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Rationality Quotes December 2011
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- Do not quote yourself.
- Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB.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.
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Comments (577)
-- Warhammer 40,000
I downvoted it because it is meaningless noise - "hope" is the first step to anything, without hope a person would just sit there in an apathetic puddle. Without hope, a person won't even try to find the "reasonable expectations" you mentioned in a latter response. Everything is founded on "hope".
I'd rather focus on anticipation. For me, "hope" has connotations of unjustified optimism, like "faith". As such, unjustified belief is (hopefully) a step on a road that would end with learning what's actually true and probably against unjustified belief, a "disappointment".
Normally I consider asking "omg why the downvotes boo hoo" to be crass, but in this case I'm genuinely curious: why do you guys think that this quote is inapplicable ?
The quote denies the possibility of Progress or Improvement.
I am not sure what "Progress" or "Improvement" mean in this context, but I interpret the quote to mean, "Instead of unfounded hope, try and get some reasonable expectations, or else you're going to end up being disappointed". I could be wrong, though. In any case, thanks for replying !
Well, I liked the quote, and you have my upvote. It says to me, stop wasting time hoping things will turn out right (and contrapositively, worrying that things will turn out wrong) and get down to fixing the problems.
Am I reading too much into it? I don't think so. I don't care, either. It made me smile because it showcases a big part of my world-view.
erm, this isn't rationality... this is poisonous cynicism.
Motorhead - God Was Never on Your Side
On YouTube.
Formatting note: You can do
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Thank you, edited. Is this the reason for the downvoting, or is there something else?
I'm a little torn - it still seems too long, and the line "all they do is steal" guarantees that our theists (all eight of them) will take it the wrong way, but parts seem quite good.
Eh, upvoted to -1.
I didn't (up/down)vote (the grandparent) but I imagine it's a combination of signalling concerns and a distaste for anything resembling theism.
-- Terence McKenna, Culture and Ideology are Not Your Friends
Don't believe it.
Cultures, to the best of my knowledge, differ somewhat significantly with respect to their attitude to moral and ideological progress or decline. It doesn't even seem particularly likely that every culture in history has even had an attitude such that it can be said to be operation with an assumption one way or the other.
We should implement a filter that changes the above phrase to "The USA in the 1950s". Because then the statements that include the phrase would generally become true.
I think you're being a little to harsh on the OC. You can at least use the phrase "Western Culture in the 20th century". (;
You can delete the duplicate comments now that they are retracted.
-John Lennon on leaving a line of retreat
Not actually a dupe, to my surprise. (Personally, I would've linked to 'Joy in the Merely Real' or something; lines of retreat doesn't seem that relevant.)
Well, the leaving a line of retreat article actually gives the example of a religious person imagining the world (even if they don't think it's really possible) where there's no god. Joy in the merely real makes sense too, I guess.
I actually gave it 50% odds that I'd lose karma for this quote, but I like it anyway.
--Sheldon Cooper, fictional character from the Big Bang Theory
While I kind-of agree, quoting that out of context without an explanation is mere gratuitous name-calling IMO, rather than a “Rationality Quote”.
Consider some of the other rationality quotes in previous threads. I am simply following established precedences.
Richard Scholz
“Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.” - Zen saying
A warning that not all hyperrationality is beneficial.
How strange; I live in an Enlightened civilization and I haven't chopped wood or carried water in a good long while. It would seem that someone has, once again, underestimated the potential of the mind because their own method did not suffice to achieve it.
This is obviously a different sense of the word "enlightenment", and a different intended connotation of "chop wood, carry water". Downvoted.
(I always thought that, like TheOtherDave said below, this quote means "it all adds up to normality".)
I disagree; I think that the saying is straightforwardly mistaken in exactly the way Eliezer states.
I read it as something like "enlightened or not, you're still made of atoms".
Or at least, that at some point, if you want to improve your lot, you need to leave off thinking long enough to build, buy, or improve some gadget or agreement that will actually help. Labor-saving tech really does equal progress.
