(Last month's started a little late, I thought I'd bring it back to its original schedule.)
A monthly thread for posting any interesting rationality-related quotes you've seen recently on the Internet, or had stored in your quotesfile for ages.
- Please post all quotes separately (so that they can be voted up (or down) separately) unless they are strongly related/ordered.
- Do not quote yourself (or your sockpuppets).
- Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB - if we do this, there should be a separate thread for it.
- No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.
Surely, to label a statement "vague" is a higher order of insult than to call it "wrong". Newton was wrong but at least he was not vague.
I do not agree with all interpretations of the quote but primed by:
I interpreted it charitably with "critical" loosely implying "worth thinking about" in contrast to vague ideas that are not even wrong. Furthermore, from thefreedictionary.com definition of critical, "1. Inclined to judge severely and find fault.", vague statements may be considered useless and so judged severely but much of the time they are also slippery in that they must be broken down into precis... (read more)