Rationality quotes: October 2010

Comment author: cousin_it 01 November 2010 01:40:05PM * 3 points [-]

He was at once a man of thought and a man of action - a combination as rare as it is usually deplorable. The man of action in him might have gone far had he not been ruined at the outset by the man of thought.

-- Rafael Sabatini, "The Sea-hawk"

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 31 October 2010 12:00:42PM 0 points [-]

"If we are to achieve results never before accomplished, we must expect to employ methods never before attempted." --Sir Francis Bacon

From a TED talk about the remarkable low cost inventions being developed in India

Comment author: gwern 29 October 2010 09:08:23PM 0 points [-]

"...It is a severe prescription. And yet now, as I grin broadly and wave to the gawkers, it occurs to me that the cold rationality of his approach may be only a surface feature and that, when linked to genuine rewards, even the chilliest of systems can have a certain visceral appeal.
By projecting the achievement of extreme memory back along the forgetting curve, by provably linking the distant future — when we will know so much — to the few minutes we devote to studying today, Wozniak has found a way to condition his temperament along with his memory. He is making the future noticeable. He is trying not just to learn many things but to warm the process of learning itself with a draft of utopian ecstasy."

--Gary Wolf in Wired, "Want to Remember Everything You'll Ever Learn? Surrender to This Algorithm", of Piotr Woźniak and his SuperMemo program which exploits spaced repetition for efficient memorization/learning

Comment author: aausch 27 October 2010 09:15:04PM 1 point [-]

I'm above average in talent, but where I think I excel is psychotic drive. All I need is for somebody to say I can't do something and this crazy switch inside me makes me attack whatever I'm doing. Psychotic drive is where I excel over people that are probably more naturally gifted.

-- Will Smith

Comment author: Perplexed 25 October 2010 03:18:39PM * 3 points [-]

I do not want to itemize the various fallacies that are commonly offered in seeking to justify cooperation in the Prisoner's Dilemma. In brief, they mostly proceed by arguing that the Prisoner's Dilemma is really some other game in which cooperation is not irrational. Game Theorists do not object to some other game being analyzed: only to the analysis of some other game being offered as an analysis of the Prisoner's Dilemma.

Ken Binsmore - in a critique of Gauthier's "Morals by Agreement"

Comment author: Perplexed 25 October 2010 03:06:16PM * 0 points [-]

[W]hat theory of morals can ever serve any useful purpose, unless it can show, by a particular detail, that all the duties, which it recommends, are also the true interest of each individual?

Hume - An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals

Comment author: gwern 24 October 2010 11:58:59PM 7 points [-]

"The conversation eventually turned to the fact that Palanpur farmers sow their winter crops several weeks after the date at which yields would be maximized. The farmers do not doubt that earlier planting would give them larger harvests, but no one, the farmer explained, is willing to be the first to plant, as the seeds on any lone plot would be quickly eaten by birds.
I asked if a large group of farmers, perhaps relatives, had ever agreed to sow earlier, all planting on the same day to minimize the losses. 'If we knew how to do that,” he said, looking up from his hoe at me, "we would not be poor.'"

--Microeconomics, pg 39, Samuel Bowles

Comment author: nhamann 24 October 2010 07:48:41PM * 2 points [-]

Is it through grandmother or grandfather that you descend from a monkey?

-- Samuel Wilberforce

Would I rather have a miserable ape for a grandfather, or a man highly endowed by nature and possessed of great means and inﬂuence, and yet who employs these faculties and that inﬂuence for the mere purpose of introducing ridicule into a grave scientiﬁc discussion – I unhesitatingly afﬁrm my preference for the ape.

-- T. H. Huxley

From an 1860 Oxford evolution debate (Quoted from Games, Groups and Global Good)

(Interestingly, the author, Robert May, after presenting these quotes, goes onto suggest that "Wilberforce, had he possessed an all-encompassing knowledge of the science of his day, could have won the debate. The Darwin–Wallace theory of evolution, at that time, had three huge problems.")

Comment author: nhamann 24 October 2010 08:38:19PM * 2 points [-]

Oh what the heck, here are two of the problems that Robert May spoke of in the above quote:

The ﬁrst problem concerned the time available for evolutionary processes to operate. Fifty years were to elapse before the ﬁrst glimmers of awareness of weak and strong nuclear forces were to appear. Of the four fundamental forces recognized by today’s physics, only gravitational and electromagnetic (“chemical”) forces were known in Darwin’s day. But if the sun’s energy source was gravitational, it could not have been burning for more than about 20 million years. And chemical fuels would give an even shorter life. A different calculation showed that it could not have taken more than roughly 20–40 million years for the earth to cool from molten rock to its present temperature. These two calculations meant that either the earth was at most a few tens of millions of years old, or that Victorian physics was fundamentally deﬁcient...Of course, the subsequent discovery of nuclear forces showed Victorian physics was indeed inadequate: the sun burns nuclear fuel; and the heat generated by the decay of radioactive elements inside the earth invalidates simplistic calculations about cooling rates. We now understand that evolutionary processes on earth have all the time they need.

...

The second problem stemmed from the conventional wisdom of the day, namely that inheritance worked by a blending of maternal and paternal characters. The essentials of this issue can be grasped by considering a trait (such as height or weight) that can be described by a single variable.... It is [...] straightforward to show that, with blending inheritance, the variance of this trait in the next generation is halved. But persisting variability is the raw stuff upon which natural selection works to produce descent with modiﬁcation; it was critical to Darwin’s ideas.... The resolution of this major difﬁculty lies, of course, in the fact that genes are inherited in particulate Mendelian fashion, not by “blending”. And, as shown in 1908 independently by Hardy and by Weinberg, under Mendelian inheritance variability remains unchanged from generation to generation, unless perturbed by factors such as selection, mutation, statistical drift, or nonrandom mating.

Comment author: gwern 24 October 2010 08:05:29PM * 2 points [-]

Well, now I have to link this DC: http://dresdencodak.com/2009/08/06/youre-a-good-man-charlie-darwin-2/

(Interestingly, the author, Robert May, after presenting these quotes, goes onto suggest that "Wilberforce, had he possessed an all-encompassing knowledge of the science of his day, could have won the debate. The Darwin–Wallace theory of evolution, at that time, had three huge problems.")

Not a surprise at all. Most major new paradigms have huge gaping flaws; this is one of the core theses of Paul Feyerabend's brand of philosophy of science in works like Against Method (eg. look at his analyses of major flaws in Galileo).

Comment author: Craig_Heldreth 24 October 2010 03:31:28PM 2 points [-]

(I was amazed this was not on the first three pages of a google search of the site.)

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself--and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that."

Richard Feynman in cargo cult science.

Comment author: RobinZ 24 October 2010 03:47:31PM 0 points [-]

It has been mentioned several times, including in April '09, but never as a top-level comment on a Rationality Quotes post.

Comment author: CronoDAS 24 October 2010 05:46:51AM 4 points [-]

Marijuana is death on writers. I’ve seen several go that route. Typical behavior for a long time marijuana user is as follows. He gets a story idea. He tells his friends about it, and they think it’s wonderful. He then feels as if he’s written it, published it, cashed the check and collected the awards. So he never bothers to write it down.

Alcohol can have the same effect.

-- Larry Niven

Comment author: ciphergoth 24 October 2010 10:10:43AM 3 points [-]

I think there are legitimate questions about the advisability of marijuana, but this is a claim for which counterexamples are plentiful. Alan Moore springs to mind.

OTOH "you only tell your story once so do it on paper" is also in Dorothea Brandt's "Becoming a Writer".

Comment author: Relsqui 24 October 2010 08:15:05AM 3 points [-]

Funny, I got the same advice sans drugs about NaNoWriMo a while back, and was just passing it on recently to someone else. The way it was put to me, though, was that "you can only tell your story once." Not literally, of course--you can relate what happens in it more than once--but you can only really tell it and put your heart into it once. Don't waste it talking to your friends about the idea. Get it on paper the way you feel it. Then tell your friends the lesser version afterwards, or just wait and let them read what you wrote down.

Comment author: Zack_M_Davis 24 October 2010 06:58:04AM 7 points [-]

I am momentarily breaking hiatus specifically to say that you don't even need marijuana or alcohol to suffer from this. The normal human capacity for self-delusion and need for self-esteem are more than deadly enough all by themselves.

Personally, I'm still struggling to accept this lesson: that it's not enough to be a smart person who has good ideas; you need to do something that actually works. It is, in its own way, a highly counterintuitive idea, much like this notion that plausibility isn't enough, and beliefs should actually predict experimental results. I keep wanting to protest that I was morally right. Well, say that I was. In order for that moral rightness to change anything, I still need a method that really actually works, not just morally works.

