You all know the rules:
When confronting something which may be either a windmill or an evil giant, what question should you be asking?
There are some who ask, "If we do nothing, and that is an evil giant, can we afford to be wrong?" These people consider themselves to be brave and vigilant.
Some ask "If we attack it wrongly, can we afford to pay to replace a windmill?" These people consider themselves cautious and pragmatic.
Still others ask, "With the cost of being wrong so high in either case, shouldn't we always definitively answer the 'windmill vs. giant' question before we act?" And those people consider themselves objective and wise.
But only a tiny few will ask, "Isn't the fact that we're giving equal consideration to the existence of evil giants and windmills a warning sign of insanity in ourselves?"
It's hard to find out what these people consider themselves, because they never get invited to parties.
-- PartiallyClips, "Windmill"
But only a tiny few will ask, "Isn't the fact that we're giving equal consideration to the existence of evil giants and windmills a warning sign of insanity in ourselves?"
And then there's the fact that we are giving much more consideration to the existence of evil giants than to the existence of good giants.
A missile silo disguised as a windmill? A helicopter in an unfortunate position? An odd and inefficient form of rotating radar antenna? A shuttle in launch position? (if one squints, they might think it's a broken windmill with the vanes having fallen off or something)
These are all just off the top of my head. Remember, if we're talking about someone who tends to, when they see a windmill, be unsure whether it's a windmill or an evil giant, there's probably a reasonable chance that they tend to get confused by other objects too, right? :)
Sure, but I wouldn't give a "good giant" really any more probability than an "evil giant". Both fall into the "completely negligible" hole. :)
Though, as we all know, if we do find one, the correct action to take is to climb up so that one can stand on its shoulders. :)
Given complexity of value, 'evil giant' and 'good giant' should not be weighted equally; if we have no specific information about the morality distribution of giants, then as with any optimization process, 'good' is a much, much smaller target than 'evil' (if we're including apparently-human-hostile indifference).
Unless we believe them to be evolutionarily close to humans, or to have evolved under some selection pressures similar to those that produced morality, etc., in which we can do a bit better than a complexity prior for moral motivations.
(For more on this, check out my new blog, Overcoming Giants.)
It is not really a quote, but a good quip from an otherwise lame recent internet discussion:
Matt: Ok, for all of the people responding above who admit to not having a soul, I think this means that it is morally ok for me to do anything I want to you, just as it is morally ok for me to turn off my computer at the end of the day. Some of us do have souls, though.
Igor: Matt - I agree that people who need a belief in souls to understand the difference between killing a person and turning off a computer should just continue to believe in souls.
This is, of course, pretty much the right answer to anyone who asserts that without God, they could just kill anyone they wanted.
Hah! Just found in today's NewsThump: We’d be total shits if it wasn’t for Jesus, admit Christians
On the plus side, bad things happening to you does not mean you are a bad person. On the minus side, bad things will happen to you even if you are a good person. In the end you are just another victim of the motivationless malice of directed acyclic causal graphs.
-Nobilis RPG 3rd edition
...that was written by a Less Wrong reader. Or if not, someone who independently reinvented things to well past the point where I want to talk to them. Do you know the author?
The author of most of the Nobilis work is Jenna K. Moran. I'm unsure if this remark is independent of LW or not. The Third Edition (where that quote is from) was published this year, so it is possible that LW influenced it.
Until this moment, I had always assumed that Eliezer had read 100% of all fiction.
Hi, you might want to consider this paper:
http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/soc/class/soc952/Wright/Wright_The%20Method%20of%20Path%20Coefficients.pdf
This paper is remarkable not only because it correctly formalizes causation in linear models using DAGs, but also that it gives a method for connecting causal and observational quantities in a way that's still in use today. (The method itself was proposed in 1923, I believe). Edit: apparently in 1920-21, with earliest known reference apparently dating back to 1918.
Using DAGs for causality certainly predates Pearl. Identifying "randomization on X" with "dividing by P(x | pa(x))" might be implicit in fairly old papers also. Again, this idea predates Pearl.
There's always more to the story than one insightful book.
No, hopefully they were re-discovered. We can improve our publicity skills, but we can't make ideas easier to independantly re-invent.
