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.
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That's because it's easy to misvalue assets if you're disconnected from the production process. So when you have specialized bookkeepers, others will typcially see them as ignorant of the true value of the assets, and associate this with bookkeeping per se, rather than bookkeeping with a screwy incentive structure and/or knowledge flows. Because this is the context in which most people interface with accountants, they tend to be associated with misvaluing assets. And thus:
"Beancounters didn't think a soldier's life was worth 300 [thousand dollars]." -- Batman Begins
Edit: Sorry, I forgot to translate all that: P(observe "accountant" | believe accountant misvalued assets) > P(observe "accountant" | ~believe accountant misvalued assets)
If I could just recruit another equally capabler soldier for $ 299,000 or less with no ill consequences, then this seems like a shut up and multiply situation that accountants are trained for.
Hell, from a utilitarian perspective, if I saved a single soldier with that money instead of feeding and housing let's say, 300 African children for 10 years, then I made a stupid decision.
I think the accountant got things just about right.