Comment author: Thomas 20 October 2010 11:45:29AM 8 points [-]

Truth does not demand belief. Scientists do not join hands every Sunday, singing 'Yes, gravity is real! I will have faith! I will be strong! I believe in my heart that what goes up, up, up must come down, down, down. Amen!' If they did, we would think they were pretty insecure about it.

Dan Barker

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 17 October 2010 01:27:44PM 1 point [-]

....research is after all, asking the universe silly questions and getting silly answers until neither question nor answer are silly any more

From a discussion of authodidacticism which may be of general interest.

Comment author: [deleted] 15 October 2010 05:32:03PM 5 points [-]

There is no point in saying that one should not doubt or one should believe. Just to say 'I believe' does not mean that you understand and see. When a student works on a mathematical problem, he comes to a stage beyond which he does not know how to proceed, and where he is in doubt and perplexity. As long as he has this doubt, he cannot proceed. If he wants to proceed, he must resolve this doubt. And there are ways of resolving that doubt. Just to say 'I believe', or 'I do not doubt' will certainly not solve the problem. To force oneself to believe and to accept a thing without understanding is political, and not spiritual or intellectual.

Walpola Rahula

Comment author: gwern 25 October 2010 12:02:12AM * 1 point [-]

"Persist, and faith will come to you."

--Jean le Rond d'Alembert on infinitesimals (as quoted in Mathematics: the loss of certainty, by Morris Kline)

Comment author: xamdam 15 October 2010 12:03:34PM * 9 points [-]

AI makes philosophy honest

-- Dan Dennet

Comment author: ata 13 October 2010 06:11:19PM 8 points [-]

You're only as young as the last time you changed your mind.

— Timothy Leary

Comment author: [deleted] 13 October 2010 05:42:11PM 3 points [-]

Who knows truly? Who here will declare whence it arose, whence this creation? The gods are subsequent to the creation of this. Who, then, knows whence it has come into being?

Whence this creation has come into being; whether it was made or not; he in the highest heaven is its surveyor. Surely he knows, or perhaps he knows not.

Not sure if this will qualify as a rationalist quote, but these are the last few lines from the Creation Hymn in the Rig Veda, the oldest of the Hindu sacred texts & estimated to be composed around 1100 BC. I like the note of uncertainty, rather rare among religious texts.

Comment author: gwern 13 October 2010 06:10:10PM * 6 points [-]

In its original, atheist Carvaka writings contained much verse (as Indian philosophy/theology usually does); see http://www.humanistictexts.org/Carvaka.htm In translation, they almost sound like senryū:

 If a beast slain as an offering to the dead
will itself go to heaven,
why does the sacrificer not straightway offer his father?

Comment author: sketerpot 13 October 2010 08:49:07PM * 6 points [-]

Reminds me of the doctrine that some Christians have, where anybody who dies before a certain age automatically goes to heaven, while people above that age can go to hell. The question then becomes: why don't parents kill their children, thus saving them from the all-too-likely possibility of eternal torture?

(Fun fact: most people who believe in hell can be made very uncomfortable if you look at the unfortunate implications of what they believe.)

Comment author: NihilCredo 20 October 2010 05:12:44PM 0 points [-]

I once read about a radical Christian sect in the early modern era that would kidnap newborn children, baptise them, and immediately kill them. I'm quite annoyed that I can't seem to remember the source, and particularly whether it was a real or fictional sect.

Comment author: Desrtopa 19 October 2010 11:28:25PM 7 points [-]

I was once in a debate in which I pursued that point at some length. I don't think most people who believe in Hell find that particular point more difficult to rationalize than most of their other religious beliefs, but I bring it up because it led to a quote which, while only tangentially relating to rationality, strikes me as pretty memorable.

"That seems like an awfully selfish reason not to kill a million babies."

Comment author: utilitymonster 13 October 2010 01:26:40PM 1 point [-]

Some wisdom on warm fuzzies: http://www.pbfcomics.com/?cid=PBF162-Executive_Decision.jpg

[Not a quote, but doesn't seem suitable for a discussion article.]

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 13 October 2010 01:48:04PM 1 point [-]

Might this imply that we might still want open threads?

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 13 October 2010 12:15:18PM 2 points [-]

"Whereas the howto is, by definition, addressed to a lay audience, it currently takes an expert on howtos to know which title in the tangled mass will deliver the goods." ---Dwight MacDonald, 1954

Cited here in an article about recalls of dangerously inaccurate how-to books.

Comment author: ata 13 October 2010 02:51:06AM * 7 points [-]

Ralph: When's Bart coming back?
Lisa: He's not. He thought he was better than the laws of probability. Anyone else think he's better than the laws of probability?
(Nelson raises his hand.)
Lisa: Well, you're not!

— The Simpsons, Season 22, Episode 3, "MoneyBART"

Comment author: Rain 12 October 2010 12:18:52AM * 9 points [-]

I can live with doubt, and uncertainty, and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers, and possible beliefs, and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything, and in many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here, and what the question might mean. I might think about a little, but if I can't figure it out, then I go to something else. But I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn't frighten me.

-- Richard Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

Comment author: CronoDAS 11 October 2010 06:20:51AM 3 points [-]

Kids, you tried your best, and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try.

-- Homer Simpson

Comment author: youaretheone comment score below threshold [+] (0 children)

Comment author: youaretheone 10 October 2010 04:00:55AM -16 points [-]

How interesting,! Please allow me to share with you what just took place and with the usage of hindsight placed in this process , I guess one could say If hindsight were or is a true value, you would not be reading this right now truly changing cause and effect, It will always remain in the "what If/" category for me You see, I was the one that gave you the negative mark on this comment. WAS it intentional ? . No ,by no means, Yet this is a pure example of what one could consider to be hindsight...""" If I'd only Known SYNDROME" For some odd reason I use my cursor as a placement while reading off the Internet, , As the cursor was following my eyes, and my mind was contemplating on that phrase by you( " which is actually an inverted version of the truth, that still sounds plausible enough that people will try to explain it even though it's wrong.) "When out of Nowhere my finger accidentally clicked down on the mouse , I didn't realize what had happened until I was taken to the next page, And there I was, ,faced with your belief system in regards to your approach on dealing with your readers negative or positive feedback, I didn't want to read that! JESSEE almost felt like was punished for a mere slip of the finger... NOW this is a Funny thing , or is It mere coincidences? Who Knows, maybe it was some unconscious physical reaction on my behalf , just so i could respond now. Seriously Really I don't think so... Simply a mere accident on my behalf, However, the YES IF I"D KNOWN THAT WOULD HAPPEN... My Little mouse would have stayed put.! , because, you see I found your article quite interesting, It intrigued me and made me think (Yet still this happened ), There's weight to that subject of yours and I like to see views through another eyes , even if the absolute conclusion has yet to surface. Now In hindsight I would have kept my mouse still, To be honest, I was rather embarrassed! However, this brings me to the thought" Was this a subconscious reaction on my behalf? Honestly. I'll never know, Like I stated earlier, I liked your article., But in regards to hindsight , I would not be writing you right now If Id been prepared for this to have happened. I am a firm believer that there are those who once exposed to, or placed into extreme certain conditions In comparison to the other who wasn't, the exposed becomes stronger other and therefor can better cope. I believe most of us know this as" Born with a silver spoon in thy mouth" , In my personal opinion Ive seen the Non exposed have a much harder time getting through what ever challenge they are facing, Now of-course this does leave room for controversy, as it simply depends on just "What" exactly that is, You depicted War, In that sense there's many variables, Where do we derive our inner sterngth from? Is It Based on knowledge alone? Is It In our genetic make-up? Some choose to be Victims , while others simply Grin and Bear It... then there's even those that feel empowered, They're Stronger because of what they just went through,,, Thanks to Good OLE HINDSIGHT... We simply make what we project and to each of us, That is what becomes our own reality ... I played Victim in this scenario, But I'm leaving empowered... You can bet i'll never use my little OLE mouse as a guide again, especially while contemplating ones beliefs and just how they arrived at that conclusion. I still have much to learn. I want to Thank you, for teaching me something about myself today. keep up the good work, I enjoy your articles very much. In Hindsight I would have marked that a positive!!!!.

Comment author: apophenia 09 October 2010 11:54:34PM 10 points [-]

"Because this is the Internet, every argument was spun in a centrifuge instantly and reduced down into two wholly enraged, radically incompatible contingents, as opposed to the natural gradient which human beings actually occupy." -Tycho, Penny Arcade

Comment author: mtaran 09 October 2010 03:23:00AM 5 points [-]

From a hacker news thread on the difficulty of finding or making food that's fast, cheap and healthy.