-- Kiwi Dave
-Sherlock Holmes, A Study in Scarlet
Reminds me of some Warhammer 40,000 quotes:
--Heinrich Heine; an early, little-known German contribution to the Evil Overlord List.
-Doctor Who, Season 5, Episode 5
I love the quote. The Doctor is badass. But ultimately this seems to be a quote about misusing the word 'impossible' - totally out of place in this thread!
-- Finn's Note, from "The Real You"
An example of working precommitment (to a plan that may involve forgetting the plan).
--Asher Peres
So is this to differentiate the n-dimensional calculus used to model quantum phenomena from the reality of a laboratory?
In some sense, yes. Peres has long been of the view that instead of looking to some kind of 'philosophical interpretation' of what quantum mechanics is, we need to see what quantum mechanics tells us about the experiments we perform. And that questions such 'what quantum mechanics means' makes sense only if they tell us something about the outcome of an experiment.
More broadly, I put that quote here to illustrate the difference between map and territory.
“If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.” - Sir Francis Bacon
~ Mencius Moldbug
That doesn't seem like the right pair of characters for making the intended point. Here is the context:
Boromir himself was an example of a character who was doing bad but thought (until just before the end) that he was doing good. So, to consider oneself to be a Boromir is to consider oneself to be fooling oneself in just the way that Moldbug describes. Boromir already is just the kind of self-deluded person that Moldbug is saying that powerful people are. It would have made his point better to say that "Every Boromir considers himself a Faramir". Or, "Every Sauron considers himself a Gandalf".
You let an evil magic artifact of unimaginable power sway you for literally two minutes and that's the only thing people remember you for, for the rest of eternity.
Heh. But, didn't Boromir advocate using the ring as a weapon in the war with Sauron since the Council of Elrond? And wasn't it implied that, even as he acquiesced, he was still hoping to sway the others to this course down the line?
What's wrong with advocating a minority view, as long as you're not acting against the consensus?
He first heard of the Ring at the Council. So did many of the others there. And yet he was the only one who asked the eminently rational question: why seek to destroy it and not use it? And was answered, essentially, "because that's the way the plot goes, kthxbye".
Offhand, I'm sure I could think of ways to use the Ring safely. The main problem is we're never told what the Ring's powers are; so the problem of using it safely is underspecified. The Council believed that by using the Ring one could win the war by main force. Making one invisible and possibly able to understand different tongues isn't that interesting. It's said to give more power to those who are already more powerful, and to tailor the specific powers to the specific individual, so more experimentation is in order.
The problem is that Gandalf explicitly refuses the ring for fear he would find it useful and thus be corrupted by it. Whereas Moldbug's point is about how Sauron would rationalize taking the ring. Perhaps a better phrasing would be, "Every Sauron starts out as a Boromir."
Like Gandalf, then, except smart enough not to pass up such an awesome opportunity to do so much good :D.
Incidentally, there's an essay by Tolkien where he explores the differences between the motivations of Morgoth and Sauron: Notes on motives in the Silmarillion. Some excerpts:
Not really. For an ultimate ring of power the ring in question seems rather pissweak. The expected alteration of his own utility function (ie. corruption) more than offsets the lame ass powers that ring gives.
Mind you Gandalf has plenty of his own power that he doesn't seem to make efficient use of. That seems a far bigger deal!
I was describing how Sauron views himself. He wouldn't think of the ring as corrupting or "pissweak".
~ Girl Genius
(They're actually talking about fantasy fiction, but the principle applies to real life as well.)
-Pierre de Beaumarchais (and usually incorrectly attributed to Voltaire)
Imagine you find yourself in a conversation with a room full of other high school kids, most of whom are as full of confusion and self-doubt as high school kids typically are, and many of whom have found solace, self-identification, and reassurance in popular music.
In that context, this quote is far too stupid to be spoken or sung.
I think they mostly forgave me eventually.
