DSimon comments on Rationality quotes: August 2010 - Less Wrong

5 Post author: Cyan 03 August 2010 12:16AM

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Comment author: mikerpiker 03 August 2010 02:55:55AM *  6 points [-]

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

-H.P. Lovecraft

Comment author: DSimon 03 August 2010 03:21:28AM *  9 points [-]

Sounds like Caveman Science Fiction to me. "Why should we risk learning about new things, when there's a possibility they'll be scary?"