Rationality Quotes November 2011

6 Post author: Jayson_Virissimo 01 November 2011 06:28PM

Here's the new thread for posting quotes, with the usual 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  • Do not quote yourself.
  • Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB.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.

Comments (391)

Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 31 October 2011 11:34:37AM 5 points [-]

It seems to me as though people can only manage to see things at all clearly when some political wind or other is blowing from behind them; if they turn against it, it blows directly into their eyes, and they become blinded.

-Hans Georg Fritzsche

Comment author: Karmakaiser 31 October 2011 01:12:50PM 20 points [-]

It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things.

-Terry Pratchett, Jingo

Comment author: Pfft 31 October 2011 02:46:39PM *  15 points [-]

[,,,]we don't just talk about arguments in terms of war. We can actually win or lose arguments. We see the person we are arguing with as an opponent. We attack his positions and we defend our own. We gain and lose ground. We plan and use strategies. If we find a position indefensible, we can abandon it and take a new line of attack. Many of the things we do in arguing are partially structured by the concept of war. Though there is no physical battle, there is a verbal battle, and the structure of an argument--attack, defense, counter-attack, etc.---reflects this. It is in this sense that the ARGUMENT IS WAR metaphor is one that we live by in this culture; its structures the actions we perform in arguing. Try to imagine a culture where arguments are not viewed in terms of war, where no one wins or loses, where there is no sense of attacking or defending, gaining or losing ground. Imagine a culture where an argument is viewed as a dance, the participants are seen as performers, and the goal is to perform in a balanced and aesthetically pleasing way. In such a culture, people would view arguments differently, experience them differently, carry them out differently, and talk about them differently.

-George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By.

Comment author: juliawise 01 November 2011 10:17:15PM 11 points [-]

I think navigators (maybe orienteers?) would be a better model than than warriors or dancers.

Comment author: dlthomas 01 November 2011 10:24:23PM 5 points [-]

Would you (or anyone else) please explore this further? How would we change the way we talk about discourse?

Comment author: juliawise 02 November 2011 11:39:22AM *  20 points [-]

War is something we do to win. Dance is something we do either to entertain others, or for our own enjoyment. Debate teams work like this - you're assigned a position which you must argue, even if you don't believe it. The performers/debaters do it some for their own pleasure, and they attract audiences who come to be entertained. My husband and I do a lot of arguing/debate for amusement, which is more like social dance in that it's playful and designed to entertain us rather than to accomplish any other goal.

But neither of these metaphors deal with objective truth. If I win a war, a debate, or a lawsuit, it doesn't prove my point is correct. It just means I fought or argued more skillfully or impressively. In navigation, both skill and objective truth are involved. Imagine two people who are trying to reach a destination (representing truth). They need skill to figure out how to get there, and can even compete for who gets there first (as in the sport of orienteering). Or, they can collaborate to find it together. If I confidently and stylishly navigate in the wrong direction, I won't reach my destination. I can only get there by reading the signs correctly.

I would prefer serious argument to be more about truth-seeking and less about showing off or defeating the opponent.

Comment author: Nominull 31 October 2011 03:31:51PM *  23 points [-]

Opening your eyes doesn't make a bad picture worse.

Comment author: orbenn 01 November 2011 04:39:42PM *  6 points [-]

Technically true, but that's a horrible analogy. Bullys are still a problem if you don't notice them. An ugly picture is completely not a problem if no one sees it, so in a way it is worse.

Comment author: Vaniver 01 November 2011 07:57:17PM 3 points [-]

Isn't this opposed to Lovecraft's claim that nothing he could describe would be as scary as the unknown / the reader's fears?

As well, there are a lot of shock pictures out there that were worse than what I could imagine before having seen them, and looking at them is worse than remembering them. If "worse" refers to subjective experience, then it seems obvious that closing your eyes can help.

Comment author: Nominull 01 November 2011 09:00:23PM 2 points [-]

As always when we hear the word "worse", we need to ask ourselves, "worse on what metric?"

Comment author: player_03 01 November 2011 11:36:02PM 5 points [-]

This reminds me of Lojban, in which the constructs meaning "good" and "bad" encourage you to specify a metric. It is still possible to say that something is "worse" without providing any detail, but I suspect most Lojban speakers would remember to provide detail if there was a chance of confusion.

Comment author: [deleted] 01 November 2011 09:01:30PM 4 points [-]

As well, there are a lot of shock pictures out there that were worse than what I could imagine before having seen them, and looking at them is worse than remembering them.

Care to name an example? I've been so desensitized, I think the worst any picture could do for me is to be somewhat depressing. Lovecraft, however, is still horrifying.

Comment author: Nominull 01 November 2011 09:04:11PM 4 points [-]

Please don't taunt the basilisk.

Comment author: Dorikka 02 November 2011 01:10:27AM 0 points [-]

Or just appropriately encode the text/label the link/add appropriate warnings?

Comment author: Luke_A_Somers 01 November 2011 11:25:33PM 6 points [-]

You actually find Lovecraft horrifying? I read a bit (color out of space, a short about ancient lizard people being wiped out by a vengeful god, and a bunch of descriptions) and found it peculiar and sad, but not horrifying. Too much Poe as a baby, I guess.

Comment author: Bugmaster 01 November 2011 11:30:06PM 1 point [-]

Same here, though I do enjoy (some of) Lovecraft's writing. I just don't find it as frightening as he apparently did. When I was little, Poe's Fall of the House of Usher and Bradbury's There Will Come Soft Rains literally gave me nightmares for weeks, so I must have developed some powerful mental antibodies.

Comment author: [deleted] 02 November 2011 12:19:48AM 6 points [-]

Lovecraft directly taps into my own madness and fears. He is psychologically quite similar to me and manages to actually express how bad xenophobia and the utter indifference of the cosmos feel. Worst of all, his more madness-focused stories like The Dreams in the Witch-House directly remind me of my own periods of insanity and paranoia. So it's really horrifying through its realism, at least for a certain kind of person.

