RichardKennaway comments on Rationality Quotes: March 2011 - Less Wrong

6 Post author: Alexandros 02 March 2011 11:14AM

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Comment author: RichardKennaway 02 March 2011 11:56:02AM 6 points [-]

Man's spontaneous tendency is to give credence to assertions and reproduce them, without even distinguishing them clearly from his own observations. In everyday life, do we not accept indiscriminately, without any sort of verification, rumors, anonymous and unverified reports, all sorts of "documents" of little or no worth? We need a special reason to take the trouble to examine the provenance and value of a document about what happened yesterday; otherwise, if it is not unlikely to the point of scandal, and as long as no one contradicts it, we take it in and hold on to it, we peddle it ourselves, embellishing it if need be. Every honest man will admit that a violent effort is necessary to shake off ignavia critica [critical laziness], that so widespread form of intellectual cowardice; that this effort must be constantly repeated, and that it is often accompanied by real suffering.

Charles-Victor Langlois and Charles Seignobos, "Introduction aux études historiques" (1898), via LanguageHat (http://www.languagehat.com/archives/001685.php).

Comment author: gwern 02 March 2011 07:40:58PM 32 points [-]

And is that laziness so bad? If extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, presumably ordinary claims require merely ordinary evidence...

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 02 March 2011 08:58:24PM 27 points [-]

"Ordinary claims require merely ordinary evidence" is an overlooked and tremendously important corollary.

Comment author: gwern 02 March 2011 09:17:22PM 7 points [-]

I have you to thank for that insight, actually.

If I hadn't read "Conservation of Expected Evidence" , it would never have occurred to me to think of truth-seeking as a zero-sum game and ask, if we have something extraordinary over here, then what is forced to be ordinary to compensate?

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 14 March 2011 08:21:53PM 3 points [-]

I'm going to quote you on this in the rationality book. Email me with who you want credited if it's not "gwern on LessWrong.com".

Comment author: gwern 15 March 2011 05:19:29PM 1 point [-]

Email sent. (Gosh, I think this will be the second book I'll be mentioned in. How thrilling.)