When people ask me what philosophy is, I say philosophy is what you do when you don't know what the right questions are yet. Once you get the questions right, then you go answer them, and that's typically not philosophy, that's one science or another. Anywhere in life where you find that people aren't quite sure what the right questions to ask are, what they're doing, then, is philosophy.
Robot: "With all your modern science, are you any closer to understanding the mystery of how a robot walks or talks?"
Farnsworth: "Yes you idiot! The circuit diagram is right in the inside of your case."
Robot: "I choose to believe what I was programmed to believe!"
-- Futurama, The Honking
That seems like the extreme case of "you don't really understand something until you can explain it to somebody else", which I'm sure somebody other than me must have said a long time ago.
Yep.
'116. You think you know when you can learn, are more sure when you can write, even more when you can teach, but certain when you can program.'
"Epigrams in Programming", by Alan J. Perlis; ACM's SIGPLAN publication, September, 1982
Yes! I'm happy that at least one person clicks on that.
The software industry is currently held back by a conception of programming-as-manual-labor, consisting of semi-mechanically turning a specification document into executable code. In fact it's much closer to "the art of improving your understanding of some business domain by expressing the details of that domain in a formal notation". The resulting program isn't quite a by-product of that activity - it's important, though not nearly as important as distilling the domain understanding.
Programming is the art of figuring out what you want so precisely that you can tell even a machine how to do it.
And by the same token, we'll know we've nailed AI not when we have written a program that can have that conversation... but when we have written down an account of how we are able to have that conversation, to such a level of detail that there's nothing left to explain.
Writing a program which solves the Towers of Hanoi is not too hard. Proving, given a formalization of the ToH, various properties of a program that solves it, isn't too hard. But looking at a bunch of wooden disks slotted on pegs and coming up with an interpretation of that situation which corresponds to the abstract scheme we know as "Towers of Hanoi"... That's where the fun is.
Yes, and explaining it to a computer (i.e. writing working code) is the hardest version of this test, because it's the closest thing to a blank slate -- you can't rely on anything being "understood" like you would with a person, in which case you can just start from the NePOCU (nearest point of common understanding, learn to live with the acronym).
We have not solved all your problems. Each answer only led to new questions. We are still confused - but perhaps we are confused on a higher level, and about more important things.
-- seen on a hotel bulletin board
Someone once quoted Shakespeare to the philosopher W. V. O. Quine: "There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy." To which Quine is said to have responded: "Possibly, but my concern is that there not be more things in my philosophy than are in heaven and earth."
I've linked to a quote from Daniel Ellsberg at Overcoming Bias, but it seemed relevant enough here to excerpt the bits that caught my eye:
First, you'll be exhilarated by some of this new information, and by having it all — so much! incredible! — suddenly available to you. But second, almost as fast, you will feel like a fool for having studied, written, talked about these subjects, criticized and analyzed decisions made by presidents for years without having known of the existence of all this information, which presidents and others had and you didn't, and which must have influenced their decisions in ways you couldn't even guess
[...]
you will forget there ever was a time when you didn't have it, and you'll be aware only of the fact that you have it now and most others don't....and that all those other people are fools
[...]
you'll eventually become aware of the limitations of this information [...] But that takes a while to learn. In the meantime it will have become very hard for you to learn from anybody who doesn't have these clearances. Because you'll be thinking as you listen to them: 'What would this man be telling me if he knew what I know? Would he be giving me the same advice...
"Test Your God.... Test[s] cannot harm a God of Truth, but will destroy fakes. Fake gods refuse test[s]."
~ Dr. Gene Ray
There is a thought that stops thought. That is the only thought that ought to be stopped.
-G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
Oscar Wilde, De Profundis
-- Ryan Armand
Sometimes I see something that just seems to hit the bullseye deeply in the centre, and sticks there, quivering.
House: There's never any proof. Five different doctors come up with five different diagnoses based on the same evidence.
Cuddy: You don't have any evidence. And nobody knows anything, huh? How is it you always think you're right?
House: I don't. I just find it hard to operate on the opposite assumption.
It is often said that experiments should be made without preconceived ideas. This is impossible.
--Henri Poincare, Science and Hypothesis.
The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent, but if we can come to terms with the indifference, then our existence as a species can have genuine meaning. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.
— Stanley Kubrick
A habit of basing convictions upon evidence, and of giving to them only that degree of certainty which the evidence warrants, would, if it became general, cure most of the ills from which the world is suffering. (Bertrand Russell)
Did Russell ever provide an argument in favor of this assertion? I am interested in hearing it.
The art of ignoring is one of the accomplishments of every well-bred girl, so carefully instilled that at last she can even ignore her own thoughts and her own knowledge.
