Rationality Quotes December 2011

Jayson_Virissimo

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Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB.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.

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Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB.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.

Every time that a man who is not an absolute fool presents you with a question he considers very problematic after giving it careful thought, distrust those quick answers that come to the mind of someone who has considered it only briefly or not at all. These answers are usually simplistic views lacking in consistency, which explain nothing, or which do not bear examination.

-- Joseph de Maistre (St. Petersburg Dialogues, No. 7)

I have on numerous occasions presented problems to others, after giving them careful thought, and had them reply instantly with the correct answer. Usually the next question is "why didn't I think of that?" which sometimes has an obvious answer and sometimes doesn't.

My favorite remains Eliezer asking me the question "why don't you just use log likelihood?" I still don't have a good answer to why I needed the question!

10fubarobfusco14y

This gives, by implication, a detector for absolute folly: the condition of believing that something is a very problematic question, when in fact it has a quick, consistent, explanatory answer available to those who have considered it only briefly or not at all.

0RobinZ14y

Related xkcd.