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Nathan Myhrvold Quotes
Nathan Myhrvold Quotes
Nathan Myhrvold
American
Businessman
Born:
Aug 3
,
1959
Cooking
Food
People
Will
World
You
Related authors:
Bill Gates
Henry Ford
Jim Rohn
Les Brown
Peter Drucker
Stephen Covey
Steve Jobs
Warren Buffett
Elections, for their part, are typically popularity contests rather than measures of candidates' relative competency or effectiveness. Imagine if scientific truth were determined according to which scientist was most popular. To be successful, scientists would have to be charismatic and attractive - and human knowledge would suffer terribly.
Nathan Myhrvold
Truth
Knowledge
Relative
Would
Charismatic
Determined
Rather
Part
Most
Attractive
Terribly
Scientific
Contests
Scientific Truth
Scientist
Scientists
Were
According
Effectiveness
Than
Candidates
Human
Which
Successful
Elections
Human Knowledge
Measures
Popular
Popularity
Suffer
Imagine
People get cranky when you burst their bubble. Over time, advances in astronomy have relentlessly reinforced the utter insignificance of Earth on a celestial scale. Fortunately, political and religious leaders stopped barbecuing astronomers for saying so, turning their spits with human-rights activists instead.
Nathan Myhrvold
Saying
Time
You
People
Political
Earth
Relentlessly
Scale
Astronomy
Religious
Religious Leaders
Insignificance
Bubble
Advances
Instead
Leaders
Over
Celestial
Get
Stopped
Cranky
Burst
Turning
Fortunately
Activists
Reinforced
Utter
Nobody wants a prediction that the future will be more or less like the present, even if that is, statistically speaking, an excellent prediction.
Nathan Myhrvold
Future
Will
More
More Or Less
Excellent
Nobody
Like
Wants
Prediction
Speaking
Less
Even
Present
The techniques of being an Internet visionary are just like those of lower-tech fortunetellers through the ages. A technological visionary must tell people what they want to hear, because your company's stock won't rise if you spout an unpopular vision to analysts.
Nathan Myhrvold
You
People
Vision
Internet
Analyst
Those
Visionary
Tell
Must
Unpopular
Rise
Through
Like
Because
Hear
Stock
Just
Being
Want
Ages
Your
Company
Techniques
Technological
Suppose that 'Unsolved Mysteries' called you with news of a long-lost identical twin. Would that suddenly make you less of a person, less of an individual? It is hard to see how. So, why would a clone be different? Your clone would be raised in a different era by different people - like the lost identical twin, only younger than you.
Nathan Myhrvold
News
You
People
Mysteries
Lost
Would
Would-Be
Be Different
See
Only
Individual
Suppose
Like
Identical
Make
How
Era
Clone
Than
Person
Different
Younger
Different People
Your
Hard
Less
Suddenly
Why
Twin
Raised
Micropayments are great if you use them for a product or service with certain properties. It must be one where you can get away with usage-based pricing, and where there is a strong rationale for making it cheap, yet not free.
Nathan Myhrvold
Service
Great
You
Strong
Free
Must
Properties
Rationale
Pricing
Cheap
Making
Get
Where
Them
Certain
Product
Use
Away
Efficiency in government is a more elusive concept than efficiency in the private economy, which may be measured relatively easily as output per units of input. What is the government's 'output?'
Nathan Myhrvold
Government
Elusive
Relatively
Input
Easily
Per
More
Output
Economy
Concept
Private
Efficiency
Than
May
Which
Measured
Units
An efficient government is dangerous in the hands of the wrong man. Sadly, the right sort of man never seems interested in the job.
Nathan Myhrvold
Government
Man
Dangerous
Job
Seems
Never
Wrong
Sadly
Sort
Efficient
Hands
Interested
Right
The prize for ultimate inefficiency goes to America. We have built in so many checks and balances that our 'leaders' are the most thoroughly hogtied of any on Earth.
Nathan Myhrvold
Our
Earth
Thoroughly
Leaders
Checks
Checks And Balances
Most
Balances
Inefficiency
Built
Ultimate
Prize
America
Goes
Any
Many
Anybody who can afford a box of business cards can afford a Web site. Any company with an 800 number can move its services to the Web for peanuts by comparison. The extreme case of corporate promotion is to strip away all other aspects of your business and sell goods or services via the Net alone, as amazon.com has done with books.
Nathan Myhrvold
Alone
Business
Other
Corporate
Books
Extreme
Strip
Promotion
Web
Net
Web Site
Case
Goods
Box
Sell
Afford
Site
Via
Any
Done
Move
Anybody
Aspects
Your
Who
Company
Comparison
Away
Peanuts
Services
Cards
Number
We pay for content that we like, and we like the content we pay for. It's a lot more satisfying to pay $7.50 for Steven Spielberg's next epic than it is to watch my home movies for free. Even for me.
Nathan Myhrvold
Home
Me
Free
Pay
Spielberg
More
Like
Steven
Content
Lot
Than
Movies
Epic
Next
Even
Satisfying
Watch
Why pay a fee for Internet content when a million free sites are just a click away? There's no incentive until people are too addicted to the Net to turn off their computers, yet are bored with what's available.