But, there's another problem, and that is the fact that statistical and probabilistic thinking is a real damper on "intellectual" conversation. By this, I mean that there are many individuals who wish to make inferences about the world based on data which they observe, or offer up general typologies to frame a subsequent analysis. These individuals tend to be intelligent and have college degrees. Their discussion ranges over topics such as politics, culture and philosophy. But, introduction of questions about the moments about the distribution, or skepticism as to the representativeness of their sample, and so on, tends to have a chilling affect on the regular flow of discussion. While the average human being engages mostly in gossip and interpersonal conversation of some sort, the self-consciously intellectual interject a bit of data and abstraction (usually in the form of jargon or pithy quotations) into the mix. But the raison d'etre of the intellectual discussion is basically signaling and cuing; in other words, social display. No one really cares about the details and attempting to generate a rigorous model is really beside the point. Trying to push the N much beyond 2 or 3 (what you would see in a college essay format) will only elicit eye-rolling and irritation.
-- Razib Khan
I think Donald Robert Perry said it more succinctly:
“If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think they'll hate you.”
Whoever corrects a mocker invites insult;
whoever rebukes a wicked man incurs abuse.
Do not rebuke a mocker or he will hate you;
rebuke a wise man and he will love you.
Instruct a wise man and he will be wiser still;
teach a righteous man and he will add to his learning.
Proverbs 9:7-9
From a forum signature:
The fool says in his heart, "There is no God." --Psalm 14:1
It is a fool's prerogative to utter truths that no one else will speak. --Neil Gaiman, Sandman 3:3:6
People commonly use the word "procrastination" to describe what they do on the Internet. It seems to me too mild to describe what's happening as merely not-doing-work. We don't call it procrastination when someone gets drunk instead of working.
-- Paul Graham
People commonly use the word "procrastination" to describe what they do on the Internet. It seems to me too mild to describe what's happening as merely not-doing-work. We don't call it procrastination when someone gets drunk instead of working.
What exactly would Paul Graham call reading Paul Graham essays online when I should be working?
Perhaps the answer to that question lies in one or more of the following Paul Graham essays:
P.S.: Bwahahahaha!
MBlume may be referring to the "noprocrast" feature:
the latest version of Hacker News has a feature to let you limit your use of the site. There are three new fields in your profile, noprocrast, maxvisit, and minaway. (You can edit your profile by clicking on your username.) Noprocrast is turned off by default. If you turn it on by setting it to "yes," you'll only be allowed to visit the site for maxvisit minutes at a time, with gaps of minaway minutes in between. The defaults are 20 and 180, which would let you view the site for 20 minutes at a time, and then not allow you back in for 3 hours. You can override noprocrast if you want, in which case your visit clock starts over at zero.
Best wishes, the Less Wrong Reference Desk.
Should we then call the original replicator molecules 'living'? Who cares? I might say to you 'Darwin was the greatest man who has ever lived', and you might say 'No, Newton was', but I hope we would not prolong the argument. The point is that no conclusion of substance would be affected whichever way our argument was resolved. The facts of the lives and achievements of Newton and Darwin remain totally unchanged whether we label them 'great' or not. Similarly, the story of the replicator molecules probably happened something like the way I am telling it, regardless of whether we choose to call them 'living'. Human suffering has been caused because too many of us cannot grasp that words are only tools for our use, and that the mere presence in the dictionary of a word like 'living' does not mean it necessarily has to refer to something definite in the real world. Whether we call the early replicators living or not, they were the ancestors of life; they were our founding fathers.
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene.
(cf. Disguised Queries.)
My friend, Tony, does prop work in Hollywood. Before he was big and famous, he would sell jewelry and such at Ren Faires and the like. One day I'm there, shooting the shit with him, when a guy comes up and looks at some of the crystals that Tony is selling. he finally zeroes in on one and gets all gaga over the bit of quartz. He informs Tony that he's never seen such a strong power crystal. Tony tells him it a piece of quartz. The buyer maintains it is an amazing power crystal and demands to know the price. Tony looks him over for a second, then says "If it's just a piece of quartz, it's $15. If it's a power crystal, it's $150. Which is is?" The buyer actually looked a bit sheepish as he said quietly "quartz", gave Tony his money and wandered off. I wonder if he thought he got the better of Tony.
-- genesplicer on Something Awful Forums, via
Story kind of bothers me. Yeah, you can get someone to pretend not to believe something by offering a fiscal reward, but that doesn't prove anything.
If I were a geologist and correctly identified the crystal as the rare and valuable mineral unobtainite which I had been desperately seeking samples of, but Tony stubbornly insisted it was quartz - and if Tony then told me it was $150 if it was unobtainite but $15 if it was quartz - I'd call it quartz too if it meant I could get my sample for cheaper. So what?
I think the interesting part of the story is that it caused the power crystal dude to shut up about power crystals when he'd previously evinced interest in telling everyone about them. I don't think you could get the same effect for $135 from a lot of, say, missionaries.
