimum value. Above that quantity, the variable becomes toxic. To fall below that value is to be deprived. ↗

— Gregory Bateson

#becomes #below #deprived #experiences #fall

It is impossible, in principle, to explain any pattern by invoking a single quantity. ↗

— Gregory Bateson

#explain #impossible #invoking #pattern #principle

The greatest felony in the news business today is to be behind, or to miss a big story. So speed and quantity substitute for thoroughness and quality, for accuracy and context. ↗

— Carl Bernstein

#behind #big #big story #business #context

If I cannot overwhelm with my quality, I will overwhelm with my quantity. ↗

— Emile Zola

#i #overwhelm #quality #quantity #will