-Voltaire, Cato
I think this quote unfairly trivializes the subjectively (and often objectively) harsh lives suicidal people go through.
As a 911 Operator, I have spoken to hundreds of suicidal people at their very lowest moment (often with a weapon in hand). In my professional judgment, the quote is accurate for a large number of cases (obviously, there are exceptions).
There are many people who want to die. There are few who are willing to commit suicide to do it.
I think this quote is objectively accurate:
In other words, if you ever think you want to kill yourself, there's a 90% chance you're wrong. Behave accordingly.
-T.H. White, in The Once And Future King (book III, Le Chevalier Mal Fet)
long quote is long.
We have never yet found a single illogical thing. Things, by and large, are pretty ordinary. If something is hard to teach and hard to learn, it's more likely that humans just suck at teaching and learning it. Alternately, some of this stuff sounds like it would really suck to learn, so active avoidance could be part of it too.
Really well written though :D
Of course. What he's describing isn't rationality, it's dysrationalia - and especially the ability to compartmentalize. The rational ones in this passage are the young, who are "intimately and passionately concerned" with the existence of God, Free Love versus Catholic Morality, and so on. More than anything I see this quote as a caution against losing the fire in your belly.
That's the point. The passage is being sarcastic.
Related: This comment by Mitchell Porter.
Louis C.K., Live at the Beacon Theater
--Max Tegmark, asking for some quantitative information in a vague lecture.
-- Daniel Shelton, re-founder of the Flat Earth Society
(We're looking for good illustrations of motivated uncertainty, insistence that no conclusion can be drawn from overwhelming data. Shelton may not be a good example because he is probably a deliberate troll who does not really believe the Earth is flat. Also, religious examples are excluded, but examples from e.g. astrology and homeopathy would not be. Daily-life examples are best.)
Is this different from the colloquial "But there's still a chance" or "But you can't be sure"?
“If you follow the ways in which you were trained, which you may have inherited, for no other reason than this, you are illogical.”
--Jalaluddin Rumi
But changing one's behavior often involves switching costs. Going with the flow avoids these costs. Since the benefits from switching are sometimes lower than the costs of switching (including the effort spent estimating the costs and benefits!), going with the flow is sometimes net-beneficial.
Example: Aren't heuristics often adaptive, even in the modern world?
Is being satisfied in a local optima rational? A rationalist should recognize that there are costs to change and they might outweigh benefits, but being better at achieving goals is the point.
That is true, people should recognize that. In fact, I don't think I disagree with anything you've said. But I think the wording of the quotation made it sound as though following pre-established behavioral patterns were always suboptimal. Surely that claim is false?
It's an interesting empirical question how much of what we do is sub-optimal. I'm sure it is larger than what most people would guess. For example, I expect that most LWers would agree that unwritten social norms, especially politeness norms, are optimized for status showing, not achievement of material goals.
That part of the quote seems to limit the applicable scope. I read it as rejection of "tradition" as a stand-alone justification. That is, we don't drive on the right side of the street in the US by "tradition," but based on Schelling point type analysis.
Sub-optimal relative to what? To what a hypothetical God/AI with unlimited computing power would recommend? Well, we don't have access to that kind of computing power.
As Nick Szabo points out in this essay, tradition often contains wisdom that would be computationally infeasible recover from first principals. So yes, all other things being equal, you should accept "tradition" as a stand-alone justification. If all other things aren't equal, then you should treat the existence of the tradition as evidence to be incorporated like other.
Thanks for the link to that interesting essay. It seems to rely on the possibility of inter-subjective truths (i.e. truths that should persuade) that are not objective (i.e. based on empirical results). Basically, I don't believe in inter-subjective truths of that kind because they are capable of proving too much. For example, "God exists" is a plausible candidate for inter-subjective truth, but there are empirical things I would expect in a world where God exists that do not appear to be present. In short, there seems to be no limit to what can be labeled inter-subjective, non-objective truth.
