Michael Crichton
Michael Crichton
John Michael Crichtonwas an American best-selling author, physician, producer, director, and screenwriter, best known for his work in the science fiction, medical fiction and thriller genres. His books have sold over 200 million copies worldwide, and many have been adapted into films. In 1994, Crichton became the only creative artist ever to have works simultaneously charting at No. 1 in US television, film, and book sales...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth23 October 1942
CityChicago, IL
CountryUnited States of America
They don't have intelligence. They have what I call 'thintelligence.' They see the immediate situation. They think narrowly and they call it 'being focused.' They don't see the surround. They don't see the consequences.
All your life, other people will try to take your accomplishments away from you. Don't you take it away from yourself.
But complex animals had obtained their adaptive flexibility at some cost--they had traded one dependency for another. It was no longer necessary to change their bodies to adapt, because now their adaptation was behavior, socially determined. That behavior required learning. In a sense, among higher animals adaptive fitness was no longer transmitted to the next generation by DNA at all. It was now carried by teaching.
For our own species, evolution occurs mostly through our behavior. We innovate new behavior to adapt.
All your life people will tell you things. And most of the time, probably ninety-five percent of the time, what they'll tell you will be wrong.
Nobody smart knows what they want to do until they get into their twenties or thirties.
The academic world was marching toward ever more specialized knowledge, expressed in ever more dense jargon.
All major changes are like death. You can't see to the other side until you are there.
Readers probably haven't heard much about it yet, but they will. Quantum technology turns ordinary reality upside down.
We think we know what we are doing. We have always thought so.
Considering that we live in an era of evolutionary everything---evolutionary biology, evolutionary medicine, evolutionary ecology, evolutionary psychology, evolutionary economics, evolutionary computing---it was surprising how rarely people thought in evolutionary terms. It was a human blind spot. We look at the world around us as a snapshot when it was really a movie, constantly changing.
In my view, our approach to global warming exemplifies everything that is wrong with our approach to the environment. We are basing our decisions on speculation, not evidence. Proponents are pressing their views with more PR than scientific data. Indeed, we have allowed the whole issue to be politicized-red vs blue, Republican vs Democrat. This is in my view absurd. Data aren't political. Data are data. Politics leads you in the direction of a belief. Data, if you follow them, lead you to truth.
Scientific research was much like prospecting: you went out and you hunted, armed with your maps and instruments, but in the ened your preparations did not matter, or even your intuition. You needed your luck, and whatever benefits accrued to the diligent, through sheer, grinding hard work.
God creates dinosaurs, God kills dinosaurs, God creates man, man kills God, man brings back dinosaurs.