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" 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

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" When we first did 'Modernist Cuisine,' I think most people in cookbook publishing would have said, 'This is insane.' "

Nathan Myhrvold

" 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

" 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

" Most visions of extraterrestrial life are actually steeped in human hubris. The fictional extraterrestrials of 'Star Trek' or a hundred other space operas are less alien than many of my neighbors. And funny, the ones running the place are mostly WASPish men. "

Nathan Myhrvold

" Life has not been boring for me. "

Nathan Myhrvold

" My career at Microsoft really was getting in the way of my cooking. "

Nathan Myhrvold

" In politics, religion and other areas of culture, people disagree on the worth of competing ideas. There is no equivalent to the scientific method that can determine in a robust way which ideas match the real world, and which ones can be ruled out. So conflicting ideologies persist indefinitely. "

Nathan Myhrvold

" The dilemma for early 21st century journalism is this: Who will pay for the news? "

Nathan Myhrvold

" Sooner or later the space program will need to save us by detecting and deflecting an incoming asteroid. "

Nathan Myhrvold

" I was good at math and science, and I got lots of degrees in lots of things, but in a parallel universe, I probably became a chef. "

Nathan Myhrvold

" Ultimately, my Ph.D. is in mathematical physics, focusing on quantum field theory and curved space-time, and I worked with Stephen Hawking. "

Nathan Myhrvold

" If people don't find what you are doing threatening, then it is probably not very important. "

Nathan Myhrvold

" Regardless of how it's done, transaction costs will continue to plummet as computers get more powerful. Low transaction costs are a wonderful thing if you're in the transaction business. They're wonderful for consumers too, making it cheaper and easier to buy things and creating new things to buy. "

Nathan Myhrvold

" We're more familiar with what economists call an English auction - prices start low and rise as people bid. However, there is also the Dutch auction, where prices start high and go lower until somebody bites. Movies are sold to the audience via a very slow Dutch auction, where each phase between price drops can last weeks or months. "

Nathan Myhrvold

" There's no way I'm going to stand up for bad ingredients. We love seasonal ingredients. It's a false dichotomy to say that modern cooking is at odds with that, but some people want to have a great ingredient and no technique. "

Nathan Myhrvold

" No CEO ever says, 'Damnit, we need to increase research!' I want to encourage them to do that. "

Nathan Myhrvold

" Politicians don't like to face unpleasant realities. In truth, nobody does, but as individuals, we have no choice; if we neglect to plan ahead, we are held accountable. Fail to meet your responsibilities at work, and you get fired. Ignore your car's gas gauge, and you get stranded. "

Nathan Myhrvold

" Making money from enforcing patents is no more wrong than investing in preferred stock. "

Nathan Myhrvold

" We have the only cookbook in the world that has partial differential equations in it. "

Nathan Myhrvold

" The depressing thing about battery technology is that it gets better, but it gets better slowly. There are a whole bunch of problems in materials science and chemistry that come in trying to make existing batteries better. "

Nathan Myhrvold

" Now, to find dinosaurs, you hike around in horrible conditions looking for a dinosaur. It sounds really dumb, but that's what it is. It's horrible conditions, because wherever you have nice weather, plants grow, and you don't get any erosion, and you don't see any dinosaurs. "

Nathan Myhrvold

" A person's basic humanity is not governed by how he or she came into this world, or whether somebody else happens to have the same DNA. "

Nathan Myhrvold

" My company invents all kinds of new technology in lots of different areas. And we do that for a couple of reasons. We invent for fun - invention is a lot of fun to do - and we also invent for profit. The two are related because the profit actually takes long enough that if it isn't fun, you wouldn't have the time to do it. "

Nathan Myhrvold

" Records were replaced by CDs, and lead type died in favor of computerized fonts. However, each had a 100-year ride of popularity, so you can't feel too bad for them. "

Nathan Myhrvold

" Words can hurt you. In the larger world, it frames how people think about you, and it can hurt you in lots of little, subtle ways. "

Nathan Myhrvold

" One of the greatest things that Apple and Jobs were very good at doing was daring to do the very different thing. It's what I did with my cookbook, frankly. "

Nathan Myhrvold

" If you have a block of ballistics gelatin and a high-speed camera, pretty soon somebody gets a gun! "

Nathan Myhrvold

" If you talk about sous-vide, then you have to talk about food safety, and microbiology, and heat. "

Nathan Myhrvold

" Three things about water affect almost all of cooking. First are the hydrogen bonds, which is why it has an incredibly high boiling point. Another is that it's a polar molecule, so that it dissolves a lot of things, and there are things that won't mix with it. And then there's how much energy it takes to heat water. "

Nathan Myhrvold

" The idea behind a dish - the delight and the surprise - makes a difference. Great literature surprises and delights, and provokes us. It isn't just 'Here's the facts - boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl.' It's how you tell it. "

Nathan Myhrvold