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- Do not quote yourself.
- Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB.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!"
-- http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/
I'm interested to find that you read ribbonfarm.com, since along with lesswrong it's one of my two most-visited blogs.
I sometimes think Venkatash's way of thinking might be on a level above that of many of the posts here. As an engineer he seems to have internalized the scientific/rationalist way of thinking, but he's combined that with a metaphorical/narrative/artistic way of looking at the world. When it works well, it works really well. What do other people think?
Interestingly, he has PhD in an AI-related field (specifically, control theory), but think... (read more)