(And he is the only one I know who does that, though I'm (intentionally) not very familiar with some related authors like Ligotti.)

Plus, violations of the natural order are much worse than anything in traditional horror. A color that doesn't fit in the light spectrum is more terrifying and disgusting to me than serial killers, torture or 2girls1cup. Not sure I can explain that one.

Comment author: Armok_GoB 02 November 2011 05:21:11PM 2 points [-]

This reminds me of an experiment I've wanted to do for some time, but don't have the necessary equipment for. I'd love to see it tested by someone who do.

*Take multiple light sources each shining in only one frequency, that can be dimmed, in specific triplets. Quickly eyeballing it I'd suggest [420nm, 550nm, 600nm] and [460nm, 500nm, 570nm]. *using a normal white light source as a reference, first adjust the relative intensity of each triplet so the combined light appears white, then scale the combined light (probably by simply altering the distance) to the same intensity. *Both lights should now appear identical. if they don't make further minor adjustments. *Look at them side by side, until you can see the colour out of space. :)

rot13 hint url: UGGC://RA.JVXVCRQVN.BET/JVXV/SVYR:PBAR-ERFCBAFR.FIT

Comment author: saturn 03 November 2011 01:18:11AM 2 points [-]

Why do you want to do this?

Comment author: Armok_GoB 03 November 2011 08:06:41PM 2 points [-]

Because seeing tetracromaticaly would be awesome, even if it's only possible in contrived settings.

Comment author: lavalamp 03 November 2011 08:30:27PM 1 point [-]

Do you expect that setup to feel much different than say, putting florescent and incandescent bulbs next to each other?

I think you need some special equipment to actually see tetrachromatically: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromacy#Possibility_of_human_tetrachromats

Comment author: Armok_GoB 03 November 2011 10:14:14PM 1 point [-]

My neurology intuition has proven useful in the past, and I trust it a lot more than that wikipedia article.

Comment author: kurokikaze 03 November 2011 08:58:34AM 11 points [-]

Pfft. Even magenta doesn't fit in the light spectrum. Are you terrified yet? :)

Comment author: [deleted] 03 November 2011 03:09:28PM *  1 point [-]

Good point. No wonder it has such a negative association.

Comment author: Vaniver 02 November 2011 04:55:47AM 2 points [-]

I do not have a very visual imagination, and so find it easy to forget the details of disturbing pictures, even if I saw them moments ago (forget meaning not be able to recreate in my mind, rather than not be able to recognize). Of the time when I was frequenting 4chan, I think my least favorite picture was ybghf gvg.

Comment author: peter_hurford 31 October 2011 04:20:46PM 19 points [-]

Expert estimates of probability are often off by factors of hundreds or thousands. [...] I used to be annoyed when the margin of error was high in a forecasting model that I might put together. Now I view it as perhaps the single most important piece of information that a forecaster provides. When we publish a forecast on FiveThirtyEight, I go to great lengths to document the uncertainty attached to it, even if the uncertainty is sufficiently large that the forecast won’t make for punchy headlines.

Nate Silver

Comment author: Alejandro1 31 October 2011 08:03:56PM 16 points [-]

From the same post:

One might expect it [our gut-feel sense] to be especially bad in the case of presidential primaries. There have been only about 15 competitive nomination contests since we began picking presidents this way in 1972. Some of them — like the nominations of George McGovern in 1972 and Jimmy Carter in 1976 — are dismissed by experts if their outcomes did not happen to agree with their paradigm of how presidents are chosen. (Another fundamental error: when you have such little data, you should almost never throw any of it out, and you should be especially wary of doing so when it happens to contradict your hypothesis.)

Comment author: DoubleReed 31 October 2011 05:26:43PM *  0 points [-]

I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.

-John Cage

Retracted: More I think about it, the less this quote makes sense.

Comment author: komponisto 31 October 2011 09:15:02PM 6 points [-]
Comment author: DoubleReed 01 November 2011 12:32:42PM 1 point [-]

I know, but aren't there valid rational reasons to be frightened of new ideas as well? It's like neophilia.

Comment author: dbaupp 01 November 2011 12:34:56PM 0 points [-]

Maybe, but it isn't valid to be frightened of an idea purely because it is new.

Comment author: ArisKatsaris 01 November 2011 12:38:39PM 3 points [-]

Isn't it valid to be somewhat frightened of a new medicine purely because it's yet untested on humans?

Comment author: dbaupp 01 November 2011 12:51:23PM *  0 points [-]

You have additional information about the idea; you are frightened of it because it is new and it is a medicine.

Comment author: ArisKatsaris 01 November 2011 01:13:48PM 4 points [-]

Can you explain your reasoning in more detail as to why it's "valid" to be wary of a new medicine, but it's not "valid" to be wary of a new idea?

Keep in mind that reversed stupidity is not intelligence. That some people are stupidly afraid of new ideas doesn't automatically make it intelligence not to be afraid of them.

Comment author: dbaupp 01 November 2011 01:39:51PM 0 points [-]

I didn't say that being wary (i.e. being careful of it) wasn't valid (and of course it is perfectly valid). I said that being frightened (i.e. not going near it) wasn't valid.

So I think we were just using those words slightly differently.

Comment author: shokwave 02 November 2011 08:55:28AM 2 points [-]

The vast majority of untested chemicals-that-would-be-medicine are harmful or at least discomfiting. The vast majority of untested words-that-would-be-ideas are nonsense or at best banal.

(That is, part of knowing it's medicine vs knowing it's an idea is our prior for "this is harmful", and the relevant properties of ideas, medicine, human bodies, and human minds play a part here.)

Comment author: quinsie 02 November 2011 03:48:35PM 3 points [-]

There's two components to it, really:

People perceive exposure to a bad medicine as being much harder to correct than exposure to a bad idea. It feels like you can always "just stop beleiving" if you decided something was false, even though this has been empericially been demonstrated to be much more difficult than it feels like it should be.

