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Thomas comments on Rationality Quotes: February 2011 - Less Wrong
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Give a man a fish, feed him for a day
Teach a man to fish, feed him for around 15 years until his major fishery collapses into unprofitability.
That looks like a description of one problem with support of developing countries.
(Terry Pratchett, I think.)
I saw a creepy hospice volunteer search ad on the street a few days ago. It said something along the lines of "They will be grateful to you for the rest of their lives." Like an inappropriate joke.
That's... disturbing, but also weirdly compelling.
I think it's more elegant to say it like this: "Light a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man afire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
In text, yes. I said it aloud a few times and I couldn't tell the two apart easily. Maybe "light a man A fire / light a man ON fire"
I've successfully delivered "a fire"/"afire" aloud, but it's a little tricky to time right.
A little gesturing will likely help a lot.
I find my formulation slightly quicker to parse, but otherwise you're right.
From Jingo, IIRC. Also I think the second line began "But set fire to him..."
IIRC, he uses this joke several times.
Ah, nevermind then.
Unknown source.
But I'm not sure what any of the variants of this have to do with rationality.
Well, a lot of instrumental-rationality posts around here are basically about the benefits of devoting effort in the short term to developing techniques for making a class of task easier, rather than devoting effort in the short term to implementing an instance of that class with more difficulty. Also, efficient charity is a recurring theme. Whether either of those things have much to do with rationality is a broader question, but they certainly seem relevant to the quote.