MichaelGR comments on Rationality Quotes: December 2010 - Less Wrong

6 Post author: Tiiba 03 December 2010 03:23AM

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Comment author: MichaelGR 03 December 2010 05:40:15PM *  25 points [-]

A man who has committed a mistake and doesn't correct it, is committing another mistake.

-Confucius

Comment author: Tesseract 13 December 2010 08:39:25AM 4 points [-]

A concurring opinion:

All men can make mistakes; but, once mistaken, a man is no longer stupid or accursed who, having fallen on ill, tries to cure that ill, not taking a fine undeviating stand. It is obstinacy that convicts of folly.

Sophocles, Antigone

Comment author: David_Gerard 13 December 2010 12:59:30PM *  0 points [-]

This is why sincere stupidity is actually worse than insincere stupidity: the sincere tend to insist on their folly.

e.g. in this dialogue form (which I see way too much of on LessWrong):

A: X's action Y was stupid, and X should have known this because of Z.

B: But X's action was entirely justifiable according to V and W!

B's statement is in the place in a discussion where a refutation would go, but doesn't actually address the folly; and seems to claim that sincerity makes stupidity less bad. Whereas in practice, sincere stupidity promises more stupidity in the future.

(A's statement is an assertion about the processes leading X to commit Y, rather than merely the folly of Y; however, A is asserting that bad results that could have been reasonably predicted should have been. The discussion can then go into a long thread about the meaning of "reasonable", possibly with one of A or B subtly dissing the other's Bayesian-fu.)

Comment author: apophenia 03 December 2010 10:32:47PM *  1 point [-]

I think this is a useful way to think of things, so you don't worry about changing and committing another mistake--it's a good way to make yourself cost-sensitive to mistake duration.

Comment author: gwern 12 December 2010 03:33:38AM 0 points [-]

From the Analects, although I can't seem to narrow it down any further. (There are a lot of ways to translate things.)

Comment author: topynate 12 December 2010 03:50:58AM 0 points [-]

Chapter 15, verse 30.

Comment author: gwern 12 December 2010 04:20:10AM *  0 points [-]

I think you may need to specify translation or edition; eg. I don't see anything similar in http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Analects/Section_3#Part_15

Comment author: topynate 12 December 2010 04:30:19AM 1 point [-]

That would be:

The Master said, "To have faults and not to reform them,-this, indeed, should be pronounced having faults."

The verse number may differ slightly between versions: on this site it's verse 29.

Comment author: FAWS 12 December 2010 04:38:32AM 0 points [-]

It's translated as

The Master said, "To have faults and not to reform them,-this, indeed, should be pronounced having faults."

there. The wikisource/Legge translation is more literal, but I'm not sure it's better.