Morendil comments on Rationality quotes: August 2010 - Less Wrong

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

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Comment author: SilasBarta 03 August 2010 04:49:35PM *  5 points [-]

I had just recently seen the two Christopher Nolan Batman movies (Batman Begins and The Dark Knight). Here are my favorite quotes; please add any that you like. (Character attribution left off to prevent pre-judgment.) Wikiquote lists.

"It's not who you are on the inside; it’s what you do that defines you." (Compare: Functionalism, substrate independence, timeless identity – I know, that’s probably not what was intended, but note how it’s used in other contexts.)

"Criminals thrive on the indulgence of society's understanding." (Compare to counterfactual reasoning: if we would sympathize with every defection, and felt that “the past is the past”, those wishing to defect would have no reason not to.)

“And what about escalation? […] We start carrying semi-automatics, they buy automatics. We start wearing Kevlar, they buy armor-piercing rounds. […] And you’re wearing a mask, and jumping off rooftops!”

(Also, I watched the earlier Batman movies after seeing this, and frankly, by comparison, they look like campy garbage.)

Comment author: Morendil 03 August 2010 04:53:26PM 12 points [-]

Nolan's Memento is also interesting from a rationalist perspective - it gives "running on untrusted hardware" a quite concrete meaning.