smoofra comments on Rationality Quotes - June 2009 - Less Wrong
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"I don't, I've come to believe, have to agree with you to like you, or respect you."
--Anthony Bourdain.
Never forget that your opponents are not evil mutants. They are the heroes of their own stories, and if you can't fathom why they do what they do, or why they believe what they believe, that's your failing not theirs.
Interestingly though, by accepting this symmetry between you and your enemy, you potentially thereby break it. If you can understand why they believe what they believe, but they don't understand why you believe what you do, then you can justifiably consider yourself in a superior epistemic position.
Maybe they also think they understand you. You can't get intelligence from simple asymmetry.
Removing the second and either the third or fourth clauses would make this a much stronger quote, i.e.
Yea, but then it wouldn't be a quote anymore!
Last paragraph is an OBLW quote, no? Those don't go here...
I don't think it's an exact quote of anything on OB or LW. If it is then my subconscious has a much better memory than I do. I was just attempting to relate the Bourdain quote to OBLW terminology.