This asserted fragility of society is inconsistent with historical evidence. You can pick just about any moral taboo (E.g. human sacrifice or incest) and find a society that violated it but continued on, and fell for reasons independent of the violation of the moral taboo. For example, Nazi Germany didn't lose WWII because they were immoral jerkwads. Germany lost WWII because it picked a fight with a more powerful opponent (who happened to also be an immoral jerkwad).
Only if you think of them as incontrovertible evidence, rather than merely another type of evidence to be incorporated.
Would be more interesting had author defined what he means by "highly evolved tradition" and added some real world examples.
Genocide is usually (and traditionally) fate of traditional society that meets more modern one. And as for mass poverty, starvation and plagues, these were traditional part of life for all recorded history and were abolished by modernity. I'm afraid the author disproves his own thesis...
The problem is that there is no such thing as "tradition". In every society bigger than village there are numerous, mostly incompatible traditions. Even in one family often happens that, if you follow grandmother's way, you anger the other one.
--Marjorie Perloff, Wittgenstein's Ladder; apparently of the many attempts, the one referred to did not actually have British backing, although some did eg. the Oster Conspiracy or Operation Foxley.
(This is the full and original quote; the emphasis is on the section which is usually paraphrased as, "What is the use of studying philosophy if all that it does for you is to enable you to talk with some plausibility about some abstruse questions of logic...if it does not improve your thinking about the important questions of everyday life?")
I don't understand what exactly is supposed to be so shockingly "primitive" or illogical about Malcolm's statements. The remarks about the national character of the British and their level of civilization and decency can be interpreted as a reasonable belief that conspiring to assassinate a foreign head of state would be a violation of certain norms that the British government is known to follow consistently in practice, and expected to follow by a broad consensus of the British people -- such consensus being strong enough that it can be considered part of their national character.
Now, one may argue that Malcolm had mistaken beliefs about some of the relevant facts here, but Wittgenstein's reaction looks in any case like a silly tantrum. He also seems to be using the Dark Arts tactic of throwing exalted and self-important rhetoric about general intellectual principles to draw attention away from his petty and unreasonable behavior.
"The remarks about the national character of the British and their level of civilization and decency can be interpreted as a reasonable belief that conspiring to assassinate a foreign head of state would be a violation of certain norms that the British government is known to follow consistently in practice, and expected to follow by a broad consensus of the British people -- such consensus being strong enough that it can be considered part of their national character"
And when people say "I have free will" it is compatible with their being compatibilists rather than magic black-boxers. But usually they mean the black box sort.
The fact that Wittgenstein, knowing this Malcolm personally, interpreted the remark as he did is evidence in favour of that interpretation.
I was going to say your interpretation is compatible at best. But now that I've checked the quote rather than going from memory I don't think it's compatible at all:
"When Wittgenstein remarked that it wouldn't surprise him at all if it were true, Malcolm retorted that it was impossible because "the British were too civilized and decent to attempt anything so underhand, and . . . such an act was incompatible with the British 'national character'."
the retort was in response to Wittgenstein saying "it wouldn't surprise him at all if it were true"
"such consensus being strong enough that it can be considered part of their national character." This is the kind of thing Wittgenstein doesn't want you to say. National character isn't just a bunch of syllables. It encodes the idea of character inherently tied to nationality, even if that is not the specific definition used. If the consensus were 100% you'd still be confusing things by calling it the national character.
When you call something disgusting, when asked to define it you can append "causes squicky feelings" or similiar, and you can define national character as "strong enough consensus to pressure government" but people won't use those words that way and that isn't how the second was used here.
"He also seems to be using the Dark Arts tactic of throwing exalted and self-important rhetoric about general intellectual principles to draw attention away from his petty and unreasonable behavior."
His behaviour being capitalisation of dangerous in a letter to the guy five years later? Maybe the guy is too upset by some normative standard, but we have no reason to believe he's faking being upset. The deception you've implied just isn't there.Especially five years later.
In any case the "to draw attention away from his petty and unreasonable behavior" stipulation is patently false. The rhetoric is what you're calling petty and unreasonable behaviour.
