Thought Experiment Quotes

When I hear of Schrödinger's cat, I reach for my pistol.

'Penny for Your Thoughts' was something I noodled on for a while.

The final war will be between Pavlov's dog and Schoedinger's Cat.

I enjoy putting my mind into different situations rather than my body.

I think if you keep the box closed long enough you do kill the cat, actually.

A lot of times, I run a thought experiment: 'If I were not at Facebook, what would I be doing to make the world more open?'

I don't know if 1300 players could really participate in the selection of a commissioner, and I've never given it a great deal of thought. I think it's a logical point they could make, but it's only an academic one.

Science doesn't purvey absolute truth. Science is a mechanism... for testing your thoughts against the universe.

What science-fiction premises do is it gives you a "what-if" prism to look at the contemporary world with a wack on the side of the head.

I was struck by - Einstein's a fascinating figure who didn't have any instruments that he used, he didn't use telescopes, he used his mind to try to understand the universe.

If the world were good for nothing else, it is a fine subject for speculation.

I can be fascinated with very little things. The clouds stimulate my imagination, and sometimes I just sit somewhere and go on dreaming for a long time. Your head is also a computer. When you're dreaming, you are simulating a world in which you are living.

Everyone's heard of Erwin Schrodinger's famous thought experiment. You put a cat in a box with a bottle of poison, which many people would suggest is about as far as you need to go.

Sci-fi is about 'what if this happened,' and 'what would you do.' You can play around with social dilemmas, or look at society or, in my case, relationships, in a very different way.

With a little persuasion, any familiar thing can turn abnormal in the mind. Here's a thought experiment. Consider this brutal bit of magic. A human grows a second human in a space inside her belly; she grows a second heart and a second brain, second eyes and second limbs, a complete set of second body parts as if for use as spares, and then, after almost a year, she expels that second screaming being out of her belly and into the world, alive. Bizarre, isn't it?

Yes, and imagine a world where there were no hypothetical situations.

Everyone is entitled to commit murder in the imagination once in a while, not to mention lesser infractions.

I have always loved science fiction. One of my favorite shows is 'Star Trek.' I like the trips, where it drops my mind off, because they give you a premise and all of a sudden, you say, 'Oh!' and I'm fascinated by it.

Go first to your Highest Thought about yourself. Imagine the you that you would be if you lived that thought every day. Imagine what you would think, do, and say, and how you would respond to what others would do and say. Do you see any difference between that projection and what you think, do, and say now?

The idea of the U.S. as a corporation is more than a thought experiment. It's a way to reposition our approach to long-term problems. What would U.S.A. Inc. be worth? Who would want to buy its shares?

A good method of discovery is to imagine certain members of a system removed and then see how what is left would behave: for example, where would we be if iron were absent from the world: this is an old example.

You might argue that my example is bad because Einstein is dead. But according to physicist Erwin Schrodinger, Einstein is neither dead nor alive until we dig him up and open the casket. If he's alive, he might want his brain back, which I understand is in a Ziplock bag in some guy's freezer. And this is a perfect example of why examples always distract from the main point.

I love J. G. Ballard. I love authors who take the world as we know it and just tweak one thing and say, 'What if the world were like this?'

Even if trolley problems were a realistic concern for AVs, it is not clear what, if anything, regulators or companies developing AVs should do about them. The trolley problem is an intensely debated thought experiment precisely because there isn't a consensus on what should be done.

Mere imagination would indeed be mere trifling; only no imagination is mere .