Kyre 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: Kyre 03 August 2010 05:35:17AM *  8 points [-]

I never read Lovecraft as being any kind of metaphor for the real world, so I wouldn't vote this up as a rationalist quote for that reason.

But I like it as a device used Lovecraft to try to convey a sheer magnitude of horror. Can you imagine discovering something so horrific you wished you could delete the whole thing from your memory ? The more you pride yourself as a rationalist, the more horrific it would have to be.