Part of me wants to say that it was foolish of Tony to take so much less money than he could have gotten simply for getting the guy to profess that it was a piece of quartz rather than a power crystal, but I'm not sure I would feel comfortable exploiting a guy's delusions to that degree either.
I thank Tony for not taking the immediately self-benefiting path of profit and instead doing his small part to raise the sanity waterline.
Was the buyer sane enough to realise that it probably wasn't a power crystal, or just sane enough to realise that if he pretended it wasn't a power crystal he'd save $135?
Is that amount of raising-the-sanity waterline worth $135 to Tony?
I would guess it's guilt-avoidance at work here.
(EDIT: your thanks to Tony are still valid though!)
"But these two snakes can't talk because this one speaks in parseltongue and that one speaks in Python"
Damn, why didn't I discover those before ...
I recently posted these in another thread, but I think they're worth putting here to stand on their own:
"Magic is just a way of saying 'I don't know.'"
Terry Pratchett, "Nation"
The essence of magic is to do away with underlying mechanisms. ... What makes the elephant disappear is the movement of the wand and the intent of the magician, directly. If there were any intervening processes, it would not be magic but just engineering. As soon as you know how the magician made the elephant disappear, the magic disappears and -- if you started by believing in magic -- the disappointment sets in.
William T. Powers (CSGNET mailing list, April 2005)
Does that mean one can answer "Do you believe in magic?" with "No, but I believe in the existence of opaque proprietary APIs"?
True heroism is minutes, hours, weeks, year upon year of the quiet, precise, judicious exercise of probity and care—with no one there to see or cheer.
— David Foster Wallace, The Pale King
A fable:
...In Persia many centuries ago, the Sufi mullah or holy man Nasruddin was arrested after preaching in the great square in front of the Shah's palace. The local clerics had objected to Mullah Nasruddin's unorthodox teachings, and had demanded his arrest and execution as a heretic. Dragged by palace guards to the Shah's throne room, he was sentenced immediately to death.
As he was being taken away, however, Nasruddin cried out to the Shah: "O great Shah, if you spare me, I promise that within a year I will teach your favourite horse to sing!"
The Shah knew that Sufis often told the most outrageous fables, which sounded blasphemous to many Muslims but which were nevertheless intended as lessons to those who would learn. Thus he had been tempted to be merciful, anyway, despite the demands of his own religious advisors. Now, admiring the audacity of the old man, and being a gambler at heart, he accepted his proposal.
The next morning, Nasruddin was in the royal stable, singing hymns to the Shah's horse, a magnificent white stallion. The animal, however, was more interested in his oats and hay, and ignored him. The grooms and stablehands all shook their heads and laughe
using the word “science” in the same way you’d use the word “alakazam” doesn’t count as being smarter
-Kris Straub, Chainsawsuit artist commentary
Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.
– Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account the limit of infinite applications of Hofstadter's Law.
Even further:
Hofstadter's Law+: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account the limit of infinite applications of Hofstadter's Law+.
For all ordinal numbers n, define Hodstadter's n-law as "It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's m-law for all m < n."
For all natural numbers n, define L_n as the nth variation of Hofstadter's Law that has been or will be posted in this thread. Theorem: As n approaches infinity, L_n converges to "Everything ever takes an infinite amount of time."
The correct question to ask about functions is not „What is a rule?” or „What is an association?” but „What does one have to know about a function in order to know all about it?” The answer to the last question is easy – for each number x one needs to know the number f(x) (…)
– M. Spivak: Calculus
There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?"
~ Story, used most famously in David Foster Wallace's Commencement Address at Kenyon College
Fluff Principle: on a user-voted news site, the links that are easiest to judge will take over unless you take specific measures to prevent it.
Paul Graham "What I've learned from Hacker News"
Our imagination is stretched to the utmost, not, as in fiction, to imagine things which are not really there, but just to comprehend those things which are there.
-- Richard Feynman
(I don't think he originally meant this in the context of overcoming cognitive bias, but it seems to apply well to that too.)
On perseverance:
It's a little like wrestling a gorilla. You don't quit when you're tired, you quit when the gorilla is tired.
-- Robert Strauss
(Although the reference I found doesn't say which Robert Strauss it was)
I think it goes well with the article Make an Extraordinary Effort.
I kind of feel like a scenario is not a great starting point for talking about perseverance when it's likely to result in your immediately getting your arms ripped off.
There are times when it's important to persevere, and times when it's important to know what not to try in the first place.
Virtually everything in science is ultimately circular, so the main thing is just to make the circles as big as possible.
Richard D. Janda and Brian D. Joseph, 2003, The Handbook of Historical Linguistics, p. 111.