Further, there's an unspoken assumption (at least for ideas-in-general) that other people will automatically ignore the 99% of the ideaspace that contains uniformly awful or irrelevant suggestions, like recomending that you increase tire pressure in your car to make it more likely to rain and other obviously wrong ideas like that. Medicine doesn't get this benefit of the doubt, as humans don't naturally prune their search space when it comes to complex and technical fields like medicine. It's outside our ancestoral environment, so we're not equiped to be able to automatically discard "obviously" bad drug ideas just from reading the chemical makeup of the medicine in question. Only with extensive evidence will a laymen even begin to entertain the idea that ingesting an unfamiliar drug would be benefical to them.

Comment author: DoubleReed 01 November 2011 01:13:56PM 2 points [-]

Should you be frightened of an idea purely because it is old?

Comment author: dbaupp 01 November 2011 01:36:11PM 3 points [-]

No.

Comment author: Nominull 31 October 2011 05:29:21PM *  17 points [-]

Writers of all stripes enjoy engaging in the most cynical readings of human behavior because they think it makes them appear hyper-rational. But in fact here is a perfect example of how trying to achieve that makes you irrational. Human emotion is real. It is an observable phenomenon. It observably influences behavior. Therefore to fail to account for it when discussing coupling and relationships is the opposite of cold rationality; it is in fact a failure of empiricism.

-L'Hote on Kate Bolick's "All the Single Ladies"

Comment author: Pfft 31 October 2011 06:24:06PM *  29 points [-]

This sounds good out of context, but I think it was actually confused. The context was a complaint that '"marriage market" theories leave love out of the equation'. But this is a false dichotomy. It could well be that people marry out of sincerely felt love, but fall in love with "older men with resources" and "younger women with adoring gazes”, as the original article had it. The cues that cause you to fall in love are not easily accessible to introspection.

More to the point, the original article was speculating about how a demographic shift that makes women wealthier than men would affect dating culture. What does it even mean to account for human emotion here? The way the problem is set up, the abstract model is the best we can hope for. In general, when discussing big trends or large groups, we don't have detailed information about the emotions of everyone involved. In that case, leaving those out of the model is not a failure of empiricism, it's just doing the best with what's available.

I think there are different contexts where this same quote makes more sense: for example you probably won't get a very good understanding of eBay auctions by assuming that everyone involved follows a simple economic model.

Comment author: Grognor 31 October 2011 06:03:50PM *  0 points [-]

Fine.

Comment author: Oscar_Cunningham 31 October 2011 06:25:23PM 0 points [-]

And? Isn't this just the standard definition of realism?

Comment author: [deleted] 31 October 2011 06:11:05PM *  13 points [-]

Would anybody tell me if I was getting stupider?

Mike Patton

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 01 November 2011 02:00:28AM 10 points [-]

Even if they did, would you believe them?

Comment author: soreff 02 November 2011 04:41:23PM 0 points [-]

One of the grislier consequences of Alzheimer's disease is that it places its victims in almost precisely this position. Yes, their minds are going. It isn't so much that they don't believe the diagnosis as that, by the time it can be made, they cannot understand it.

Comment author: wedrifid 02 November 2011 05:14:53PM 5 points [-]

Yes, their minds are going. It isn't so much that they don't believe the diagnosis as that, by the time it can be made, they cannot understand it.

That would seem to apply only if the diagnosis is made very late. Plenty of people know about their condition and must watch as their minds steadily deteriorate. See, for example, Terry Pratchett's "Living With Alzheimer's" documentary.

Comment author: soreff 02 November 2011 05:26:22PM 2 points [-]

Many Thanks! I was relying on Sherwin B. Nuland's description of it in a chapter in his "How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter " . That was published in 1994. I guess earlier diagnosis is feasible today.

Comment author: RomeoStevens 02 November 2011 10:29:08AM *  2 points [-]

were getting stupider. :p

Comment author: Emily 02 November 2011 05:30:54PM 2 points [-]

There's nothing stupid about "was" there. The subjunctive and indicative are equally grammatical in this context in modern English --- informal contexts might even prefer the latter over the former.

Comment author: gaffa 31 October 2011 06:41:50PM 21 points [-]

You can't make a movie and say 'It was all a big accident' - no, it has to be a conspiracy, people plotting together. Because in a story, a story is about intention. A story is not about spontaneous order or complex human institutions which are the product of human action but not of human design - no, a story is about evil people plotting together.

Comment author: dlthomas 31 October 2011 06:50:43PM 11 points [-]

Apparently he hasn't seen many Cohen brothers movies...

Comment author: dlthomas 31 October 2011 07:35:15PM 4 points [-]

Which isn't to say this undermines his overall point - such movies are the exception, and interesting partly because of that - just that his language was too forceful.

Comment author: juliawise 01 November 2011 10:13:51PM 4 points [-]

Or movies that are about relationships instead of stuff blowing up. There are plenty of good movies with plots and no bad guys.

Comment author: ciphergoth 01 November 2011 08:47:57AM 24 points [-]

One of the strengths of Apollo 13 is that it has only good guys in it, battling together against an unforeseen, mysterious and near-lethal twist of fate.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 01 November 2011 12:48:58PM 4 points [-]

There's a mystery novel that left me incredibly angry at the author because I was expecting an interesting complex cause tying all the murders together, but there wasn't. I'm probably a calmer person now, and for all I know, there may have been hints I was missing about what sort of story it was.

Gur Anzr bs gur Ebfr

Comment author: Solvent 02 November 2011 10:06:50AM 1 point [-]

...I think it's a sign of the times that I can read rot13 to the extent that I know what book you said. Dammit, I was going to read that book one day.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 02 November 2011 12:46:27PM 1 point [-]

Apologies. I've seen a post with a link to a rot13 page-- I'll see if I can make that work for future spoilers.

You still might want to read the book-- it had a lot of engaging detail and characters.. That's why I was so angry at not getting the sort of ending I wanted.

