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Konkvistador comments on Rationality Quotes October 2011 - Less Wrong
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--Thomas Carlyle
I love this quote, but it really isn't true. People frequently forego the first one.
I just ran into a surprisingly candid example of Richard Feynman talking about when he did that. He worked on the atomic bomb to make sure that Nazis didn't get it first, but then he kept working on it even after the Nazis had been defeated.
I don't think the first one ever gets generated unless someone else asks them why they did that something.
it must be nice to be clever enough to generate good reasons in real time, rather than having to spend all your spare cycles preemptively coming up with justifications for your actions.
I interpret "good reason" as "'good' reason".
I love it too and I like to have an evil reason as well. That keeps things in perspective. And a right reason - which balances the 'good' with the 'evil' according to my ethical sentiment. But that's just a (morally ambiguous) ideal. The real reason, that which Carlyle mentions, is something else again.
I have a different angle - I like to have a stupid reason, to amuse my friends with.
What is most awful is how often people do things for no reason at all.
Why is that awful?