Rationality Quotes: February 2010

wedrifid

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Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB.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.

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!"

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Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB.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.

Then what are Dawkins and his opponents "equally wrong" about? What does it mean to say that complexity is "inherent in the laws of nature"? Or that it isn't? What does Landsburg mean by "complexity"? Is arithmetic "complex" because it contains deep truths, or is it "simple" because it can be captured in a small set of axioms?

I have yet to understand what is being claimed here.

RichardKennaway:

Ariithmetic is complex because it can not be captured in a small set of axioms. More precisely, it cannot be specified by any (small or large) set of axioms, because any set of (true) axioms about arithmetic applies equally well to other structures that are not arithmetic. Your favorite set of axioms fails to specify arithmetic in the same way that the statement "bricks are rectangular" fails to specify bricks; there are lots of other things that are also rectangular.

This is not true, for example, of euclidean geometry, which... (read more)

0[anonymous]16y

As far as I understand it, the claim is that both camps are asking wrong or useless questions. Reality is inherently complex and logical possible. To ask for why complexity is generally there is asking for rainbows end. But I've only arrived on page 34 of his book today so... Anyway, I've to get some sleep soon. Will come back to it tomorrow. Thanks.