Comment author: khafra 02 November 2011 01:07:20PM 0 points [-]

I read Sbhpnhyg'f Craqhyhz before Gur Anzr bs gur Ebfr, so the nature of the ending was no surprise to me; but I still enjoyed the book.

Comment author: Oligopsony 31 October 2011 07:38:26PM *  27 points [-]

On precision in aesthetics, metaethics:

RS: Butt-Head, I have a question for you. I noticed that you often say, "I like stuff that's cool." But isn't that circular logic? I mean, what is the definition of "cool," other than an adjective denoting something the speaker likes?

BH: Huh-huh. Uh, did you, like, go to college?

RS: You don't have to go to college to know the definition of "redundant." What I'm saying is that essentially what you're saying is "I like stuff that I like."

B: Yeah. Huh-huh. Me, too.

BH: Also, I don't like stuff that sucks, either.

RS: But nobody likes stuff that sucks!

BH: Then why does so much stuff suck?

B: Yeah. College boy! Huh-huh, huh-huh.

-Rolling Stone, Interview with Beavis and Butt-Head

Comment author: wallowinmaya 31 October 2011 07:55:56PM 31 points [-]

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.

Voltaire

Comment author: Jolima 31 October 2011 10:18:51PM 0 points [-]

There's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all.

  • Bob Dylan (Love minus Zero / No limit)
Comment author: Alejandro1 31 October 2011 10:44:25PM *  11 points [-]

I want to give thanks to the divine
Labyrinth of causes and effects
For the diversity of beings
That form this singular universe,
For Reason, that will never give up its dream
Of a map of the labyrinth,

Jorge Luis Borges, “Another poem of gifts” (opening lines).

Comment author: jsbennett86 01 November 2011 12:53:29AM 13 points [-]

Who first called Reason sweet, I don't know. I suspect that he was a man with very few responsibilities, no children to rear, and no payroll to meet. An anchorite with heretical tendencies, maybe, or the idle youngest son of a wealthy Athenian. The dictates of Reason are often difficult to figure out, rarely to my liking, and profitable only by what seems a happy but remarkably unusual accident. Mostly, Reason brings bad news, and bad news of the worst sort, for, if it is truly the word of Reason, there is no denying it or weaseling out of its demands without simply deciding to be irrational. Thus it is that I have discovered, and many others, I notice, have also discovered, all sorts of clever ways to convince myself that Reason is "mere" Reason, powerful and right, of course, but infinitely outnumbered by reasons, my reasons.

Richard Mitchell, The Gift of Fire

Comment author: Alejandro1 01 November 2011 01:25:25AM 19 points [-]

Consider an instance close to hand: arguments on the Internet. Whether the discussion is about abortion or the definition of atheism or the advisability of tax cuts, one might think that the longer the debate continues, the more ideas would emerge. In fact, the reverse is the case. A couple of scientists discussing the proper taxonomy of flesh flies will entertain many options, but thousands of people talking about God will endlessly repeat the same rhetorical moves.

Jim Harrison

Comment author: peter_hurford 01 November 2011 02:23:57AM 10 points [-]

I think, therefore I am perhaps mistaken.

Sharon Fenick

Comment author: lukeprog 02 November 2011 12:46:36AM 3 points [-]
Comment author: peter_hurford 02 November 2011 04:10:43PM 1 point [-]

Aye, sorry. It's a good quote.

Comment author: kalla724 02 November 2011 08:30:48PM 10 points [-]

I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.

Bertrand Russell

A common sentiment among the thoughtful, it seems.

Comment author: TimS 02 November 2011 08:50:14PM *  5 points [-]

Barbarians shouldn't win. At the very least, we shouldn't surrender ahead of time.

Comment author: wedrifid 02 November 2011 10:17:15PM 21 points [-]

I would never die for my beliefs because... screw that I would rather lie.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 03 November 2011 07:46:09PM 10 points [-]

Is Bertrand Russell willing to die if he encounters someone with a gun who demands he agree that 2 + 2 = 5?

Comment author: lessdazed 03 November 2011 07:55:34PM *  0 points [-]

It's a bit late to threaten Bertrand Russell with anything, particularly a gun, considering that he died decades ago.

Comment author: [deleted] 03 November 2011 08:28:23PM 9 points [-]

I am willing to lie if I encounter someone with a gun who demands I agree that 2 + 2 = 5.

Comment author: dlthomas 03 November 2011 08:44:30PM 7 points [-]

Profess the belief or adopt the belief?

Comment author: Tyrrell_McAllister 03 November 2011 08:58:09PM 1 point [-]

He's probably talking about "ought" beliefs, not "is" beliefs. Even so...

Comment author: thomblake 03 November 2011 09:35:56PM 2 points [-]

Deceptively clever.

Russell would have liked that one, I think.

Comment author: byrnema 03 November 2011 10:00:24PM 3 points [-]

Why? (Can you explain?)

Comment author: thomblake 03 November 2011 10:17:06PM *  7 points [-]

At first glance, it looks like a misunderstanding. "I would never die for my beliefs" is unambiguous, and the "because I might be wrong" is merely a bit of explanation in case you're wondering why he'd take that stance. So obviously, Russell would not be willing to die for "2+2=4".

Russell, while a Philosopher of any sort, is perhaps best known for his contributions to math and logic. He is the sort of person who would have insisted that he can't be wrong that 2+2=4.

In the case that "X because Y", it is generally assumed that ~Y would have counterfactually resulted in ~X. It was a popular-enough way to approach the problem in the early 20th century, anyway. Thus the statement seems to imply that for any beliefs Russell can't be wrong about, he is willing to die for them. And thus he seems to be saying that he would die for "2+2=4", and we're left to ponder what that would mean.

In what way is it "dying for one's beliefs" to refuse to capitulate to a gunman about a trivial matter? I'd guess that in that situation, Russell would have perfectly good reasons left to not die for "2+2=4".

So we might conclude that there are a lot of reasons not to die for a lot of beliefs, other than that we might be wrong about them. So that's not Russell's true rejection of dying for one's beliefs.

