Jim Holt
Jim Holt is a longtime contributor to the New Yorker -- where he has written on string theory, time, infinity, numbers, truth, and bullshit, among other subjects -- and the author of Stop Me If You've Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes. He is also a frequent contributor to the New York Times and the London Review of Books. He lives in Greenwich Village.
“In both jokes and dreams, Freud observed, meanings are condensed and displaced, things are represented indirectly or by their opposites, fallacious reasoning trumps logic. Jokes often arise involuntarily, like dreams, and tend to be swiftly forgotten. From these similarities Freud inferred that jokes and dreams share a common origin in the unconscious. Both are essentially means of outwitting our inner "censor.”
Jim Holt
“Suppose you turn your attention inward in search of this 'I'. You may encounter nothing more than an ever changing stream of consciousness, a flow of thoughts and feelings in which there is no real self to be discovered.”
Jim Holt
“Having just enough life to enjoy being dead.”
Jim Holt