"Most of us really aren't horribly unique. There are 6 billion of us. Put 'em all in one room and very few would stand out as individuals. So maybe we ought to think of worth in terms of our ability to get along as a part of nature, rather than being the lords over nature"
About this Quote
The provocation here is blunt: the modern cult of exceptionalism is statistically absurd. Simon, a scientist who spent his career mapping the limits of human decision-making, punctures the comforting story that each of us is a special snowflake destined to dominate our surroundings. “Put ’em all in one room” is a deliberately deflating thought experiment: individuality isn’t denied, but it’s demoted from moral trump card to ordinary variation at scale.
The subtext is a rebuke to two intertwined myths. First, the economic one: that personal worth is best proven through standout achievement, as if human value were a leaderboard. Second, the environmental one: that our intelligence licenses mastery. Simon’s phrasing “lords over nature” invokes an old hierarchy - man above, world below - and calls it both childish and dangerous. If you’re not uniquely entitled, you’re not uniquely exempt.
The context matters. Simon helped found fields (AI, cognitive science, organizational theory) that revealed how bounded and situational our rationality is. That intellectual background surfaces here as an ethical pivot: once you accept humans as limited, patterned creatures, domination stops looking like destiny and starts looking like a category error. “Get along” is doing heavy work: it frames survival as coordination, not conquest, and worth as ecological fit rather than individual glory.
It’s not anti-human; it’s anti-vanity. Simon is asking for a humility grounded in numbers and systems thinking: if we’re one species among many, the highest achievement isn’t standing out - it’s learning to stay in.
The subtext is a rebuke to two intertwined myths. First, the economic one: that personal worth is best proven through standout achievement, as if human value were a leaderboard. Second, the environmental one: that our intelligence licenses mastery. Simon’s phrasing “lords over nature” invokes an old hierarchy - man above, world below - and calls it both childish and dangerous. If you’re not uniquely entitled, you’re not uniquely exempt.
The context matters. Simon helped found fields (AI, cognitive science, organizational theory) that revealed how bounded and situational our rationality is. That intellectual background surfaces here as an ethical pivot: once you accept humans as limited, patterned creatures, domination stops looking like destiny and starts looking like a category error. “Get along” is doing heavy work: it frames survival as coordination, not conquest, and worth as ecological fit rather than individual glory.
It’s not anti-human; it’s anti-vanity. Simon is asking for a humility grounded in numbers and systems thinking: if we’re one species among many, the highest achievement isn’t standing out - it’s learning to stay in.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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