-- H.G. Wells, Ann Veronica
Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth, more than ruin, more even than death.... Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man. (Bertrand Russell)
There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
-- Peter Drucker
I'm looking for a Darwin quote I used to have, but lost. It was something about how whenever he encoutered a fact that seemed wrong to him, he immediately noted it down, as such facts are both important and easy to forget.
It's harder to find than you think. It's not on the master list of rationality quotes or any of the top 10 google results for "darwin quotes". And the problem with 19th century thinkers is that their vocabulary is too big, and so Google is crippled against them.
(Edit: good job. I had tried "fact", but not limiting the source. And some other words I attempted - "note", "write", "remember", "forget" - are not there.)
Anyone who upvotes this comment is committing to upvote the person who finds the quote.
I had, also, during many years followed a golden rule, namely, that whenever a published fact, a new observation or thought came across me, which was opposed to my general results, to make a memorandum of it without fail and at once; for I had found by experience that such facts and thoughts were far more apt to escape from the memory than favourable ones. Owing to this habit, very few objections were raised against my views which I had not at least noticed and attempted to answer.
-From his Autobiography, 1902.
A wonderful quote indeed. Found by guessing that it was biographical or autobiographical (it seemed a little too personal for a scientific treatise) and searching for the word "fact" in the online text of the (very readable) autobiography.
If there were a party of those who are not sure they are right, I'd belong to it.
--Albert Camus
Ignoring the trees to see the forest doesn't mean that one is more important than the other - it just gives a different perspective.
-- Michael Sipser, Introduction to the Theory of Computation (2nd ed., page 257)
Distrust any historical anecdote good enough to have survived on its literary merit.
The best thing for being sad," replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.
--T.H. White, The Once and Future King
Be not astonished at new ideas; for it is well known to you that a thing does not therefore cease to be true because it is not accepted by many.
-- Spinoza
How do you get new ideas? That you do by analogy, mostly, and in working with analogy you often make very great errors. It's a great game to try to look at the past, at an unscientific era, look at something there, and say have we got the same thing now, and where is it?
-- Richard Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist, page 114
Let’s consider what an economist would do if he wanted to study horses. [...] What would he do? He’d go to his study and think, ‘What would I do if I were a horse?’ And he’d come up with the conclusion that he’d maximize his utility.
-- Ronald Coase, quoting Ely Devons
The longer, less soundbite-y quote is also interesting:
...Now what’s wrong with this situation? What’s wrong with economists acting in this sort of way? I’ll tell you a tale about an English economist, Ely Devons. I was at a conference and he said, “Let’s consider what an economist would
This one is rather long, but I think makes a point worth considering for anyone writing to instruct the public.
...One who hopes to effect any good by his writings, must be so pure in his life, that what he proposes for instruction or imitation must be a transcript of his own heart. But general improvement is so little to be anticipated, that almost any attempt which may be made by an individual in his zeal to do good, seems to be lost labour. Those whose character has attained to the greatest perfectness, are at all times the persons most willing and anxiou
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.
Marcus Aurelius
Finally, a third from Russell that I admire chiefly for its unflinching courage. And love him or hate him, you've got to admit - the guy had a way with words:
"That man is the product of causes that had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspir...
If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.
-- Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor
I was about to reply that apparently Marcus Aurelius had never put his hand on a burning stove, but then I remembered that he had probably been taught about Mucius Scaevola about a million times.
Huh, I'd never heard of that. Great story. Thanks for sharing -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaius_Mucius_Scaevola
"I am Gaius Mucius, a citizen of Rome. I came here as an enemy to kill my enemy, and I am as ready to die as I am to kill. We Romans act bravely and, when adversity strikes, we suffer bravely." He also declared that he was one of three hundred other Romans willing to give their own life to kill Porsenna.(Ab Urbe Condita, II.12) Porsenna, fearful and angry, ordered Mucius to be cast into the flames. Mucius stoically accepted this punishment, preempting Porsenna by thrusting his hand into that same fire and giving no sign of pain. Impressed by the youth's courage, Porsenna freed Mucius.
Von Neumann advised Shannon to use the word “entropy” on the grounds that “Nobody knows what entropy really is, so in a debate you will always have the advantage.”
"The things with which we concern ourselves in science appear in myriad forms, and with a multitude of attributes. For example, if we stand on the shore and look at the sea, we see the water, the waves breaking, the foam, the sloshing motion of the water, the sounds, the air, the winds and the clouds, the sun and the blue sky, and light; there is sand and there are rocks of various hardness and permanence, color and texture. There are animals and seaweed, hunger and disease, and the observer on the beach; there may be even happiness and thought. A...
Stand firm for what you believe in, until and unless logic and experience prove you wrong. Remember, when the emperor looks naked, the emperor is naked. The truth and a lie are not sort of the same thing.
-Daria Morgendorffer (from the TV show Daria)
Three things are necessary for the salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe; to know what he ought to desire; and to know what he ought to do. (St. Thomas Aquinas)
I find this a very efficient three-step guide to living, provided of course that we interpret "ought to" in a way that is very much not the Angelic Doctor's.