You've given the first guy the most generous interpretation possible and the second the worst interpretation possible.
I get the impression you're just politicking against getting annoyed by specific word choice and against people getting upset about it (and possibly in favour of interpreting things more generously than was meant, though that could just be incidental.)
Malcolm was one of Wittgenstein's most promising students; yet even he fell - unquestioningly - into the vapid jingoistic idea that there are intrinsic 'national characters' (aggregates over millions of people of multiple regions!) which carry moral qualities despite the obvious conflict of interest (who is telling him the English are too noble to assassinate), that they exist and carry enough information to overrule public claims like that, and all his philosophical training which ought to have given him some modicum of critical thought, some immunity against nationalism, did nothing. And in point of fact, he was blatantly wrong, which is why I linked the British-connected plots and assassins.
Uh huh. And if a Tea Partier tells you that Abu Ghraib was just youthful spirits and black sites don't exist, well, obviously that's a reasonable interpretation of the facts based on that non-chimerical 'national character' or a broad consensus of the American people... Whatever.
In retrospect maybe I should've rewritten the anecdote as a German saying it (about Churchill claiming a German attempt on his life) and an English rebuking him later, just to see whether there would be anyone trying to justify it. (It's not that famous a Wittgenstein quote, I don't think anyone would notice.)
Did you also have other examples you were thinking of?
With all due respect, you are getting seriously mind-killed here.
Do you agree that the probability of a person accepting and following certain norms (and more generally, acting and thinking in certain ways) can be higher or lower conditional on them belonging to a specific nationality? Similarly, would you agree that the probability of a government acting in a certain way may strongly depend on the government in question? Or are these "vapid jingoistic idea[s]"?
For example, suppose I'm an American and someone warns me that the U.S. government would have me tortured to death in the public square if I called the U.S. president a rascal. I reply that while such fears would be justified in many other places and times, they are unfounded in this case, since Americans are too civilized and decent to tolerate such things, and it is in their national character to consider criticizing (and even insulting) the president as a fundamental right. What exactly would be fallacious about this reply?
Note that I accept it as perfectly reasonable if one argues that Malcolm was factually mistaken about the character of the British government. What I object to is grandstanding rhetoric and moral posturing that tries to justify what is in fact nothing more than a display of the usual human frailty in a petty politicking quarrel.
You are correct that such fears are unfounded in this case, but not owing to the "national character" of Americans. Rather, they are unfounded owing to the very public nature of the action your fears concern; carrying out such an action publicly would predictably raise an outcry, with hard-to-predict consequences on things like behaviour of the electorate and of the media; from an utilitarian standpoint the US government is better off finding subtler ways of coercing you, and has very little to gain from silencing this particular type of dissent.
But covert action, and covert action taken against leaders of foreign countries, might be a different calculation entirely. So the fallacious nature of the reply would arise from not comparing like with like.
In this case, the "national character" would manifest itself in the public outcry (it's certainly easy to imagine a population that would insted cheer while the seditious traitor is being executed). However, even regardless of that, would you agree that the U.S. government officials themselves are more likely to feel honest revulsion towards this idea compared to their equivalents from various other historical governments, and that they would be less likely to retaliate this way even if they could somehow get away with it?
It is clearly true that "national character," for obvious reasons, provides much more solid evidence when considering public opinion and mass behaviors. However, the amount of evidence it provides about the possible behaviors of small groups of government officials behind closed doors is also not negligible. This especially since secrets are hard to keep.
In Malcolm's case, the argument would be that British government officials are unlikely to conspire to assassinate the German head of state because, being British, they are likely to share intense revulsion towards such an idea, and also to fear the exceptional outrage among the British public should they be caught doing it. Once again, I have no problem if someone thinks that this argument rests on completely wrong factual beliefs and probability estimates. My problem is with attempts to delegitimize it based on lofty rhetoric that in fact tries to mask irrational anger at the fact that nationality indeed gives some non-zero evidence on people's beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors.
