Rationality Quotes August 2011

dvasya

Here's the new quotes thread, for all those quotes you were going to post.

Rules:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be voted up/down separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB.
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.

Here's the new quotes thread, for all those quotes you were going to post.

Rules:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be voted up/down separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB.
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.

It seems surprising that this is true. Why are functional things beautiful, even when they serve only their own purposes?

I once asked a similar question (here). jimrandomh's reply was that having to satisfy constraints simply forces you to think harder about the problem, which increases the beauty of your solution. The analogy to wild animals doesn't hold up, which is lucky.

9machrider15y

Perhaps a better word would have been 'elegant'.

15jimmy15y

Because beauty in design isn't some arbitrary metric different than the good design metric. It's what it feels like when you pattern match to 'good design'. You might notice your aesthetic tastes in something change once you understand more about their design (I certainly have), and I doubt you'd see so much interest in 'carbon fiber' stickers if carbon fiber weren't associated with strong light high tech stuff. This 'Art' thing seems to be an obvious counterpoint, but I suspect its just beauty wireheading as a result of goodhearts law.

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Rationality Quotes August 2011

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Rationality Quotes August 2011

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