Comment author: dlthomas 03 November 2011 10:29:05PM *  1 point [-]

die for "2+2=5"

Did you mean that, or did you mean die for not "2+2=5"?

Comment author: thomblake 03 November 2011 11:12:30PM 0 points [-]

Seems ambiguous. I'm not sure which I meant to write. I'll fix it to be consistent.

Comment author: byrnema 03 November 2011 11:22:22PM *  5 points [-]

Ah, got it. Thanks for the explanation.

Since Russell said he wouldn't be willing to die for his beliefs because of X, it seems logical to conclude he would be willing to die if not-X. But that is absurd (as highlighted by Eliezer's question) so Russell hadn't given his true rejection.

... I'll add that Russell didn't give his true rejection but a clever one, so he does prefer cleverness over truthiness, so he would appreciate Eliezer's rhetorical question, which was more clever than accurate (because 2+2=4 is something Russell could still possibly be wrong about.)

Comment author: earthwormchuck163 01 November 2011 03:07:16AM *  2 points [-]

Nature uses only the longest thread to weave her patterns, so that each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry.

Feynman

Comment author: Nominull 01 November 2011 04:01:52PM 4 points [-]
Comment author: ahartell 01 November 2011 05:28:51PM *  5 points [-]

Truth lies within a little and certain compass, but error is immense.

Henry St. John

Comment author: sabre51 01 November 2011 07:10:44PM 0 points [-]

> Our civilization is still in a middle stage: scarcely beast, in that it is no longer wholly ruled by instinct; scarcely human, in that it is not yet wholly ruled by reason.

Theodore Dreiser

Comment author: sabre51 01 November 2011 07:11:56PM 8 points [-]

Our civilization is still in a middle stage: scarcely beast, in that it is no longer wholly ruled by instinct; scarcely human, in that it is not yet wholly ruled by reason.

Theodore Dreiser

Comment author: soreff 02 November 2011 04:35:20PM *  1 point [-]

Very much like Alexander Pope's:

Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,

A being darkly wise, and rudely great:

Comment author: brazzy 03 November 2011 12:23:38AM 2 points [-]

Or Terry Pratchett:

HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

Comment author: Bugmaster 03 November 2011 12:53:14AM *  0 points [-]

It seems like Terry Pratchett is explicitly contradicting Theodore Dreiser (IN ALL CAPS, no less).

Pratchett: "Humans need fantasy to be fully human."

Dreiser: "Fantasy is an atavism, humans need reason to be fully human."

Though it's possible that Dreiser was reflecting on cognitive bias, not on fantasy.

Comment author: bbleeker 03 November 2011 02:24:20PM *  3 points [-]

The ALL CAPS are because it's the character Death who is speaking here, in a voice like two concrete blocks being rubbed together, or the slamming of coffin lids.

Comment author: Bugmaster 03 November 2011 05:51:21PM 1 point [-]

That's what I figured, but it still looks weird without context.

Comment author: Thomas 01 November 2011 07:12:34PM 9 points [-]

If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?

  • American proverb
Comment author: gjm 01 November 2011 07:29:50PM 6 points [-]

If you're so rich, why aren't you smart? -- Traditional reply. (I'm not sure it makes much sense, but then neither does the original question.)

Comment author: Vaniver 01 November 2011 07:51:18PM 0 points [-]

To which, of course, the reply is that they don't need to be, and so why waste the effort? That is, they are smart, on the level that's important.

Comment author: RobinZ 01 November 2011 09:04:23PM 6 points [-]

Oddly, this reply works equally well for the original quote.

Comment author: anandjeyahar 02 November 2011 07:46:53AM 0 points [-]

Exactly.... to me this is always a sign of a strawman argument..

Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 03 November 2011 02:52:15PM 2 points [-]
Comment author: DoubleReed 03 November 2011 02:59:33PM 0 points [-]

Or maybe both statements are equally ridiculous.

Comment author: gjm 01 November 2011 10:13:36PM 0 points [-]

If the only thing that's important is money, yes.

Comment author: thomblake 01 November 2011 10:17:01PM 9 points [-]

Or if money were fungible.

Comment author: thomblake 01 November 2011 10:33:30PM 8 points [-]

A propos:

Thales of Miletus was a philosopher - so committed was he to thinking carefully that once he was walking along contemplating deeply and thus fell into a well. The locals made fun of him, commenting that philosophers were so busy attending to the stars that they could not see what is in front of them.

Since coins were recently invented (or recently brought to Asia Minor), Thales was involved in a discussion over the power of money. His interlocutors didn't believe that a philosopher could become rich, but he insisted that the power of the mind was paramount. To prove the power of having a reasoning mind, he devised a way of predicting weather patterns. He used this knowledge to buy up everyone's olive presses when the weather was bad and managed to corner the market, becoming quite wealthy when a very good season followed soon after.

Comment author: Thomas 02 November 2011 10:51:30AM 2 points [-]

I don't buy that Thales indeed predicted any weather patterns so well, that he became rich be cause of those pattern predictions of him. Just an urban legend from those times.

Comment author: khafra 02 November 2011 01:03:52PM 1 point [-]

I agree. With the strong incentives for people involved in the olive trade to be as good as possible at predicting the weather, it's hard to believe a philosopher could become better than the subject matter experts of his time; especially with the armchair methods popular at the time, and especially^2 since we still can't predict the weather very well. Also, the story switches from "the power of money" to "the power of thought" abruptly.

Comment author: thomblake 02 November 2011 05:44:38PM 5 points [-]

especially with the armchair methods popular at the time

Thales was arguably the first Western philosopher, and despite the 'well' story, he was noted for being particularly observant and empirical. The primary distinction between Thales and earlier philosophers was that where other philosophers made explanations based on supernatural forces and agents, Thales preferred explanations referring to the natural properties of objects. Notably, he was the first recorded person to study electricity.

Comment author: thomblake 02 November 2011 01:58:38PM 0 points [-]

Indeed a likely explanation - Aesop in particular was fond of writing about the exploits of Thales, and we know how often he drifted from fact for his subjects.

