Ah ok, I guess I shouldn't have posted this on lesswrong.com - Really, it's a book that muses about the possibility of a mathematical universe. Mind is biology. Biology is chemistry. Chemistry is physics. Physics being math. Mind perceives math, thus the universe exists physically. Erase the "baggage" and all that's left is math. It explicitly states that all assertions are pure speculation, philosophical thought, not science. I think it's a very beautiful idea. This quote thus might be a bit out of context.
More info here: http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2009/11/the-big-questions.html
So please don't judge the book by my quote here. Wasn't my intention.
If you've read Permutation City by Greg Egan, this is musing about it being real.
Gary Drescher's "Good and Real" is an example of this sort of Deep Book done right. Landsburg seems to make a lot more errors - like he tried to write Good and Real but failed.
A monthly thread for posting rationality-related quotes you've seen recently (or had stored in your quotesfile for ages).
ETA: It would seem that rationality quotes are no longer desired. After several days this thread stands voted into the negatives. Wolud whoever chose to to downvote this below 0 would care to express their disapproval of the regular quotes tradition more explicitly? Or perhaps they may like to browse around for some alternative posts that they could downvote instead of this one? Or, since we're in the business of quotation, they could "come on if they think they're hard enough!"