## Metadata - Author: [[Saul Perlmutter, John Campbell, and Robert MacCoun]] - Full Title: Third Millennium Thinking - Category: #books ## Highlights - One of the possible explanations for why we scratch an itch offers a more surprising example of the benefits of noise: it could be that we are masking the annoying itch signal coming from the mosquito bite on our arm with the noise of a less annoying scratching sensation. ([Location 1664](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C3ZPP4BJ&location=1664)) - A huge amount of the training of scientists therefore involves just getting better and better at recognizing such sources of uncertainty, and then thinking up creative ways to control, balance out, or measure each one well enough so that it doesn’t make the measurement too uncertain to base a decision on. ([Location 2304](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C3ZPP4BJ&location=2304)) - Habits are so essential to normal functioning that William James called them “the great flywheel of society.” Alfred North Whitehead argued that “civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.” ([Location 2836](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C3ZPP4BJ&location=2836))