Rationality quotes: March 2010

Morendil

This is our monthly thread for collecting these little gems and pearls of wisdom, rationality-related quotes you've seen recently, or had stored in your quotesfile for ages, and which might be handy to link to in one of our discussions.

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Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB.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

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Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB.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

No, because it pulls you, your scale and the Earth all (very close to) equally.

This would only be relevant if you were accelerating relative to the Earth. The scale measures the normal force keeping you at rest relative to the Earth's center; the force being exerted on the Earth does not change that. (Modulo the orbital-velocity argument, which I'll respond to separately.)

2RobinZ16y

I feel like an idiot for not seeing this earlier: you're right; this is the tidal force problem. [...] In other words, the measured weight of 100-kg human changes from Solar gravity by 5.2 [edit: milli]grams between equitorial solar noon or midnight and equitorial dawn or dusk.