Not necessarily. I don't know to what extent government officials of all countries are more like the typical citizen of their own country than they are like other government officials of any other country. It's not clear to me which reference class would dominate in assigning priors.
Just to avoid misunderstanding, the question is whether the views of a typical U.S. government official about what criticisms of government are permissible are more similar to the average U.S. citizen, or to the views of government officials averaged across the whole world, or even across all governments that ever existed. Am I understanding correctly that you see this as a highly uncertain question?
Yup. The dynamic I have in mind is this: to become a government official, one must first pass a certain set of filters, which are likely to select for the kind of person who'll view anyone criticizing their government as scum who deserve no better than a public beating.
This is definitely not the only dynamic in play; but if you want to deny that this dynamic exists, you will have to bring evidence to bear to overcome its strong plausibility.
Malcolm doesn't make that claim if the description of the argument is a fair one. It's not the word "unlikely" but the word "impossible" that is used; and the fear of an outrage by the public isn't discussed.
It may be a good thing to correct an opponent's argument before you defeat it, but we're not obliged to actually call it a good argument.
In this situation, Malcolm's statements were only briefly paraphrased by his opponent, and the criticism of Malcolm is being presented as a great and commendable example of rational thinking. In such a context, I believe it's only fair and reasonable to give Malcolm's reported statements maximally charitable reading.
In particular, I think it's reasonable to interpret "impossible" in its casual meaning (i.e. merely vastly improbable, not literally disallowed by the laws of logic and physics). Moreover, I also think it's reasonable to interpret "national character" in a way that makes his statements more sensible, i.e. as including all factors that determine what behaviors are a priori more or less likely from a given government and its officials and subjects.
Malcolm spoke about the British national character (not the character of the British government) and from this he arbitrarily leaped to thinking that it binds the actions of the British government; as if the British government is somehow a random or representative sample of the British population.
The assumptions and leaps of logic necessary for this flawed logic are obvious to those who've managed to avoid thinking of whole nations as if they're homogeneous groups. Wittgenstein was correct to call it primitive. Malcolm was not saying anything more intelligent or subtle or deep than "Our monkey tribe good! Therefore nobody from our monkey tribe ever do bad thing!" If the representation of the conversation is a fair one, Malcolm wasn't wise enough to be able to even distinguish between government and governed, and consider the differences that might accumulated to each.
Such an absurd assumption is not necessary. It is sufficient that the way government officials are selected from the British population doesn't specifically select for traits contrary to the "national character," or that their behavior is constrained by what the general public would be outraged at, even when they act in secret. (Note also that this isn't necessarily due to rational fear of being caught -- people are normally afraid and reluctant to do outrageous things even when rational calculations tell them the probability of getting caught is negligible. With the exception of certain things where hypocrisy is the unspoken de facto norm, of course, but that's not the case here.)
Malcolm may well have been guilty of such thinking, but at the same time, Wittgenstein clearly had a fit of irrational anger at the suggestion that probabilities of monkey behaviors are not independent of their tribe. (I won't speculate on what part his own residues of tribal feelings might have played here.)
And nobody here is claiming that Malcolm was correct -- merely that Wittgenstein's reaction was hardly the paragon of rationality it's presented to be.
The fake explanation. What does the claim of 'civilization' and 'decency' add to the assertion? (Recall that Wittgenstein specifically objects to "dangerous phrases".) Does it help you predict that, eg, child-molesters could die painfully in prison, out of the public eye but not out of mind? What does it tell you about the public use of pain in other cases? Seems to me the meaningful part of your hypothetical reply ends with "in this case," since you've already drawn a line around the USA by saying that it differs from "many other places and times".
It also seems like (when you speak of "probability") you're defending a statement that Perloff does not record Malcolm making, while criticizing Wittgenstein for traits this particular passage does not clearly show.