Comment author: dlthomas 02 November 2011 06:15:32PM 6 points [-]

Just an urban legend from those times.

While I agree that this is the more probable explanation, I'm not sure one needs to predict the weather particularly well to know "it'll likely be different at some point soonish", which seems to be all he needed for the above story.

Comment author: SisterY 03 November 2011 11:21:50PM *  6 points [-]

In "Self-poisoning of the mind" Jon Elster uses the Thales olive incident as an example of a perverse cognitive bias:

In his retelling of the [Thales olive] story, de Montaigne (1991, p. 153) explicitly asserts that when he condemned money-making, Thales ‘was accused of sour grapes like the fox’. Although Thales wanted to ‘show the world’ that the accusation was unfounded, one could also imagine that he had made a fortune in order to demonstrate to himself that his philosophy was not the product of sour grapes. Not content with thinking that he could have acquired riches had he wanted to, he might have decided to actually acquire them to deflect self-suspicion. [Emphasis in original.]

What Elster is pushing is that, since we are aware we edit reality to suit our self-images, we constantly suspect ourselves of doing so, and perversely believe the worst of ourselves on very flimsy evidence.

Comment author: thomblake 03 November 2011 11:25:01PM 0 points [-]

This being markdown, begin the first line of that blockquote paragraph with a greater-than sign and replace the italics tags with asterisks.

Comment author: thomblake 03 November 2011 11:26:18PM 0 points [-]

Also, Welcome to Less Wrong, apparently. Your handle looks familiar for some reason, so I didn't notice you were new.

Comment author: FiftyTwo 02 November 2011 01:52:57AM 1 point [-]

Because my utility function includes moral constraints.

Comment author: RomeoStevens 02 November 2011 10:26:36AM 11 points [-]

is that your true reason or is it a reason that allows you to assert status over those wealthier than you?

Comment author: FiftyTwo 02 November 2011 10:29:02AM *  2 points [-]

If so, then my utility function places status/morality above wealth. Which also answers the question.;

Comment author: FiftyTwo 02 November 2011 11:24:40AM 4 points [-]

A better phrasing might be: "If you're so smart why aren't you fulfilling your Goals/Utility Function"

Comment author: RomeoStevens 02 November 2011 09:12:45PM 9 points [-]

all of the economic analysis I've seen indicates it is more efficient to maximize wealth and then buy what you value directly. Forgoing money because it would harm someone is probably less efficient than making money and donating to givewell.

Comment author: Xom 02 November 2011 01:09:05PM 0 points [-]

Effort.

Comment author: Logos01 03 November 2011 12:41:37PM 3 points [-]

If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?

  • American proverb

"It takes money to make money."
- Titus Maccius Plautus.

Comment author: Xom 01 November 2011 08:14:06PM *  18 points [-]

In prose, the worst thing one can do with words is surrender to them. When you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualizing you probably hunt about until you find the exact words that seem to fit it. When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one's meaning as clear as one can through pictures and sensations.

~ Orwell

Comment author: RobinZ 01 November 2011 08:36:05PM 6 points [-]
Comment author: Armok_GoB 02 November 2011 05:33:37PM 2 points [-]

This is the exact opposite of my experience- I think wordlessly with both abstract and concrete things, and hunting for words might work for the concrete things occasionally, since they are mostly the same, but for almost all abstract things there simply does not exist any word even close to what I want to say, so surrender - the hard kind, accepting defeat and humiliation, like that class scene in MoR - and making do with unbearably clumsy, confusing and muddled metaphor is exactly what I have to learn in every case I don't know the exact mathematical notation to formalize my thoughts.

Comment author: djcb 01 November 2011 09:48:31PM 16 points [-]

The nurse recorded the time of death, 9:21 P.M. He discovered, oddly, that the clock had halted at that moment —just the sort of mystical phenomenon that appealed to unscientific people. Then an explanation occurred to him. He knew the clock was fragile, because he had repaired it several times, and he decided that the nurse must have stopped it by picking it up to check the time in the dim light.

[ James Gleick - Genius - The work and Life of Richard Feynman; this is a really chilling passage, which describes the moments just after Feynman's wife has passed away, which devastated him. Somehow, this struck me.]

Comment author: RobinZ 01 November 2011 10:01:44PM 18 points [-]

Arlene died a few hours after I got there. A nurse came in to fill out the death certificate, and went out again. I spent a little more time with my wife. Then I looked at the clock I had given her seven years before, when she had first become sick with tuberculosis. It was something which in those days was very nice: a digital clock whose numbers would change by turning around mechanically. The clock was very delicate and often stopped for one reason or another - I had to repair it from time to time - but I kept it going for all those years. Now, it had stopped once more - at 9:22, the time on the death certificate!

I remembered the time I was in my fraternity house at MIT when the idea came into my head completely out of the blue that my grandmother was dead. Right after that there was a telephone call, just like that. It was for Pete Bernays - my grandmother wasn't dead. So I remembered that, in case somebody told me a story that ended the other way. I figured that such things can sometimes happen by luck - after all, my grandmother was very old - although people might think they happened by some sort of supernatural phenomenon.

Arlene had kept this clock by her bedside all the time she was sick, and now it stopped the moment she died. I can understand how a person who half believes in the possibility of such things, and who hasn't got a doubting mind - especially in a circumstance like that - doesn't immediately try to figure out what happened, but instead explains that no one touched the clock, and there was no possibility of explanation by normal phenomena. The clock simply stopped. It would become a dramatic example of these fantastic phenomena.

I saw that the light in the room was low, and then I remembered that the nurse had picked up the clock and turned it toward the light to see the face better. That could easily have stopped it.

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, "Los Alamos from Below" (third chapter of Part 3)

Comment author: djcb 01 November 2011 10:08:20PM 2 points [-]

Nice. This is probably where mr. Gleick got it from. The strange thing is that (I think), Feynman's wife's first name is Arline, not the more common Arlene. I found Gleick's book nice in that it did attempted to look beyond some of legends/anecdotes.

