Miller comments on On Being Okay with the Truth - Less Wrong

33 Post author: lukeprog 02 May 2011 12:17AM

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Comment author: BenAlbahari 02 May 2011 03:08:53PM *  4 points [-]

Ethics and aesthetics have strong parallels here. Consider this quote from Oscar Wilde:

For we who are working in art cannot accept any theory of beauty in exchange for beauty itself, and, so far from desiring to isolate it in a formula appealing to the intellect, we, on the contrary, seek to materialise it in a form that gives joy to the soul through the senses. We want to create it, not to define it. The definition should follow the work: the work should not adapt itself to the definition.

Whereby any theory of art...

merely serves as after-the-fact justification of the sentiments that were already there.

Comment author: Miller 02 May 2011 03:48:06PM 8 points [-]

Or Ben Franklin, contemplating his vegetarianism:

But I had formerly been a great Lover of Fish, & when this came hot out of the Frying Pan, it smelt admirably well. I balanc'd some time between Principle & inclination: till I recollected, that when the Fish were opened, I saw smaller Fish taken out of their Stomachs:--Then, thought I, if you eat one another, I don't see why we mayn't eat you. So I din'd upon Cod very heartily and continu'd to eat with other People, returning only now & then occasionally to a vegetable Diet. So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable Creature, since it enables one to find or make a Reason for every thing one has a mind to do

Comment author: pjeby 02 May 2011 04:06:56PM 6 points [-]

So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable Creature, since it enables one to find or make a Reason for every thing one has a mind to do

Now there's a Rationality Quote. ;-)

Comment author: gwern 02 May 2011 06:20:52PM 3 points [-]

Indeed.

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