Nathan Myhrvold
People
Internet
Free
Pay
Too
Addicted
Bored
Net
Computers
Fee
Until
Click
Content
Off
Sites
Just
Available
Turn
Turn-Off
Incentive
Why
Away
Million
By burning nuclear waste as fuel, we believe we can power the United States cleanly for hundreds of years without ever touching new resources.
Nathan Myhrvold
Power
Believe
Resources
Hundreds
States
Hundreds Of Years
Touching
New
Without
Years
Burning
Fuel
United
Waste
Ever
United States
Nuclear
Pressure cookers are relatively inexpensive, they're in every kitchen store, your grandma probably had one, but a lot of people don't. A pressure cooker is interesting because by pressurizing the vessel, you're able to cook much hotter than the boiling point of water, and still have water be present.
Nathan Myhrvold
You
People
Water
Pressure
Every
Relatively
Able
Kitchen
Point
Had
Hotter
Because
Still
Inexpensive
Lot
Vessel
Than
Store
Interesting
Grandma
Much
Cook
Your
Boiling
Present
Making money from enforcing patents is no more wrong than investing in preferred stock.
Nathan Myhrvold
Money
More
Investing
Wrong
Making
Making Money
Stock
Than
Patents
Preferred
Enforcing
I'm one of the first invention capitalists.
Nathan Myhrvold
Invention
First
Capitalists
New online formats gutted the newspaper-ad business. Why pore over tiny print looking for a job in the want ads when you can tap a few keywords into monster.com, then click through and apply? Why pay a steep per-character rate for a classified when you can hawk a whole garage full of used stuff on EBay or Craigslist for free?
Nathan Myhrvold
You
Business
Job
Free
Looking
Few
Pay
Classified
Rate
Online
Steep
Hawk
Through
Ads
Stuff
Over
New
Print
Click
Tap
Tiny
Want
Formats
Then
Full
Used
Whole
Garage
Why
Apply
Cooking is for chefs. Science informs us and lets us cook while knowing what we are doing, but it is not a replacement for the skills of a chef.
Nathan Myhrvold
Science
Cooking
Knowing
Chef
Chefs
Doing
Replacement
While
Informs
Us
Skills
Cook
Lets
Intellectual Ventures is a company that invests in invention.
Nathan Myhrvold
Invention
Ventures
Intellectual
Company
I think you would find almost anyone who stands up for their patent rights has been called a patent troll.
Nathan Myhrvold
You
Rights
Think
Has-Been
Would
Find
Almost
Been
Up
Patent
Anyone
Who
Stands
There's a limit to how much you can deploy renewables, like wind or solar. People will talk about getting up to 30 percent of America's power from renewables, but you can't get to 100 percent because of their unreliability.
Nathan Myhrvold
You
People
Solar
Will
Wind
Power
About
Percent
Like
Talk
Renewables
Because
Limit
How
How Much
Up
America
Get
Getting
Deploy
Much
If you had a really good - battery, it wouldn't matter that the sun goes down at night and the wind stops blowing sometimes. But at the moment, battery technology is nowhere near good enough to use at utility scale.
Nathan Myhrvold
Good
You
Technology
Sometimes
Matter
Wind
Down
Enough
Sun
Battery
Scale
Had
Blowing
Goes
Stops
Really
Use
Moment
Utility
Near
Nowhere
Night
Researchers who examined the voting records of wine judges found that 90 percent of the time they give inconsistent ratings to a particular wine when they judge it on multiple occasions.
Nathan Myhrvold
Time
Judge
Voting
Wine
Examined
Percent
Give
Ratings
Records
Particular
Occasions
Judges
Researchers
Who
Multiple
Found
Inconsistent
The first thing that is not obvious to people is global warming is a less-than-1% effect. It's like being shortchanged at the bank by a penny every dollar. Over a long period of time with lots of transactions, that piles up.
Nathan Myhrvold
Time
People
Penny
Long
First
Every
Long Period
Over
Like
Global
Period
Global Warming
Obvious
First Thing
Piles
Dollar
Effect
Lots
Up
Bank
The First Thing
Transactions
Being
Warming
Thing
For relatively modest amounts of sulfur dioxide injected into the atmosphere, you could easily cool Earth by 1% or more, if you want.
Nathan Myhrvold
You
Relatively
Earth
Easily
Atmosphere
More
Could
Want
Modest
Cool
Amount
If I say I've got two versions of Word - that old one from 1982 that's perfect, with zero defects; or the new one that's got all this cool new stuff, but there might be a few bugs in it - people always want the new one. But I wouldn't want them to operate a plane I was on with software that happened to be the latest greatest release!
Nathan Myhrvold
People
Old
Word
Few
Software
Latest
Say
Release
Perfect
Stuff
New
Operate
Bugs
Greatest
Always
Got
New One
Versions
New Stuff
Want
Happened
Them
Might
Plane
Old One
Cool
Zero
Defects
Two
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