Comment author: RobinZ 01 November 2011 10:22:43PM 1 point [-]

I recognized it from Mr. Gleick's remarks. As for the name, I copied the text from the free preview on Amazon.com - they spelled it Arlene in the book. Guess there was an overambitious proofreader.

Comment author: billswift 03 November 2011 09:29:36PM 1 point [-]

If you are up to a harder read, Jagdish Mehra's biography The Beat of a Different Drum does a better job of covering Feynman's actual work.

Comment author: djcb 03 November 2011 10:02:05PM 1 point [-]

Thanks -- I'll put that on my reading list. Will read some other books in between though!

Comment author: ArisKatsaris 01 November 2011 11:01:13PM *  17 points [-]

If I let go of a hammer on a planet that has a positive gravity, I need not see it fall to know that it has in fact fallen. [...] Gentlemen, human beings have characteristics just as inanimate objects do.

-Spock, "Court Martial", Star Trek: The Original Series

Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 03 November 2011 02:43:41PM *  -1 points [-]

Wait...theory trumps data?

Comment author: Oscar_Cunningham 03 November 2011 03:34:05PM *  6 points [-]

If Spock wasn't looking then he has no data. The theory makes predictions. That's the point of theories.

EDIT: See "Belief in the Implied Invisible"

Comment author: [deleted] 03 November 2011 05:33:53PM *  9 points [-]

on a planet that has a positive gravity

Heh.

Comment author: JenniferRM 02 November 2011 12:15:08AM 6 points [-]

Even more than the easier problem of remembering faces and matching them to favors, the ability of both parties to agree with sufficient accuracy on an estimate of the value of a favor in the first place is probably the main barrier to reciprocal altruism among animals. It is also likely the most important barrier to exchange among humans. Many kinds of exchange, probably many more than most economists perceive, are rendered infeasible by the inability of one or both parties to the exchange to estimate its value.

-Nick Szabo

Comment author: JenniferRM 02 November 2011 12:16:16AM 9 points [-]

A lot of people are interested in predicting the future so that they can orient their present activities accordingly. With a few exceptions we can discuss, I think the future is inherently uncertain and unpredictable. We are way better off if we accept the enormous uncertainty that pervades the world and approach it with a sense of adventure and mystery... There are a couple of small but important exceptions to the unpredictability of the unfolding. We can notice a current reality that is hidden or nonobvious. We might notice the reality by looking at data, watching conversations, or observing practices. We then discuss the reality and its consequences in the near term -- a year or two is easiest, but sometimes we can go up to five years. Management guru Peter Drucker was a master at this; he said that others who rated him as a good prognosticator were wrong because all he was doing was revealing current truths that most of them had missed.

-Peter Denning

Comment author: JenniferRM 02 November 2011 12:17:36AM 14 points [-]

All scientists despise the ideology of 'breakthroughs' --- I mean the belief that science proceeds from one revelation to another, each one opening up a new world of understanding and advancing still farther a sharp line of demarcation between what is true and what is false. Everyone actually engaged in scientific research knows that this way of looking at things is altogether misleading, and that the frontier between understanding and bewilderment is rather like the plasma membrane of a cell as it creeps over its substratum, a pushing forward here, a retraction there --- an exploratory probing that will eventually move forward the whole body of the cell... in real life, science does not prance from one mountain top to the next.

-Peter Medawar in "Does Ethology Throw Any Light on Human Behavior?"

Comment author: JenniferRM 02 November 2011 12:19:56AM 21 points [-]

People can learn to look you in the eyes even when they're lying to you. But it's kind of like a fake smile; there are involuntary muscles up there. If you know what you're looking for, you can still tell. But what does it mean if they're looking you in the eyes and they mean it? It means that, at least in that moment, they're doing what they really believe is right. That's the definition of integrity.

That part is easy. That's not the surprising thing.

The surprising thing, to me, was that someone can have integrity and still be completely evil. It's kind of obvious in retrospect; the super-villain in an action movie can always look the hero in the eye, and he always does, just to prove it. He has integrity. Evil with integrity is more respectable, somehow, than plain evil. All it takes to have integrity is to do what you think is right, no matter how stupid that may be.

Beware of people with integrity.

-Avery Pennarun

Comment author: Patrick 02 November 2011 01:03:39AM *  8 points [-]

Almost anything can be attacked as a failure, but almost anything can be defended as not a significant failure. Politicians do not appreciate the significance of 'significant'.

-- Sir Humphrey Appleby

Comment author: Maniakes 02 November 2011 01:12:00AM 43 points [-]

The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.

John W. Gardner

Comment author: michaelcurzi 02 November 2011 01:38:50AM *  1 point [-]

But wise men pierce this rotten diction
and fasten words again
to visible things.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Comment author: wedrifid 02 November 2011 11:26:25AM 6 points [-]

Which is why "X Rays" still don't have an actual name, just a letter.

Comment author: DoubleReed 02 November 2011 02:14:36PM 6 points [-]

What? I thought they were Xtreeeeme Rays!

Comment author: [deleted] 02 November 2011 08:22:53AM 11 points [-]

At sea once more we had to pass the Sirens, whose sweet singing lures sailors to their doom. I had stopped up the ears of my crew with wax, and I alone listened while lashed to the mast, powerless to steer toward shipwreck.

-- Odysseus in Odyssey

Comment author: Raemon 02 November 2011 01:56:49PM 1 point [-]

I'm confused about why it was valuable for him to be able to hear, if he wasn't allowed to act upon information.

Comment author: wedrifid 02 November 2011 02:02:56PM 5 points [-]

For the same reason a kleptomanic may enjoy visiting a museum even where all the beautiful works of art are securely displayed. Because he could appreciate the aesthetic without knowing that his decisions at the time would destroy him.

Comment author: Raemon 03 November 2011 05:42:57PM 0 points [-]

This makes sense, but I never felt it was really implied by the story. It always sounded like there was supposed to be a practical reason for sailing the ship.