"Former poet laureate of the US, Charles Simic says, the secret to happiness begins with learning how to cook." -- pfarrell

Reply: "Well, I'm sure there's some economics laureate out there who says that the secret to efficiency begins with comparative advantage." -- Eliezer Yudkowsky

Comment author: roland 31 October 2010 12:03:49AM 0 points [-]

I just saw this. I figured out a food with said qualities: chicken.

1) cheap and healthy 2) fast to prepare if you do it my way: buy chicken hips. wash them and put them into a pan with water, cook for 18 minutes. Eat.

They don't taste that good but you can't beat the price and convenience.

Comment author: gwern 13 October 2010 06:12:43PM 4 points [-]

I don't understand this one. A poetry guy says something practical (and completely unrelated to poetry) is a valuable thing, and Eliezer replies that an economics guy would say something about economics?

The message eludes me.

Comment author: whpearson 13 October 2010 07:00:04PM * 4 points [-]

My take: Comparative advantage as I understand it is about specializing and being better off for it (in simplistic terms).

So Eliezer is hinting that you should become good at thing X where X isn't cooking and pay for someone who has specialized in cooking to cook for you, and you'll both be better off.

Edit: I think he phrased it in the way (Economics laureate etc) as parody and to highlight the appeal to authority in the original (why should a poet laureate, no more than a normal poet or any other person what the secret to happiness was).

</ humour destruction through explanation>

Comment author: gwern 13 October 2010 07:27:59PM 0 points [-]

That seems possible... but I don't like the disconnect between the poetry guy talking about increasing happiness and the economics guy talking about increasing efficiency, with no connection given. They aren't the same thing at all, and I'm sure Eliezer understands that better than either of us.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 13 October 2010 03:21:41PM * 0 points [-]

thanks, but no quoting LWers in this post

Comment author: RobinZ 13 October 2010 03:58:32PM 5 points [-]

But the quote is from a hacker news thread, isn't it? Would we want to stop quoting Dennett's books if he became a regular here?

Comment author: Fleisch 13 October 2010 07:58:07PM * 0 points [-]

Probably not, but you wouldn't (need to) quote what he wrote here.

EDIT: Or rather, what he's writing since he's here, unless it's still novel to LW.

Comment author: [deleted] 09 October 2010 01:42:32AM * 25 points [-]

Philosopher: Can we ever be certain an observation is true?

Engineer: Yep.

Philosopher: How?

Engineer: Lookin'.

Scrollover of SMBC #1879

Comment author: AdShea 12 October 2010 05:55:58PM 3 points [-]

I'd say a good engineer would reply: No observation is true, but truth doesn't matter if it works.

Comment author: sketerpot 13 October 2010 08:52:49PM 5 points [-]

In that case, I'd say you're using a much too binary definition of "true". I'm sure this has been posted a dozen times before, but it seems relevant:

"When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."

-Isaac Asimov

Comment author: AdShea 13 October 2010 09:45:43PM 2 points [-]

Exactly the sort of quote I was looking for. The philosopher is asking about absolute truth, the engineer only cares about finding parameters for a model of reality that works well enough for what you need it to do.

Comment author: Tiiba 12 October 2010 03:34:25PM * 0 points [-]

Sssso there AR threeeeeee Hariats. Toldem so Oh god, my head.

**Note: the dupes are on purpose

Comment author: Tiiba 12 October 2010 03:34:11PM * 0 points [-]

Sssso there AR threeeeeee Hariats. Toldem so Oh god, my head.

**Note: the dupes are on purpose

Comment author: aausch 08 October 2010 04:30:07PM * 0 points [-]

I may not be smart enough to debate you point-for-point on this, but I have the feeling about 60% of what you say is crap.

David Letterman, To Bill O'Reilly, in discussion about the supposed War on Christmas, as quoted in "In Letterman appearance, O'Reilly repeated false claim that school changed 'Silent Night' lyrics", Media Matters for America, (2006-01-04) (From Wikiquote)

Comment author: DilGreen 09 October 2010 11:34:13PM 1 point [-]

I imagine this is getting up-voted here in response to the sentiment, and I'm not going to vote it down. But this approach is more often used by deists against rationalists, and the next step is book-burning.

Comment author: aausch 13 October 2010 08:25:13PM 1 point [-]

This quote, for me, shows two ideas: The I defy the data that khafra mentions below, as well as, on Letterman's side, an ability to accurately detect bs and dismiss it without having spent significant resources on formal debate. That ability seems incredibly useful to me, and definitely worth cultivating.

I associate the second idea with the Prior Information Chapter of HPMoR

Comment author: khafra 13 October 2010 04:15:00PM 1 point [-]

I saw it as a real-life example of I defy the data.

Comment author: wedrifid 09 October 2010 11:45:39PM 2 points [-]

Do deists really go around telling people how unintelligent they are? Around here they tend to be insecure about their intelligence and try hard to act smart. But the intellectual status of religious belief is something that varies by culture.

Comment author: M88 08 October 2010 12:39:34PM * 3 points [-]

Freedom is not an immutable fact graven in nature and on the heart of man. It is not inherent in man or in society, and it is meaningless to write it into law. The mathematical, physical, biological, sociological, and psychological sciences reveal nothing but necessities and determinisms on all sides. As a matter of fact, reality consists in overcoming and transcending these determinisms.

...Freedom is not static but dynamic; not a vested interest, but a prize continually to be won. The moment man stops and resigns himself, he becomes subject to determinism. He is most enslaved when he thinks he is comfortably settled in freedom.

Jacques Ellul, "The Technological Society"

Comment author: CronoDAS 08 October 2010 03:16:26AM * 0 points [-]

The meaning of life, as explained by a 12-year-old girl.

(The visuals are required to get the joke.)

Comment author: NihilCredo 08 October 2010 04:15:34PM * 1 point [-]

I don't see any rationality there, but the site seems a good resource for practising German. (Bilingual webcomic = bite-sized parts, usually fairly simple sentences, pictures provide hints, if still updated it becomes a regular exercise)

Comment author: Yvain 07 October 2010 07:08:15PM * 5 points [-]

The line between genius and insanity is measured only by success

-- unknown

Comment author: Apprentice 09 October 2010 10:04:35AM 3 points [-]

Compare:

Only the insane have strength enough to prosper. Only those that prosper may truly judge what is sane.

Comment author: Leonhart 11 October 2010 11:32:10PM 7 points [-]

Therefore, one-box. FOR THE EMPEROR.

Comment author: katydee 09 October 2010 08:50:27PM 2 points [-]

Generally speaking, Warhammer 40k probably isn't a good source for philosophy.

Comment author: gwern 12 October 2010 01:37:19AM 0 points [-]

At least in fiction (quoted approvingly in the past by our glorious leader), Warhammer is great for instrumental rationality...

Comment author: wedrifid 09 October 2010 10:28:08PM 8 points [-]

I rate it above Decartes.

Comment author: bojangles 11 October 2010 04:09:27AM 6 points [-]

above "invented analytic geometry" Descartes or just above meditations descartes?

Comment author: Yvain 07 October 2010 07:07:18PM * 12 points [-]

A neighbor came to Nasrudin, asking to borrow his donkey. "It is out on loan," the teacher replied. At that moment, the donkey brayed loudly inside the stable. "But I can hear it bray, over there." "Whom do you believe," asked Nasrudin, "me or a donkey?"

-- old Sufi parable

Comment author: Yvain 07 October 2010 07:04:21PM 22 points [-]

"Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones."

— Marcus Aurelius

Comment author: Document 18 October 2011 09:08:29PM 3 points [-]

I've just been advised that he probably didn't say that.

Comment author: Document 11 October 2010 03:54:41AM * 4 points [-]

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".)

Comment author: b1shop 25 October 2010 03:44:19PM 0 points [-]

Is there a general name for that shape of argument?

Disjunctive reasoning. I liked the example in this post.

Comment author: Document 27 October 2010 07:03:57PM * 0 points [-]

Calling it fake or selective disjunctive reasoning might describe it, I guess.

Comment author: b1shop 28 October 2010 04:59:05PM 0 points [-]

Can you think of any possibilities the good emperor didn't mention?

Comment author: Document 11 October 2010 09:59:48PM * 0 points [-]

Also:

The phrase "the people who mind don't matter and the people who matter don't mind". Similarly, the phrase/meme "haters gonna hate" (edit: although that usually has further information implied).
Possibly the saying that if you're worried you might be crazy, it proves that you're not. (Although the problem with that could have more to do with taking your conclusion and adding it back to the evidence pile, ala One Argument Against an Army.)
"And people do stupid things no matter what -- beer or grass or whatever are all incidental to that central fact.". That's fits under "predestination fallacy", but possibly not the concept I was originally thinking of, which was something like "argument by subtly-flawed categorization".
"If I lied the first time, I'm not going to tell you the truth just because you ask twice.".