“In life as in poker, the occasional coup does not necessarily demonstrate skill and superlative performance is not the ability to eliminate chance, but the capacity to deliver good outcomes over and over again. That is how we know Warren Buffett is a skilled investor and Johnny Chan a skilled poker player.” — John Kay, Financial Times
To arrive at the simplest truth, as Newton knew and practiced, requires years of contemplation. Not activity. Not reasoning. Not calculating. Not busy behaviour of any kind. Not reading. Not talking. Not making an effort. Not thinking. Simply bearing in mind what it is one needs to know. And yet those with the courage to tread this path to real discovery are not only offered practically no guidance on how to do so, they are actively discouraged and have to set abut it in secret, pretending meanwhile to be diligently engaged in the frantic diversions and to conform with the deadening personal opinions which are continually being thrust upon them.
--George Spencer Brown in The Laws of Form, 1969.
The north went on forever. Tyrion Lannister knew the maps as well as anyone, but a fortnight on the wild track that passed for the kingsroad up here had brought home the lesson that the map was one thing and the land quite another.
--George R. R. Martin A Game of Thrones
Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.
– Mencken, quoted in Pinker: How the Mind Works
Bertrand Russell, in his Autobiography records that his rather fearsome Puritan grandmother:
gave me a Bible with her favorite texts written on the fly-leaf. Among these was "Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil." Her emphasis upon this text led me in later life to be not afraid of belonging to small minorities.
It's rather affecting to find the future hammer of the Christians being "confirmed" in this way. It also proves that sound maxims can appear in the least probable places.
-- Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"
Douglas Adams
This quote defines my approach to science and philosophy; a phenomenon can be wondrous on its own merit, it need not be magical or extraordinary to have value.
Zaphod thinks they're on a mythic quest to find the lost planet Magrathea. They've found a lost planet alright, orbiting twin stars, but Ford still doesn't believe.
As Ford gazed at the spectacle of light before them excitement burnt inside him, but only the excitement of seeing a strange new planet; it was enough for him to see it as it was. It faintly irritated him that Zaphod had to impose some ludicrous fantasy onto the scene to make it work for him. All this Magrathea nonsense seemed juvenile. Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?
Wisdom is easy: just find someone who trusts someone who trusts someone who trusts someone who knows the truth.
– Steven Kaas
I will repost a quote that I posted many moons ago on OB, if you don't mind. I don't THINK this breaks the rules too badly, since that post didn't get its fair share of karma. Here's the first time: http://lesswrong.com/lw/uj/rationality_quotes_18/nrt
"He knew well that fate and chance never come to the aid of those who replace action with pleas and laments. He who walks conquers the road. Let his legs grow tired and weak on the way - he must crawl on his hands and knees, and then surely, he will see in the night a distant light of hot campfires, and u...
Clevinger exclaimed to Yossarian in a voice rising and falling in protest and wonder. "It's a complete reversion to primitive superstition. They're confusing cause and effect. It makes as much sense as knocking on wood or crossing your fingers. They really believe that we wouldn't have to fly that mission tomorrow if someone would only tiptoe up to the map in the middle of the night and move the bomb line over Bologna. Can you imagine? You and I must be the only rational ones left." In the middle of the night Yossarian knocked on wood, crossed his fingers, and tiptoed out of his tent to move the bomb line up over Bologna.
Joseph Heller (Catch-22)
On boldness:
If you're gonna make a mistake, make it a good, loud mistake!
-- Augiedog, Half the Day is Night
(Edit: I should mention that the linked story is MLP fanfic. The MLP fandom may be a memetic hazard; it seems to have taken over my life for the past several days, though I tend to do that with most things, so YMMV. Proceed with caution.)
He who pours out thanks for a favourable verdict runs the risk of seeming to betray not only a bad conscience, but also a poor idea of the judge's office.
Francis Paget, preface to the 2nd ed. of "The Spirit of Discipline", 1906
http://www.archive.org/details/thespiritofdisc00pageuoft
The book also contains material on accidie (the Introductory Essay and the preface to the seventh edition), which is probably how I came across it.
(Courtesy of my dad)
One must be absolutely modern. No hymns! Hold the ground gained.
Arthur Rimbaud, 1873
"Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion."
-Hume, An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding
"I can't make myself believe something that I don't believe" —Ricky Gervais, in discussing his atheism
Reminds me of the scene in HPMOR where Harry makes Draco a scientist.
You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.