(For the record, he followed up with: The first is taught in the [Nicean] Creed... the second in the Lord's prayer; the third in law. Wish it were so simple.)
There are two ways of holding beliefs in one’s mind. Holding a belief may be experienced ... as plain awareness of a fact, without awareness of reasons to take it to be a fact. So are held most of our ordinary beliefs. ...
Other beliefs I hold because I also believe there is a good reason to hold them. ... we entertain them together with the reasons we have to accept them.
-- Dan Sperber (emphasis mine)
I firmly believe that the whole materia medica as now used could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be all the better for mankind and all the worse for the fishes.
"Hence our truth is the intersection of independent lies."
-- Richard Levins, "The Strategy of Model Building in Population Biology" American Scientist, V. 54, No 4, Dec 1966, pp421-430.
It is part of this paragraph on p. 423:
"Therefore, we attempt to treat the same problem with several alternative models each with different simplifications but with a common biological assumption. Then, if these models, despite their different assumptions, lead to similar results we have what we can call a robust theorem which is relatively free of the details of the model. Hence our truth is the intersection of independent lies."
Things are entirely what they appear to be and behind them... there is nothing. (Jean-Paul Sartre)
Perfect descriptions of reality are unattainable, unnecessary, and too costly for learning organisms, including humans. But workable descriptions are indispensable. So knowledge systems, like maps, are a complex blend of realism, flexibility, usefulness, and inspiration.
-- David Christian, Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History
...An attitude of nonjudgment, patience, and compassion entices clients to let down their defenses in order to get in touch with emotional charges they have been holding in their bodies. If practitioners try to break through the resistances -- to fight with the guardian -- clients are put in a no-win situation. They then have no choice but to fight back or to shut down the part of themselves that is in charge of protection, in which case the results might be catastrophic. The guardian is betrayed by the very part of the self that needs protection, propagatin
Consciousness is overrated. What we call consciousness now is a very imperfect summary in one part of the brain of what the rest is doing.
-- Marvin Minsky
...It is usual to distinguish four phases in creation: preparation, incubation, illumination and verification, or working out.... Preparation is largely conscious, and anyhow directed by the conscious. The essential problem has to be stripped of accidentals and brought clearly into view; all relevant knowledge surveyed; possible analogues pondered. It should be kept constantly before the mind during intervals of other work.... Incubation is the work of the subconscious during the waiting time, which may be several years. Illumination, which can happen in a f
By now I have established myself as either a recognized authority possessing admirable diligence or a raving fanboy admitting dubious sanity, or just possibly the two are not mutually exclusive.
Billy [Beane] wasn't one to waste a lot of time worrying about whether he was motivated by a desire to succeed or the pursuit of truth. To his way of thinking the question was academic, since the pursuit of truth was, suddenly, the key to success.
Michael Lewis, Moneyball, Chapter Three ("The Enlightenment").
As society and the problems that face it become more and more complex and machines become more and more intelligent, people will let machines make more of their decisions for them, simply because machine-made decisions will bring better results than man-made ones. Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control. People won't be able to just turn the machines off, because t...
Since 1900, perhaps 1800 or even earlier, people have been letting markets make their decisions for them. When the Bolsheviks decided to turn off the markets by bringing the means of production and exchange into common ownership they found that the decisions necessary to keep the system running were so complex that human beings were incapable of making them intelligently.
That is Mises Economic calculation argument against socialism. Perhaps Mises argument is wrong. Free markets and private property offer a system that is roughly incentive compatible. Perhaps the real issue is that we do not know how to design a burearocracy in which the incentives of the bureaucrats are sufficiently aligned with the over-arching goal. Whatever. My main point is that people only make decisions locally and have never been in charge in the sense that quote claims.
Those creatures, which by their original make are so constituted, that their desires and their duty always necessarily coincide, can't, I think, be said to have any claim to a reward: whereas those who are surrounded with difficulty and temptation, and who are obliged to deny themselves and submit to great inconveniences that they may maintain their integrity, if notwithstanding this, they do behave uprightly, seem on this account to have an equitable claim to it.
-- Thomas Bayes
(The first type of entity sounds like a properly designed FAI - there is cer...
If magic is all we've ever known
Then it's easy to miss what really goes on
-Insane Clown Posse, "Miracles." Unfortunately, the rest of the song is garbage (though humorous garbage) and glorifies the exact naive view criticized in these lines.
Be not astonished at new ideas; for it is well known to you that a thing does not therefore cease to be true because it is not accepted by many.
-- Spinoza
"Sanity is a state in which our component selves love and trust each other, and are prepared to let each other assume control as circumstances demand."
"Sanity is a state in which our component selves love and trust each other, and are prepared to let each other assume control as circumstances demand."
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.