I'll edit this post with any further examples. Last edited 2010/11/07.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 11 October 2010 01:13:47PM 3 points [-]

False dilemna. Also false dicholomy or possibly black and white thinking.

Comment author: jimrandomh 11 October 2010 04:03:11AM 3 points [-]

I've never heard a name for that, and it ought to have one. How about "the predestination fallacy"? They all seem to start with the assumption that something will go the same way no matter what, then conclude that therefore, pushing it in a bad direction is okay.

Comment author: Document 12 September 2012 12:16:59AM 1 point [-]

It looks like it's called Morton's fork.

Comment author: gjm 11 October 2010 12:26:21PM 1 point [-]

It's not always a fallacy. Examples:

You're trying to achieve some objective, and the difference between achieving it and not achieving it swamps all other differences between credible outcomes. It may then be rational to assume that your desired objective is achievable. (You have nasty symptoms, which can be caused by two diseases. One will kill you in a week whatever you do. One is treatable. If it's at all difficult to distinguish the two, you might as well assume you've got the treatable one.)
You're trying to achieve some objective, and you know it's achievable because others have achieved it, or because the situation you're in has been crafted to make it so. It's rational to assume it's achievable. (There's an example in J E Littlewood's "Mathematician's Miscellany": he was climbing a mountain, he got to a certain point and couldn't see any way to make progress, and he reasoned thus: I know this is possible, and I know I've come the right way so far, so there must be a hidden hold somewhere around there ... and, indeed, there was.)

Comment author: Document 09 October 2010 06:48:19AM 1 point [-]

For the first two "then"s, the conclusions seem plausible but far from the only possible ones if the possibility of (knowable) gods were taken seriously. It sounds like saying that if you live under an unjust government, you should act like it doesn't exist until you get arrested, rather than either accepting it or trying to fight it.

Comment author: [deleted] 10 October 2010 11:55:27PM 2 points [-]

As Marcus Aurelius was a philosopher king, I get the feeling this quote is in the context of the gods being unknowable. The unjust government, on the other hand, is here and knowable.

Comment author: Document 11 October 2010 02:39:12AM 0 points [-]

Were there people who advocated worshipping unknowable gods?

Comment author: [deleted] 11 October 2010 02:57:32AM * 2 points [-]

Arguably. The main one I could find was this:

St. Augustine - "A God understood is no God at all."

Though I remember at least once being told that God's "mystery", that is, the inability to figure him out, understand him, or be absolutely certain he's there, was part of a reason to worship him.

Comment author: Document 11 October 2010 07:29:44AM * 0 points [-]

Since St. Augustine was a Christian, I don't think he fits. By "knowable" I meant something like "we can identify an action that they're more likely to regard as worship than as blasphemy, thereby making the question of whether to worship them relevant". I'm uncomfortable with my use of the action/inaction distinction there, but I'm going to leave it.

Alternate interpretation of the Marcus Aurelius quote: It illustrates how far thoughts fit ideals. Regardless of whether he took gods seriously, they were distant enough that he could make grand moral claims without worrying about living up to them.

Comment author: Yvain 07 October 2010 07:00:04PM * 32 points [-]

Even after ten thousand explanations, a fool is no wiser, but an intelligent man requires only two thousand five hundred.

-- Brahma, Mahabharata

Comment author: Pavitra comment score below threshold [+] (17 children)

Comment author: Pavitra 07 October 2010 08:00:48PM 1 point [-]

Why am I getting downvoted for this?

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 08 October 2010 04:51:30PM * 6 points [-]

Downvoted, since burning Bibles is stupid and pointless, and certainly not a sane test for recognizing ability to be a scientist. (I agree with the implied point of getting over the reverence, but the presentation is poor.)

Comment author: thomblake 07 October 2010 08:56:47PM 6 points [-]

Off the cuff guesses:

It's a quote from the time cube nutter.
The quote itself doesn't seem to have much to do with rationality.
It's technically false. A scientist without means of creating fire, or a bible, is still a scientist.
It commits the fallacy of false dilemma. Scientists can be liars.

Can't guess any other reasons.

Comment author: Pavitra 08 October 2010 01:59:44AM * 2 points [-]

This one did all right.
The intended point is that it is not sufficient to be a scientist only while in the laboratory.
That's stupid. After reflecting on the problem of inferential distance, I could believe that someone could reasonably respond that they didn't understand what the quote was trying to say, but the form of the rhetoric should have made clear that the literal meaning was not the one meant.
My first reaction was "lolwut". I see where you're coming from, but it still just feels wrong, as if I were missing the point. The non-God-repudiating scientist is not just lying to others, but lying to herself, and that is incompatible with the serious pursuit of truth.

I know it's a leaky generalization, that there are obvious exceptions and edge cases, but that's true of all English sentences and especially true of those that are composed for pithiness and rhetoric, that is, the ones that make good quotes.

(Edit: I had originally linked "serious" above here, but I like the current pothole better.)

Comment author: RobinZ 08 October 2010 08:16:08PM 3 points [-]

The intended point is that it is not sufficient to be a scientist only while in the laboratory.

I honestly expected a link to Outside the Laboratory.

Comment author: Pavitra 09 October 2010 02:21:42AM * 1 point [-]

That's what I had in mind, but for some reason when I googled for it the other thing came up instead.

Comment author: Swimmy 07 October 2010 10:03:44PM 10 points [-]

5) Burning Bibles is socially considered far more disrespectful than simply calling the Bible "false." Even a scientist who treats honesty as a lexicographic preference may still try to maximize politeness or social capital afterwards.

6) A scientist who lives in a time/region when Bible-burning leads to self-burning will use the method of observation to determine that burning the Bible is a bad idea.

Comment author: RobinZ 08 October 2010 02:39:44AM 9 points [-]

I believe this about captures it - for the purpose it serves, burning Bibles is usually needlessly incendiary.

Comment author: thomblake 11 October 2010 08:38:29PM 2 points [-]

Upvoted for the punnish double entendre.

Comment author: RobinZ 11 October 2010 08:42:03PM 1 point [-]

I aim to please (if not always inform). (:

Comment author: Pavitra 08 October 2010 02:03:17AM * -2 points [-]

5. To the extent that a person places political correctness before truth, that person is not behaving as a scientist.

6. i strongly doubt that's what the people who downvoted me had in mind. I could imagine getting a few downvotes on those grounds, but not net downvotes.

Comment author: thomblake 08 October 2010 03:45:41PM 7 points [-]

Regarding 5, I don't see how not burning a particular book is a necessary condition for valuing truth above political correctness. "Destroying information" and "Valuing truth" might seem logically equivalent to you, but to me they seem quite in tension.

Comment author: Pavitra 08 October 2010 03:57:01PM -1 points [-]

Again, this seems disingenuous. Are people really interpreting the quote in terms of censorship rather than blasphemy?

Comment author: thomblake 08 October 2010 04:30:47PM 8 points [-]

The quote's at -2. That could well be 2 downvotes total. You have at least 6 reasons here that believably could be why someone might have done that, and you still seem to balk. Is it really that confusing?

When I first saw the quote, I thought "meh". When I saw it again, a couple of the things I cited occurred to me. It's totally out-of-context, and I'm not sure what the intended interpretation is. I definitely wasn't thinking in terms of "censorship" or "blasphemy"; rather, I tried to imagine what the author might have thought scientists do all day that requires them to set books on fire.

There are very few things that I would count as logically necessary conditions for being a "scientist", and that particular action isn't one of them. Why do bibles have anything to do with scientists at all? Are you a religious nut or something?

Comment author: Pavitra 08 October 2010 04:39:51PM 1 point [-]

The quote's at -2. That could well be 2 downvotes total. You have at least 6 reasons here that believably could be why someone might have done that, and you still seem to balk. Is it really that confusing?

2 downvotes total requires not only that two people downvote it, but also that no people upvote it. It is the latter that I find surprising.

Why do bibles have anything to do with scientists at all?

I was thinking of the objection to scientists who believe unsupportable things when they leave the laboratory.

Are you a religious nut or something?

I certainly hope not. :(

Comment author: NihilCredo 08 October 2010 04:29:38PM * 8 points [-]

Yes. Historically as well as in current culture, burning a book is THE signal that you wish for it to disappear, not just that you consider it wrong. It implies that you would do the same to all copies, not just one, and book-burners who had the power to do so almost always did. Ridiculously extensive Wikipedia article.

Comment author: Pavitra 08 October 2010 04:40:08PM 4 points [-]

In retrospect, I really should have thought of that myself.

Comment author: Kobayashi 06 October 2010 11:28:21PM 13 points [-]

"You can always reach me through my blog!" he panted. "Overpowering Falsehood dot com, the number one site for rational thinking about the future--"

Zendegi, by Greg Egan (2010)

Go ahead, down-vote me. It's still paradoxically-awesome to be burned in a Greg Egan novel...