Comment author: wedrifid 03 November 2011 05:56:58PM *  1 point [-]

To get to the other side?

Comment author: Raemon 03 November 2011 06:59:32PM 0 points [-]

:P

Practical reason (with respect to sailing the ship) for lashing yourself to the mast.

Comment author: [deleted] 02 November 2011 02:28:00PM *  15 points [-]

The point of the story is that it illustrates the power of precommitment; Odysseus made a choice in advance not to steer towards the rocks even though he knew that when the opportunity would arise he would want to steer towards them.

Why he wanted to be lashed to the mast instead of stooping his ears with wax I guess was because he desired to hear the "sweet singing".

Comment author: Armok_GoB 02 November 2011 05:43:41PM 8 points [-]

Getting hit by basilisks can be very fun.

Comment author: Bugmaster 03 November 2011 05:55:29PM 5 points [-]

Pure curiosity, probably. It's the same reason that (some) people climb mountains or poke around with rare and special rocks that glow in the dark.

Comment author: Hey 02 November 2011 09:01:09AM 14 points [-]

I am thinking of coding up a web app for accumulating, voting, and commenting on quotes. Kind of like bash.org but much fancier.

Is that something you guys would be interested in? If so, what features would you want?

This would be free to use of course, and the site would not lock down the data (ie it would be exportable to various formats).

I am thinking there are a lot of communities that post quotes for internal use, and might be interested in a kind of unified web site for this. My initial thought is that it would be like Reddit, where each tribe/community/subculture/topic/etc gets its own subdirectory.

Comment author: DanielVarga 03 November 2011 07:26:19PM 1 point [-]

Are you aware of my Best of Rationality Quotes post? I'm not saying that it is directly relevant for you, but there is stuff there that might give you some inspiration, especially the weird aggregate statistics at the end.

Comment author: scav 02 November 2011 03:36:55PM 40 points [-]

I just noticed CVS has started stocking homeopathic pills on the same shelves with--and labeled similarly to--their actual medicine. Telling someone who trusts you that you're giving them medicine, when you know you’re not, because you want their money, isn’t just lying--it’s like an example you’d make up if you had to illustrate for a child why lying is wrong.

-- Randall, XKCD #971

Comment author: scav 02 November 2011 03:40:39PM 6 points [-]

I have no fear of ghosts, and I have never heard it said that so much harm had been done by the dead during six thousand years as is wrought by the living in a single day.

-- The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 02 November 2011 03:43:57PM 1 point [-]

Hmm, not sure I agree. The living now can cause great harm for the people in the future. In that regard at any given time the dead are creating harm in some sense. But the basic point seems valid. The dead at least can't alter their activity to help more or reduce harm, the living can.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 02 November 2011 09:48:34PM 3 points [-]

The dead at least can't alter their activity to help more or reduce harm, the living can.

It's the other way around: in timeless view, nether living not dead can "alter" anything, the relevant fact is that you can influence activity of the living, but not of the dead (not as you said whether the dead themselves can alter things vs. the living can alter things).

Comment author: scav 02 November 2011 03:46:28PM 9 points [-]

There are not books enough on earth to contain the record of the prophecies Indians and other unauthorized parties have made; but one may carry in his overcoat pockets the record of all the prophecies that have been fulfilled.

-- Mark Twain

Comment author: kalla724 02 November 2011 08:34:16PM *  16 points [-]

The best way to escape from a problem is to solve it.

-Alan Saporta

Comment author: TimS 03 November 2011 12:12:29AM 0 points [-]

"Don't sell yourself to your enemy in advance, in your mind. You can only be defeated here." He touched his hands to his temples.

  • Admiral Aral Vorkosigan, Mirror Dance
Comment author: lukeprog 03 November 2011 07:45:04AM 23 points [-]

It is better to destroy one's own errors than those of others.

Democritus

Comment author: summerstay 03 November 2011 03:18:49PM *  -1 points [-]

Let any one examine the wonderful self-regulating and self-adjusting contrivances which are now incorporated with the vapour-engine, let him watch the way in which it supplies itself with oil; in which it indicates its wants to those who tend it; in which, by the governor, it regulates its application of its own strength; let him look at that store-house of inertia and momentum the fly-wheel, or at the buffers on a railway carriage; let him see how those improvements are being selected for perpetuity which contain provision against the emergencies that may arise to harass the machines, and then let him think of a hundred thousand years, and the accumulated progress which they will bring unless man can be awakened to a sense of his situation, and of the doom which he is preparing for himself... we must choose between the alternative of undergoing much present suffering, or seeing ourselves gradually superseded by our own creatures, till we rank no higher in comparison with them, than the beasts of the field with ourselves...

There is reason to hope that the machines will use us kindly, for their existence will be in a great measure dependent upon ours; they will rule us with a rod of iron, but they will not eat us; they will not only require our services in the reproduction and education of their young, but also in waiting upon them as servants; in gathering food for them, and feeding them; in restoring them to health when they are sick; and in either burying their dead or working up their deceased members into new forms of mechanical existence.

-- Samuel Butler, Darwin Among the Machines 1863

Comment author: Eneasz 03 November 2011 04:25:28PM 4 points [-]

Science is the assurance of things that exist, hoped for or not, the conviction of things that are actually seen.

Jerry Coyne

Comment author: Eneasz 03 November 2011 04:29:18PM 1 point [-]

Reach out and take also from the Tree of Life and eat, and live forever.

David Brin

Comment author: roland 03 November 2011 05:17:42PM 6 points [-]

As a team converges on a decision—and especially when the leader tips her hand—public doubts about the wisdom of the planned move are gradually suppressed and eventually come to be treated as evidence of flawed loyalty to the team and its leaders.

--Daniel Kahneman

Comment author: MichaelGR 03 November 2011 06:23:22PM 3 points [-]

Let us take what the terrain gives.

-Amos Tversky

Comment author: lukeprog 04 November 2011 12:04:15AM 5 points [-]

It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it.

Jacob Bronowski