I added these word specifically to parallel the paraphrase of Malcolm's claim. The rationale for their use is that there exists a specific (if somewhat vague and, on some dimensions, disputed) cluster in the space of all possible systems of social norms that is commonly associated with these words in modern English. Among other things, this includes a negative attitude towards public judicial torture and open repression of (some kinds of) anti-government speech (relevant for my example), as well as towards assassination plots against foreign leaders (relevant for Malcolm's example -- and possibly a matter of greater outrage back in his day).
So it's not a fake explanation, because it points to a real existing cluster of norms that have been dominant in the Western world in recent history. This can in turn be used, for example, to point to other norms in this cluster and predict that they are correlated with the listed examples across societies.
Note that here I'm merely using these words with their customary meaning, not to express unreserved approval of this entire cluster of norms.
As I already pointed out, we are not judging Malcolm and Wittgenstein as two equal participants in a debate. Rather, we are discussing whether the latter's criticism really is up to such high standards that it deserves being extolled as a sterling example of rational thinking. Hence my sticter scrutiny of him, and my tendency to give maximally charitable interpretation to Malcolm.
The quote and comments raise two questions: 1) What was Wittgenstein chastising Malcolm for? and 2) Were their opinions rational?
On the first, I don't think there's enough information to tell. Was Wittgenstein protesting that Malcolm drew too close a connection between national character and state conduct or that Malcolm was victim of an idealized view of British national character? I think Malcolm was "primitive" for both reasons, and it seems fairly plausible that Wittgenstein might have had both in mind.
But there's a third form of primitiveness in Malcolm's remark, and Wittgenstein appears to have shared Malcolm's premise—although that's not completely clear. It is a cached-belief bias: that the assassination of any foreign head of state is immoral. Such formalism is irrational when considering a radically new development (the rise of a Nazi Germany and the degree of its dependence on its fuhrer). Only "primitive" people would assume that "decent" people necessarily eschew assassination, regardless of the despot's international role.
As I think about it, I can't dismiss that this aspect might have been what offended Wittgenstein, who does not appear to have been completely honest; to my ear, he sounds personally offended. What offended him, we might guess, is that Malcolm was insinuating that Wittgenstein's approval of such an endeavor was indecent. (A point on which Wittgenstein was, I think, sensitive and which would offend most people when directed toward them.)
-- Paul Graham, "The Age of the Essay" (http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html)
But its not true. (well, under the most reasonable interpretations that come to mind)
Rivers do meander "frivolously" due to instabilities.
Even if it didn't carve into the earth, it wouldn't be true, since it's a simple gradient descent.
Let's go for two-in-one this time:
--PZ Myers
-- Guy Steele, Growing a Language (pdf)
(McKay & Dennett 2009)
Isn't pure mathematics a counterexample?
Euripides, Helen
-- Dutch proverb
“To see is to forget the name of the thing one sees.” ― Paul Valéry
I occasionally do this as a routine for meditation/reflection/expanding perspective/entertainment/not sure what label to use, and I recommend it because I think members of the community will be able to do it.
I basically go outside and walk around looking around at trees the sidewalk and grass and trying to disassociate what I'm seeing from any notions of 'tree' or 'grass' object classes. Once I can get those I can usually extend it to everything in my perception. A sort of de-object-ification, trying to hold in my mind the notion that there are no boundaries between one thing and the next, and that 'thing' itself is a fundamentally false concept. If you read HPMOR, it's Harry's thought processes when he attempts partial transfiguration.
The effect is somewhat of an exhilarating experience of stepping out of the system and seeing it for what it is, and a peaceful intimate connection with the air around you, realizing that there really is no boundary between self and the world.
If I can point to anything similar, it would be Jill Bolte Taylor's description of her stroke, and drug experiences I've had recounted to me, though I don't have personal experience in either area.
~ Randall Munroe, xkcd #240: Dream Girl
Except that in this case it did.
Just reading that maxed out my GDA for fuzzies.
