other writers shared M's fascination with the unstable
Page 34 other writers shared M's fascination with the unstable. What was unusual to him was his instinct that the observer is as unreliable as the observed. The two kinds of movement interact like variables in a complex mathematical equation, with the result that one can find no secure point from which to measure anything. To try to understand the world is like grasping a cloud of gas, or a liquid using hands that are themselves made of gas or water so that they dissolve as you close them .
— from Takeoff Into Chaos · How to Live by Sarah Bakewell
In the book
Embracing change rather than bracing against it is the very thing that opens the door to transformation. Distrust your own instruments. In a shaking world the observer is every bit as unreliable as the thing observed, so when you must judge in the fog, cross-check yourself — averaging several independent readings is all but guaranteed to cut the noise roughly in half. Stay in perpetual beta, like the best forecasters, always ready to revise. — Takeoff Into Chaos