Rationality Quotes November 2009

Eliezer Yudkowsky

A monthly thread for posting rationality-related quotes you've seen recently (or had stored in your quotesfile for ages).

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be voted up/down separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB.
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.

A monthly thread for posting rationality-related quotes you've seen recently (or had stored in your quotesfile for ages).

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be voted up/down separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB.
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.

Amusingly, your holy indignance at hearing such stereotypes isn't a human universal either - it's part of the same particular moral system I was talking about.

PS: I didn't downvote you.

I was trying to point out why part of your post was nonsense, despite making some valid points, and sending your troll back back at you. Words -- with a few exceptions like 'objectivism' -- are not as strongly associated with a single moral system as you suggest. There is no single moral system that originates in the USA, and no single moral system that everybody who uses the terms "racism" and "sexism" in a sentence holds. And unless you think that Russia has adopted the moral system "whose place of origin is the USA", 2.19.2... (read more)