Comment author: NihilCredo 07 October 2010 01:36:57AM 3 points [-]

What is the context of the quote? Is the OF.com guy a total dolt, an arrogant twat, a cloud cuckoolander, or what?

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 07 October 2010 06:58:12AM 2 points [-]

Thought this was worthy of its own thread in Discussion so interested people won't miss it: http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/2ti/greg_egan_disses_standins_for_overcoming_bias/

Comment author: Risto_Saarelma 07 October 2010 06:38:18AM 4 points [-]

Found a couple of semi-spoilery reviews for Zendegi. Apparently it has stand-ins for Robin Hanson and SIAI as foils for the authorial message.

Comment author: gwern 07 October 2010 12:03:14AM 1 point [-]

Oh, I see - the ref is to 'Overcoming Bias.com'. For a moment I was confused because overpoweringfalsehood.com doesn't work and I didn't see any URL in your profile and I thought you were talking about you being burned and not all of us.

Comment author: MC_Escherichia 09 October 2010 10:25:01PM * 0 points [-]

Someone's snapped it up now: http://whois.domaintools.com/overpoweringfalsehood.com

Comment author: gwern 10 October 2010 12:03:17AM 2 points [-]

And not by someone who intends to use it for good, it seems.

(Only now do I realize that 'overpoweringfalsehood.com' isn't that bad a domain name.)

Comment author: iongantas 10 October 2010 01:34:39PM 6 points [-]

That depends entirely on whether 'overpowering' is a verb or an adjective.

Comment author: gwern 10 October 2010 02:18:09PM 2 points [-]

So... you're saying it would be a perfect replacement domain for timecube.com?

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 10 October 2010 01:39:48PM 0 points [-]

Same applies to 'overcoming' of 'overcoming bias'.

Comment author: MC_Escherichia 10 October 2010 03:23:53PM 1 point [-]

"Overcoming" doesn't really work as an adjective.

Comment author: [deleted] 10 October 2010 11:56:53PM * 3 points [-]

My goodness, that bias is quite overcoming, wouldn't you say?

Comment author: MC_Escherichia 11 October 2010 12:34:04AM 6 points [-]

No, nobody would ever say that.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 11 October 2010 08:35:15AM 1 point [-]

Seems so, 79000 results for "is quite overpowering" compared to 1800 for "is quite overcoming".

Comment author: [deleted] 11 October 2010 02:50:03AM 1 point [-]

I realize. It was a joke to even see if it sounded like it fit.

Comment author: [deleted] 06 October 2010 10:53:08PM * 9 points [-]

Elphaba, where I'm from, we believe all sorts of things that aren't true. We call it - "history."

A man's called a traitor - or liberator.

A rich man's a thief - or philanthropist.

Is one a crusader - or ruthless invader?

It's all in which label is able to persist.

There are precious few at ease, with moral ambiguities. So we act as though they don't exist.

The Wizard of Oz, during the song Wonderful from Wicked

Comment author: Vladimir_M 06 October 2010 10:49:54PM * 13 points [-]

Prompted by the discussion of Sam Harris's idea that science should provide for a universal moral code, I thought of this suitable reply given long ago:

[The] doctrine of right and wrong is perpetually disputed, both by the pen and the sword: whereas the doctrine of lines and figures is not so, because men care not in that subject what be truth, as a thing that crosses no man's ambition, profit, or lust. For I doubt not, but if it had been a thing contrary to any man's right of dominion, or to the interest of men that have dominion, that the three angles of a triangle should be equal to two angles of a square, that doctrine [would] have been, if not disputed, yet by the burning of all books of geometry suppressed, as far as he whom it concerned was able.

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651)

(It also provides for some interesting perspective on the current epistemological state of various academic fields that are taken seriously as a source of guidance for government policy.)

Comment author: torekp 17 October 2010 01:15:22AM 1 point [-]

The continuing controversy over well-established facts of evolution, even though the threat they pose to religious leaders' dominion is very indirect, would seem to prove Hobbes right.

Comment author: cata 06 October 2010 07:25:11PM * 18 points [-]

One of my mentors once gave me a list of obvious things to check when stuff doesn't work. Funny, years later I still need this list:

It worked. No one touched it but you. It doesn't work. It's probably something you did.

It worked. You made one change. It doesn't work. It's probably the change you made.

It worked. You promoted it. It doesn't work. Your testing environment probably isn't the same as your production environment.

It worked for these 10 cases. It didn't work for the 11th case. It was probably never right in the first place.

It worked perfectly for 10 years. Today it didn't work. Something probably changed.

edw519, Hacker News, on debugging.

I always need that list, too.

Comment author: sketerpot 08 October 2010 02:31:13AM * 4 points [-]

It worked for these 10 cases. It didn't work for the 11th case. It was probably never right in the first place.

That one is counterintuitive, but true surprisingly often. Maybe not most of the time, but more often than you might think. And it picks the worst times to be right, let me tell you. Especially if it reveals a mistake in the math underlying everything you've been doing....

The solution, I suppose, is to learn to enjoy rewriting.

Comment author: Thomas 06 October 2010 06:51:49PM * 2 points [-]

The new man of science must not think that the "inquisition of nature is in any part interdicted or forbidden." Nature must be ... put "in constraint" and "moulded" by the mechanical arts. The "searchers and spies of nature" are to discover "her" plots and secrets.

Francis Bacon

Comment author: simplicio 06 October 2010 08:57:04PM 2 points [-]

Great quote, but what's with the quotation marks?

Comment author: Thomas 07 October 2010 05:14:23AM 0 points [-]

It is the very essence of the negation of the environmentalism. Too rational, too heartless quote for many readers of this page.

Comment author: simplicio 07 October 2010 02:20:40PM 3 points [-]

I interpreted it as a call for experiment, not industry. I could very well be wrong.

Comment author: arundelo 06 October 2010 09:28:59PM 5 points [-]

It looks like this is actually a quote from Carolyn Merchant's The Death of Nature; only the parts in quotation marks are Bacon's words, taken from "The Great Instauration", "The Masculine Birth of Time", and "De Dignitate".

Comment author: RobinZ 07 October 2010 12:20:10AM 2 points [-]

Confirmed from the linked Amazon.com page by searching the preview for "searchers and spies of nature" (no quotes).

Comment author: arundelo 07 October 2010 01:14:15AM 1 point [-]

That's exactly what I did! (And looked up the sources in the endnotes.)

Comment author: SilasBarta 06 October 2010 02:56:53PM * 7 points [-]

A real-world example of Parfit's Hitchhiker was prominently in the news recently, about firefighters that watched a guy's house burn down because didn't buy a subscription, even though he offered to pay when they arrived at the scene (which I assume means with all the penalties for serving a non-member, etc.). The parallel to PH became clear from this exchange with a writer on Salon:

Yes, he offered to pay, while his house burned. I can’t prove what would have happened, but the FD would probably have had to sue him to gain full reimbursement. ...

A man whose house is on fire will say anything to a guy with the means to put the fire out -- best not to trust him, unless you can get it in writing.

Obviously, this doesn't carry over the "perfect predictor" aspect, but I'm guessing the FD's decision maker could do much better than chance in guessing whether they'd be able to recover the money -- and the homeowner suffered as a result of not being able to credibly tell the FD (which, of course, has its own subjunctive decision-theoretic concerns about "if I put out the fires of non-payers when they ...") that he would pay later.

(Sorry if this has been posted already, and let me know if this belongs somewhere else like the new discussion forum.)

Update: Okay, it looks like details are in dispute -- by some accounts, he wasn't offering the penalty rate, and people dispute whether the nonpayment was deliberate or an oversight (and the evidence strongly favors the former). "You'll say anything", indeed.

Comment author: humpolec 09 October 2010 10:54:05PM 4 points [-]

I see here a Newcomb-like situation, but in the reverse direction - the fire department didn't help the guy out to counterfactually make him pay his $75.

Comment author: wedrifid 06 October 2010 03:16:30PM 6 points [-]

Wow. I just felt a surge of patriotism. I had no idea that sort of system was in place in any first world country. I'm sure it's all Right, True, and Capitalistic but I must say I prefer the system here.

In fact, in rural areas (where I grew up) most firefighters are actually volunteers. Those that I knew considered the drastic enhancement to sexual attractiveness to be more than enough payment. ;)

Comment author: komponisto 08 October 2010 01:33:11PM 3 points [-]

Wow. I just felt a surge of patriotism. I had no idea that sort of system was in place in any first world country. I'm sure it's all Right, True, and Capitalistic but I must say I prefer the system here.

It is very likely that this is an issue of a particular locality and that plenty of places in the U.S. are sane about matters like this. (You'll also note that it made the news, suggesting people may not have realized this kind of thing was possible.)