~ David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
I don't have a simple answer
But I know that I could answer
-- The Killers in This is Your Life
...Most libertarians would agree that it’s a messed-up state that:
Creates a massive crime problem in poor minority neighborhoods with a futile, vicious and every more far-reaching attempt to prevent commerce in popular, highly portable intoxicants that leaves absurd numbers of young men with felony records, making them marginally employable.
Fails to provide adequate policing for such neighborhoods.
Fails to provide effective education in such neighborhoods after installing itself as the educator of first resort.
Uses regulatory power to sharply curtail
You know, in the comic books where super-powered mutants are real, no one seems to question the theory of evolution. Maybe we're going about this all wrong.
"If you choose to follow a religion where, for example, devout Catholics who are trying to be good people are all going to Hell but child molestors go to Heaven (as long as they were "saved" at some point), that's your choice, but it's fucked up. Maybe a God who operates by those rules does exist. If so, fuck Him." --- Bill Zellar's suicide note, in regards to his parents' religion
I love this passage. If a god as described in the Bible did exist, following him would be akin to following Voldemort: fidelity simply because he was powerful. This isn't precisely a rationality quote, but it does have a bit of the morality-independent-of-religion thing. (The rest of the note is beautiful and eloquent as well.)
I think we should keep some sort op separation between "rationality quotes" and "atheism quotes". You can stretch this to be a rationality quote, but it does require a stretch. Just because a quote argues against the existence of a god doesn't make it particularly rational.
I love this passage. If a god as described in the Bible did exist, following him would be akin to following Voldemort: fidelity simply because he was powerful.
There are other similarities too. e.g. Voldemort's human form died and rose again; his (first) death was foretold in prophesy, involved a betrayal (albeit in the opposite direction), and left his followers anxiously awaiting his return; "And these signs shall follow them that believe; ... they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents..." (Mark 16:17-18); ...
So, who wants to join the First Church of Voldemort?
Make no mistake about it: Computers process numbers - not symbols. We measure our understanding (and control) by the extent to which we can arithmetize an activity.
-- Alan Perlis
Since I discovered them through SICP, I always liked the 'Perlisims' -- many of his Epigrams in Programming are pretty good. There's a hint of Searle/Chinese Room in this particular quote, but he turns it around by implying that in the end, the symbols are numbers (or that's how I read it).
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education.
-- Paul Feyerabend
Science is interesting, and if you don't agree you can fuck off.
By Richard Dawkins, quoting a former editor of New Scientist (here's at least one source). I don't think this quote contains any deep wisdom as such, but it made me laugh. Actually you could replace the word science with any other noun and it would still make grammatical sense.
Water has memory! And while it’s memory of a long lost drop of onion juice is Infinite It somehow forgets all the poo it’s had in it!
...In what circumstances shall I say that a tribe has a chief? And the chief must surely have consciousness. Surely we can't have a chief without consciousness!
But can't I imagine that the people around me are automata, lack consciousness, even though they behave in the same way as usual?--If I imagine it now--alone in my room--I see people with fixed looks (as in a trance) going about their business--the idea is perhaps a little uncanny. But just try to keep hold of this idea in the midst of your ordinary intercourse with others, in the street, say! Say to
Procrastination is one of the most common and deadliest of diseases and its toll on success and happiness is heavy.
Also:
You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.
-Wayne Gretsky
...the best lesson our readers can learn is to give up the childish notion that everything that is interesting about nature can be understood... It might be interesting to know how cognition (whatever that is) arose and spread and changed, but we cannot know. Tough luck.
Richard Lewontin
"Take up the White Man's burden-- The savage wars of peace-- Fill full the mouth of Famine, And bid the sickness cease; And when your goal is nearest (The end for others sought) Watch sloth and heathen folly Bring all your hope to nought." -Rudyard Kipling
His comment is that humans are terrible, treacherous, disloyal scum. The only difference between the friend and the non-friend is that the friend might tell you when he's harming you whereas the non-friend won't even bother telling you.
Son, you’re a body, son. That quick little scientific-prodigy’s mind she’s so proud of and won’t quit twittering about: son, it’s just neural spasms, those thoughts in your mind are just the sound of your head revving, and head is still just body, Jim. Commit this to memory. Head is body. Jim, brace yourself against my shoulders here for this hard news, at ten: you’re a machine a body an object, Jim, no less than this rutilant Montclair, this coil of hose here or that rake there for the front yard’s gravel or sweet Jesus this nasty fat spider flexing in its web over there up next to the rake-handle, see it?
Infinite Jest, page 159
-Nobilis RPG 3rd edition
...that was written by a Less Wrong reader. Or if not, someone who independently reinvented things to well past the point where I want to talk to them. Do you know the author?