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Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB.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Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB.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

Factually false. The Openness personality trait, and creativity in general, is linked with mental issues like schizophrenia (see also Spent 2011), while the only investigation I currently am aware of for mathematicians does not find any noticeable increase for 48 prominent modern logicians (including Godel): http://blog.computationalcomplexity.org/2011/07/disproofing-myth-that-many-early.html

(I will note I am not surprised in the least that the quote comes from Chesterton.)

Is 48 a statistically significant sample? Seriously, I do not take this quotation as factually correct. I am intrigued by the idea of logic set against imagination as I don't view them as necessarily opposing attributes. I am also amused at the idea of dividing the world into (a) poets and other creative artists and (b) chess players, mathematicians and cashiers. When I am amused I like to share - and I thought that was the point of this particular thread.