From what I know, it's utterly common for several different fire departments to respond to a single call that happens to be near, even if not in, their specific jurisdictions, and I was utterly shocked to read this story.

Comment author: James_K 07 October 2010 08:13:42AM 6 points [-]

It's a government-run fire station, so it's not all that capitalistic.

Comment author: wedrifid 07 October 2010 08:35:07AM 3 points [-]

Really? Going for a 'worst of both worlds' approach it would seem. ;)

If you are going to make fire fighting a pay for individual service system instead of a cooperation problem handled by central authority and taxation then you may as well at least get the efficiency benefits of competition in private industry. In fact a completely capitalistic organisation with no interest in public welfare would probably not have had a problem like we see in this instance. The organisation would have set up payment contingencies such that they can sell their services at a penalty rate to those who didn't buy according to the preferred subscription/insurance model.

Comment author: James_K 08 October 2010 04:20:14AM 6 points [-]

For some strange reason a lot of US policy in particular seems to fall into the "worst of both worlds" camp ( I would consider their health insurance system as an example). As I'm not an American I don't know why this is the case.

Comment author: Douglas_Knight 08 October 2010 06:23:32PM 3 points [-]

a lot of US policy in particular seems to fall into the "worst of both worlds" camp

Could you give other examples? I certainly accept health insurance and this particular fire department, but I don't think it is a representative fire department. Is the common theme the word "insurance"?

Comment author: orangecat 09 October 2010 04:19:56AM 5 points [-]

"Too big to fail" banks: they profit when their gambles pay off, we bail them out when they don't. Also arguably telecommunications carriers that have quasi-natural quasi-monopolies.

Comment author: James_K 09 October 2010 06:07:20AM 1 point [-]

I'd go along with both of those examples (though the US has a history of corporate bailouts that extends far beyond current events). Also rent control (it has significant perverse effects on rental markets and often hurts the poor).

That's not to say other countries don't have their problems, I don't think the US is a uniquely bad policy maker, but there is something about the way the US government makes policy that seems to want to have its cake and eat it too. When they try that it usually doesn't end well.

Comment author: wnoise 08 October 2010 05:47:13AM 6 points [-]

As I'm not an American I don't know why this is the case.

Neither do Americans.

Comment author: [deleted] 08 October 2010 02:51:27PM 9 points [-]

Neither do Americans.

Sure we do. It's all the other party's fault.

Comment author: CronoDAS 08 October 2010 03:23:46PM 0 points [-]

Sure we do. It's all the other party's fault.

I agree with this statement. Either extreme would probably be better than what we actually ended up with.

Comment author: wedrifid 08 October 2010 04:40:05AM 1 point [-]

I would consider their health insurance system as an example

What little I know of that system scares me.

Comment author: James_K 08 October 2010 10:52:31AM 6 points [-]

I'm an economist and it makes no sense to me at all. It seems almost like someone carefully identified the efforts insurance markets make to mitigate the failures in health markets and then crippled them. I actually have trouble convincing some of my colleagues that I'm serious when I describe the regulatory structure.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 08 October 2010 04:17:11PM 5 points [-]

Could you expand on the specific details of what went wrong?

Comment author: James_K 08 October 2010 07:24:58PM 11 points [-]

The essential problem is the way health insurance works in the US. The basic function of insurance is to protect people from strongly adverse events that would put them into financial distress. Insurance companies have to charge more than an actuarially fair rate for insurance in order to make a profit. This means that it is inefficient to run small or high probability expenses through an insurance scheme. The only reason this happens in the US is the tax deductibility of insurance and the mandates on coverage in some states. This turns health insurance into an inefficient health savings scheme.

Furthermore community rating produces very adverse outcomes. By preventing insurance companies from pricing insurance policies at a different rate for each customer (thus creating an expected profit from each customer), the insurance company has an incentive to refuse cover to high risk people (i.e. those that need insurance the most) or drive them away by making their life a misery every time they try to lodge a claim. To the extent they can't do this it drives low risk people out of the market, which leave them exposed if they suddenly need emergency health care (this is especially problematic since low risk people are generally young and therefore have little savings) and insurance companies have to raise premiums further to make up for the loss of the highly profitable young people.

My advice to the US government would be to end community rating, guaranteed issue and mandated coverage. I would suggest eliminating the tax deductibility of insurance (or failing that, make putting money into a Health Savings Account tax deductible). Medicare and Medicaid should be discontinued and replaced with a system of income support where poor or unusually sick people would receive extra money in a health savings account that could be spent on healthcare or health insurance. If you have to include old people in the scheme explicitly to make it politically possible, that would be OK as a second-best solution.

The basic principle in this is to let market mechanisms work in the absence of a clear market failure and then deal with people who can't afford vital services by helping them directly. To what extent you provide that help is a terminal values question so I won't venture an opinion here, but however much or little you want to help, this system should result in cheaper insurance for most people and essential coverage for the poor or those in need of extraordinary levels of health care. It should also arrest the escalating health costs of the US government.

Comment author: jimrandomh 08 October 2010 07:45:28PM 1 point [-]

This idea seems to involve people negotiating their health care expenses with providers directly, which doesn't work. Or rather, it only works for the routine expenses, and not the unexpected ones. Some fraction of health care decisions are made under conditions that are literally "buy this or die", and a large fraction of the remainder are made by people who are in no condition to negotiate, so either some form of collective bargaining, or else direct regulation of prices, is required.

continue this thread »

Comment author: Risto_Saarelma 06 October 2010 03:15:35PM 10 points [-]

I assumed that the firefighters didn't accept the offer to pay them on the spot because that would send the signal to all the other houseowners that they could skip the regular fire department fee and then make an emergency payment when their house catches fire.

Comment author: SilasBarta 06 October 2010 03:34:30PM * 5 points [-]

Okay, but that wouldn't be a free ride if the emergency payment were high enough -- the guy wasn't saying, "okay, fine, I'll pay this year's subscription fee -- now will you put out the fire?" He was offering the higher amount (which isn't credible, because the court wouldn't enforce it because if your house is burning, you'll lie, knowing you won't pay, because the court won't enforce ...).

(Long ago, I had this image in my mind of a rude, doesn't-get-it guy who didn't buy car insurance, didn't understand car insurance, and then when his car was wrecked, visits an insurance company, expecting a payout. When they don't pay out, he sighs and says, "Fine, how much is a month of coverage? There -- there you go. NOW will you pay for my car?"

That's not what's going on here.)

Comment author: wedrifid 06 October 2010 03:57:50PM 3 points [-]

Multiple paragraph parenthesising - nice!

An analogy that fits better is that of simple gym membership. "I haven't paid a gym membership for this year but I really want to go to the gym today. How much do you charge?" There is no particularly good reason why the fire putting out service must be a subscription service or insurance model.

The ambulance service, at least the one we have here, seems to be practical. You can get a membership. If you don't have one then when you wake up in hospital you'll have a bill to pay. If you needed a helicopter rescue it'll be a big bill.

Comment author: rastilin 10 October 2010 05:20:11AM 0 points [-]

I've been told that the cost of deploying the fire department runs into several thousand; this would be a pretty nasty invoice to get in addition to fire damage. The insurance model makes it easier to pay.

Also, in that specific incidence, it wasn't their fire-department. The township was getting fire services from the next station over; not their own. They had to pay monthly fees for this, so without a monthly payment, they wouldn't be convincing those guys to maintain service.

Comment author: [deleted] 06 October 2010 01:48:49PM * 22 points [-]

To sum up: it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

If a man, holding a belief which he was taught in childhood or persuaded of afterwards, keeps down and pushes away any doubts which arise about it in his mind, purposely avoids the reading of books and the company of men that call into question or discuss it, and regards as impious those questions which cannot easily be asked without disturbing it--the life of that man is one long sin against mankind.

... "But," says one, "I am a busy man; I have no time for the long course of study which would be necessary to make me in any degree a competent judge of certain questions, or even able to understand the nature of the arguments."

Then he should have no time to believe.

--W. K. Clifford, "The Ethics of Belief."

Comment author: RobinZ 06 October 2010 04:03:19PM 2 points [-]

The first line was previously posted in a Rationality Quotes without context or full citation - I consider the additional material sufficient value-added to justify the duplication.

Comment author: Apprentice 06 October 2010 10:47:42AM 13 points [-]

If I close my mind in fear, please pry it open.

-- Metallica

Comment author: Apprentice 06 October 2010 10:13:16AM 23 points [-]

We live in a world where it has become "politically correct" to avoid absolutes. Many want all religions to be given the same honor, and all gods regarded as equally true and equally fictitious. But take these same people, who want fuzzy, all-inclusive thinking in spiritual matters, and put them on an airplane. You will find they insist on a very dogmatic, intolerant pilot who will stay on the "straight and narrow" glidepath so their life will not come to a violent end short of the runway. They want no fuzzy thinking here!

