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.
- Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be voted up/down separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
- Do not quote yourself.
- Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB.
- No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.
Is there a general name for that shape of argument? It or something close to it seems to be a recurring pattern.
"People who can manage their lives will, despite MMOs.". (People who lose time playing MMOs are bad at managing life, so they would've lost the time anyway.)
"There's only two possible outcomes for their relationship. They split, or they stay together forever. If it's split, then the sooner it happens the better for everyone. If it's stay, then my meddling won't matter.".
"No one you would want to meet would find you boring.".
(Edit: removed opening "also".)
Disjunctive reasoning. I liked the example in this post.