-- Jack T. Chick

Comment author: N_MacDonald 12 October 2010 09:30:14AM 15 points [-]

No, they don't want a dogmatic and intolerant pilot. They want an empirical pilot who trusts his observations and instruments and uses them to make the best judgement regarding how to operate the plane.

On the other hand, a dogmatic, absolutist pilot who is absolutely sure as to the best way to land the airplane under all conditions, ignores his instruments, weather conditions and data from the control towers, and never listens to his flight crew... is a recipe for disaster.

Dogmatic absolutists mistake observation, skepticism, tolerance and empiricism for "fuzzy thinking". They don't realize that their own thinking is the very opposite of scientific thinking- which is based on observation, not fixed dogmas.

Comment author: Apprentice 12 October 2010 10:44:08AM 0 points [-]

I agree! And I think atheist writers, in their worst moments, fall into the same trap.

Comment author: Dragonlord comment score below threshold [+] (96 children)

Comment author: RobinZ 20 October 2010 04:17:30AM * 2 points [-]

Revisiting your comment after a productive back-and-forth with Perplexed:

I realize immediately that I never addressed the substance of your claim: that, so far as I can tell, being that it takes as much faith to believe that no gods exist as to believe that (at least?) one god does. Or, to avoid the possible misuse of the word "faith", to say that any standard by which "I believe in God" needs justification is a standard by which "I believe there is no God" needs justification.

Which is perfectly correct. But it misses a lot of what is being said, for two reasons.

First, as I alluded to previously, a large contingent of affirmative atheists these days lack belief in any general god rather than assert a blanket nonexistence. There are exceptions - Perplexed is one - but it is an oversimplification to say that "atheism" is a matter of positive belief. If you go on random.org and generate an integer from 1 to 100, I will not believe that it is 42 - but I will not believe that it is not 42. I have no reason to hold any positive belief in such a case.

Second, however, we do have evidence. If you generate a number from 1 to 100, I will believe that it isn't "blue". Again, exceptions like Perplexed [edit: if Perplexed is an exception] may appear, but many of the ostensible atheists you will meet will have reasons for thinking that many or most possible deities are not real - reasons like absence of evidence and lack of support for ontologically basic mental entities. In fact, many of the ostensible theists will have reasons for thinking that one or more deities in particular are real!

What I'm saying is: it is not "as much a matter of belief", it is a factual dispute. Either the god is real or the god is not, and we have different expectations each way. To compare the two positions is a first step, but it is a mistake to halt before comparing their respective support.

Comment author: Document 20 October 2010 02:30:47AM * 1 point [-]

I'd say it's because all current atheist writers are human, and therefore suffer from the same basic limitations of brain design as theists. A rational AI could, in principle, form and communicate beliefs without being as vulnerable to the trap.

But you probably meant that atheism and theism are both non-fact-based, which is a bigger inferential gap than I'm willing to try to cross right now. (Edit: And I don't get how it's implied by the existence of a middle ground at all.)

Comment author: Document 20 October 2010 03:11:12AM * 2 points [-]

Also, there are no particular requirements that force atheist writers to be smart or rational, especially if they come from an atheist community. To quote another post here, "the God-test no longer works".

Comment author: RobinZ 19 October 2010 12:59:48PM 3 points [-]

In the current freethinker discourse, agnosticism and atheism are considered to be independent properties - "gnostic" meaning "believing knowledge is possible" and "agnostic" meaning "believing knowledge is impossible". There was a very active agnostic theist poster on the forum then known as the Internet Infidels Discussion Board when I was a regular, for example.

Even if this were not true, changing the definition of the word "atheism" merely means that the word no longer describes the people you are disagreeing with - not that their opinions must correspond to the new word.

(If you are a YouTube fan, QualiaSoup's "Lack of belief in gods" is a pretty good overview.)

Comment author: wnoise 15 October 2010 05:58:53PM 1 point [-]

And bald is a hair color.

Comment author: [deleted] 19 October 2010 05:59:53AM 0 points [-]

Let's not respond to bad comments with cached slogans.

Actually, let's not respond to bad comments at all.

Comment author: Risto_Saarelma 20 October 2010 09:10:05AM * 2 points [-]

Actually, let's not respond to bad comments at all.

Might be a good idea. The huge thread that swelled up below shows that drive-by trolling (regardless of whether the original commenter was one) can give big rewards here.

In general, long threads sparked by a disagreeable single comment of someone who doesn't participate in the further discussion have started to look like a forum behavior anti-pattern to me.

Comment author: wedrifid 19 October 2010 02:08:31PM 1 point [-]

Let's not respond to bad comments with cached slogans.

Not cached by me. Never heard it before.

Comment author: [deleted] 19 October 2010 05:39:25PM * 3 points [-]

It's a rather widespread phrase.

Comment author: RobinZ 19 October 2010 01:01:38PM 4 points [-]

This is Dragonlord's first comment - I think a bit of Atheism-101 is appropriate. If DL proves to be a troll, then we may perfectly well annihilate his future contributions without discussion, but that's far from established.

Comment author: Perplexed 19 October 2010 02:41:07PM * 1 point [-]

That is "True Atheism 101". A bit like "True Scotsman".

Your true atheist is characterised by epistemic purity. Any opinions regarding deities or the supernatural are formed by rational consideration of evidence.

Of course, regarding persons who claim to be atheists and who apparently generate their opinions on the matter by a kind of actively choosing to believe that evidence for the supernatural is impossible - well true atheists simply ignore folks like that. They are not true atheists and hence true atheists are under no obligation to create a label for them.

Edit: spelling "belief" vs "believe".

Comment author: wnoise 19 October 2010 06:29:00PM * 3 points [-]

Your true atheist is characterised by epistemic purity. Any opinions regarding deities or the supernatural are formed by rational consideration of evidence.

That's not what the word means, neither definitionally nor extensionally. An atheist is merely someone who lacks a belief in deities. Their history as to not acquiring that belief is irrelevant to whether they are an atheist or not.

Someone who rationally considers the evidence (whether or not on the subject of deities) is a rationalist.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 19 October 2010 06:33:43PM * 1 point [-]

Someone who rationally considers the evidence (whether or not on the subject of deities) is a rationalist.

But rationality is not just about evidence. One needs to be reasonable about a priori beliefs as well, or more pragmatically/generally, possess effective reasoning skills.

continue this thread »

Comment author: RobinZ 19 October 2010 03:44:52PM 1 point [-]

...what? I read Dragonlord as talking about prominent atheist writers like Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett, Harris, or even P. Z. Myers - who are all epistemically careful. And the terms are used the way I described among the active atheist communities I am familiar with - and not just the online communities: I've seen Matt Dillahunty give this definition of "agnostic" on The Atheist Experience.

The people Dragonlord were talking about are not fideist atheists, whether or not atheists who believe without good reason are around.

Comment author: Perplexed 19 October 2010 04:42:40PM 4 points [-]

...what? I read Dragonlord as talking about prominent atheist writers like Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett, Harris, or even P. Z. Myers - who are all epistemically careful.

... what? How did you arrive at that belief? Dragonlord, as you point out yourself, just made his first posting here. He may well have formed his impression of "athists" in the local coffee shop, or at talk.origins, or by reading the comments at Pharyngula.

But let me come right out with the real question. What is the proper label for someone like myself who knows of no evidence for or against the existence of a deity, but chooses to believe that there is no God?

And, btw, calling PZ and Sam Harris "epistemically careful" is not what I would call evidence-based analysis. PZ doesn't do even the most rudimentary fact checking before passing along anti-religion horror stories on his blog - he has fallen for hoax stories about atrocities by Muslims several times in recent months. And PZ is currently in a debate with Jerry Coyne about whether it is even possible for evidence of a deity to exist. PZ says he would remain an atheist in spite of any evidence.

As for Harris, he seems to be currently peddling some kind of scientifically-based approach to ethics.

continue this thread »

Comment author: ciphergoth 12 October 2010 11:41:03AM 2 points [-]

Could you give an example?

Comment author: Apprentice 13 October 2010 12:01:00AM * 1 point [-]

Well, the obvious one is the Dawkins quote on the airplane, already treated in ways I agree with by SilasBarta. More generally, I am troubled by atheist attacks on the idea of religious tolerance - Sam Harris says it's "driving us toward the abyss". I mean, really, if you find yourself nodding along to a pro-intolerance rant from Jack Chick then maybe you want to ask yourself some questions.

Even so, I, like Sam Harris and Jack Chick, think that Islam is awful and needs to be resisted.

Edit: Bleh, this comment came out wrong - it's more condescending than helpful. The subject is probably too complicated to deal with here. Basically I think religious tolerance has a fairly good track record and I'd want to be very careful in tinkering with it.

Comment author: ciphergoth 13 October 2010 07:23:18AM 2 points [-]

I agree with your last sentence. But I don't think you've provided an example of any of these writers doing any of the things attributed to "dogmatic absolutists" in N_MacDonald's last paragraph.

Comment author: simplicio 06 October 2010 06:57:11PM 19 points [-]

I'm continually amused by the abundance of quotes here on LW from sundry wingnuts and theists, some of which are quite good. We've had Jack Chick, Ted Kaczynski, CS Lewis (howdya like that reference class, Lewis), GK Chesterton, and that crazy "Einstein was wrong!" guy.

Maybe being a contrarian in anything whatsoever helps one to break through the platitudes and cached thoughts that ordinary folks seem to bog down in whenever they try to think.

Comment author: NihilCredo 07 October 2010 02:50:43AM * 23 points [-]

There's also a certain fun challenge in looking for jewels among the fecal matter. Rationalist aphorisms by Voltaire or Russell are a regular feature of their writing, and have been quoted in books and articles for decades or centuries, but a pearl of wisdom by a fideist is a tough find and most likely unknown to other LW readers.

Heh. Of all goddamn things to be a hipster about, "rationality quotes" has got to be one hell of a weird choice.

Comment author: Risto_Saarelma 07 October 2010 06:50:36AM 12 points [-]

There's also a certain fun challenge in looking for jewels among the fecal matter.

Do that with the writings of Space Tetrahedron Guy, and then all further Ultimate Space Tetrahedron Documents will have a header text SPACE TETRAHEDRON THEORY IS ENDORSED BY NIHILCREDO.

Comment author: CronoDAS 09 October 2010 06:46:27AM 8 points [-]

In the game "Alpha Protocol", one of the characters is a conspiracy theorist. When he sends you an email about the Federal Reserve (which, according to him, is deliberately engineering a financial crisis so the banks can foreclose on all the houses and get everyone's property), you can respond by quoting Time Cube at him. Which makes him like you more.

Comment author: komponisto 06 October 2010 05:14:58PM 12 points [-]

Compare:

Show me a cultural relativist at thirty thousand feet and I'll show you a hypocrite.

-- Richard Dawkins

Comment author: SilasBarta 06 October 2010 06:36:46PM 1 point [-]

I was about to stand and applause, until I realized...

Let's say I like flying, I like the earth's ecology, I think large-scale flying is killing the earth's ecology, I think my individual flying is not capable of making a difference to the planet's ecology, and I think technologically advanced cultures capable of sustaining commercial human flight only appear superior because they're able to offload the costs of their advancement to the rest of the earth's population [1].

And I'm at 30,000 feet. Am I a hypocrite?

Worse, am I Richard Dawkins, once you clip of the last item on the first paragraph?

[1] Not my actual beliefs. Except one.

Comment author: gjm 07 October 2010 01:46:49AM 18 points [-]

I think you may have misunderstood the point Dawkins was making. It wasn't "if you're in an aeroplane, you aren't entitled to denigrate the society whose achievements made that possible". It was "If you're in an aeroplane, you aren't entitled to claim that all truth is relative, because the fact that the aeroplane stays in the air is dependent on a very particular set of notions about truth, which demonstrably work better than their rivals -- as demonstrated by the fact that our aeroplanes actually fly."

Some context that may be helpful.

Comment author: SilasBarta 07 October 2010 10:21:06PM 7 points [-]

Okay, point taken. But to nitpick, that sounds more like epistemological relativism than cultural -- though he can be forgiven for not expecting his audience to be sensitive to the difference. And the context makes it clear too.

Comment author: Tenek 06 October 2010 04:05:10PM 2 points [-]

Well, Jack doesn't want any thinking at all, so I'm not sure if that's better or worse than fuzziness.

Comment author: wedrifid 06 October 2010 10:27:10AM 1 point [-]

Jack T. Chick

That guy would've gone through hell in high school unless he was really good at sport. :P

Comment author: billswift 07 October 2010 04:59:25AM 2 points [-]

Or really funny. When I was in school I know I thought those little booklets were hilarious.

Comment author: wedrifid 07 October 2010 05:15:46AM * 1 point [-]

Err... booklets? Am I missing something here? Oh, are you talking about airplane flights?

Comment author: AngryParsley 07 October 2010 06:44:04AM * 1 point [-]

Jack T. Chick draws religious comics called Chick tracts.

Comment author: arundelo 07 October 2010 05:56:08AM 4 points [-]

"Chick tracts are short evangelical-themed tracts created by American publisher Jack Chick."

Comment author: wedrifid 07 October 2010 06:03:18AM 1 point [-]

Ahh, thanks. I don't think we ever got those here.

Comment author: arundelo 07 October 2010 06:13:26AM * 7 points [-]

Ooh, they are insane. You can read many or all of them online. This one ("Dark Dungeons") is a favorite of mine.

Edit: As mentioned in the Wikipedia article, an earlier version of "Dark Dungeons" (the one that was my introduction to Chick tracts a couple decades ago) listed C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien as occult authors whose books should be burned.

Comment author: sketerpot 08 October 2010 02:39:13AM 4 points [-]

No link to chick.com is complete without mentioning these two things:

Dark Dungeons with MST3K-style snarking. This really improves it.

Lisa, which is no longer published or archived on the Chick Publications web site. It has some... interesting ideas about how one should deal with people who rape children. (Everything is okay after five minutes of prayer! No need to report it to the police! Lalala!)

There are some other great Chick tracts, but those are the cream of the crop.

Comment author: gjm 09 October 2010 03:13:20PM 3 points [-]

And also the famous Who will be eaten first? which, for the avoidance of doubt, is not really by Jack Chick.

Comment author: wedrifid 07 October 2010 06:20:11AM 2 points [-]

listed C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien as occult authors whose books should be burned.

That's brilliant. :P

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 07 October 2010 03:12:29PM 6 points [-]

I have a notion that the Chick flavor of Christianity is trying to set itself up as the monopoly supplier of fantasy.

Comment author: NihilCredo 07 October 2010 02:52:19AM 1 point [-]

Wouldn't surprise me if he'd been home-schooled.

Comment author: DilGreen 09 October 2010 10:14:44PM 4 points [-]

from a European perspective, and simultaneously from the perspective of one who sees most state-sanctioned educational approaches as almost comically counter-productive, the idea that appears common in the US, that home schooled = fundamentalist christian parents is confusing. Many home educators in europe are specifically atheist.

Comment author: NihilCredo 10 October 2010 12:02:31PM * 0 points [-]

Depends on which parts of Europe, I guess. I am told that homeschooling is relatively common in the British Isles, but in the countries I am familiar with (Italy, Sweden, to a lesser degree Germany and Belgium) it ranges from unheard-of to extremely unusual.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 09 October 2010 10:53:03PM 3 points [-]

As far as I can tell, "home schooled = fundamentalist" is American left-wing nonsense.

In fact, while many home-schoolers are fundamentalist, there are a slew of motivations. Some home schoolers think that conventional schooling is a bad environment for learning. Some have children with special needs. Some live in isolated areas. Some are religious, but not pathologically so.

Comment author: tim 06 October 2010 04:57:36AM * 10 points [-]

The famous pipe. How people reproached me for it! And yet, could you stuff my pipe? No, it's just a representation, is it not? So if I had written on my picture "This is a pipe," I'd have been lying!

-- René Magritte, on his painting The Treachery of Images depicting a pipe with "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" ("This is not a pipe") written under it

Comment author: gwern 06 October 2010 12:23:32AM * 24 points [-]

'One day, Korzybski was giving a lecture to a group of students, and he interrupted the lesson suddenly in order to retrieve a packet of biscuits, wrapped in white paper, from his briefcase. He muttered that he just had to eat something, and he asked the students on the seats in the front row, if they would also like a biscuit. A few students took a biscuit.
"Nice biscuit, don't you think," said Korzybski, while he took a second one. The students were chewing vigorously. Then he tore the white paper from the biscuits, in order to reveal the original packaging. On it was a big picture of a dog's head and the words "Dog Cookies."
The students looked at the package, and were shocked. Two of them wanted to vomit, put their hands in front of their mouths, and ran out of the lecture hall to the toilet.
"You see," Korzybski remarked, "I have just demonstrated that people don't just eat food, but also words, and that the taste of the former is often outdone by the taste of the latter."'

(R. Diekstra, Haarlemmer Dagblad, 1993, cited by L. Derks & J. Hollander, Essenties van NLP (Utrecht: Servire, 1996), p. 58)

I think of this as a rationalist parable and not so much a quote. It has a lot of personal resonance since I often had dog biscuits with my tea when I was younger.

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Rationality quotes: October 2010

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