"The Latest Toughs" by Okkervil River http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tziQcj4XIYw
Gerry Spence (emphasis his)
-Randall Munroe, xkcd
-- Questionable Content #2072
-Eric Drexler, Engines of Creation
This is just reinforcing what people (on LessWrong) already think about non-narrow AI; you could just as easily have someone say that:
I remember reading on LessWrong (though I can't find the link now) about how if folk wisdom/sayings can be reversed and applied to the situation, it means that neither is capable of giving real insight to the problem.
I thought seriously about whether or not to post it, for that reason. And I myself have commented a few times in the past on quotes that espoused libertarianism, or transhumanism, or singularitarianism, but didn't have some sort of rationality message. While I do in fact think that AI is possible in the way Drexler wrote, the part I was actually thinking about was the definition of impossible. I actually tried to come up with a way of "censoring" the quote, while still leaving the passage readable, but I didn't see a way to do it.
Which of course doesn't mean that it's impossible ;)
PS. Upvoted
-John Nash, A Beautiful Mind
In other words, recognizing that politics is the mind-killer helped Nash manage his paranoid-scizophrenia.
Or, at least, he believes it did.
-Tooby and Cosmides, emphasis theirs. It occurred to someone on the Less Wrong IRC channel how good this is an isomorphism of, "You have asked a wrong question."
I disagree. Say that many members of the royal family have hemophilia. Is this due to genes, or environment? If it is genes, you can try to track down who has the gene, and not marry any of those people to your current monarch. If it is something in the royal water supply, you can track that down. If you say "It's both!", you are unlikely to solve the problem.
This applies to pretty much every case where people argue whether something is genes or environment. The claim that you can't call some things mainly genetic and some things mainly environmental is, we know with a very high degree of certainty, false. In most cases, the motivation for this claim is, I think, to avoid the unpleasant possibility that the answer is "genetic".
I never actually considered this viewpoint. But you know, the Tooby and Cosmides quote attacks the false dichotomy of "Everything is genetics! It's all programmed from before you're born!" and "Blank slate! Absolutely nothing is determined by anything other than experience!" both of which are nonsense.
But it also doesn't support the false third option, "You found a genetic basis for autism? Racist!"
For certain traits, you cannot break things down as a ratio of genetics:environment. For example, myopia appears to be a genetically-based trait, but it also appears to be expressed much more frequently when children learn to read (which is why such a disasterous trait for a hunter-gatherer wasn't eliminated in the tens of thousands of years before literacy). In other words, the phenotype (nearsighted) is both entirely genetic and entirely environmental.
Some things are mostly genetic. Some things are mostly environmental. Some things are a mix of both. But currently, you are supposed to say that everything is both genetic and environmental (or be labelled a racist). And that is false.
Everything is genetic and environmental. If you look low enough down.
The fact is, humans share lots of genes with each other.
Example: Suppose I tell you, “What about language acquisition? I'm sure that if I speak better Italian than Nick Bostrom and he speaks better Swedish than me, our genes have f* all to do with that.” You could answer that it's our genes which shaped our brain in such a way that we could have picked up a native language in the first place, and a chimpanzee (or a human with major neurological problems) wouldn't have learned Italian or Swedish even if raised in the very same environment. But when more than 99% (I guess) of the world human population would have been able to learn whichever natural (or sufficiently natural-like) language they had been raised in, such an objection wouldn't be very useful.
On the other hand, while genes require environments in a given range to be expressed (you couldn't raise a person to be the same as me on Mars, even if he were my identical twin brother), certain features are expressed pretty much the same way throughout the range of environments where one could survive. The probability that John's blood type is AB+ given that he's alive and that his identical twin brother's blood type is AB+ is pretty close to 1, wherever John was raised.
Hence, I'd just say that language is environmental and blood type is genetic. Anything else is useless nitpicking, akin to saying that I shouldn't say that the C and C# keys on a piano are white and black respectively because even the former does absorb some light and even the latter does scatter some.
The notion of heritability clears up this issue a bit, as it screens off genetic similarities in the population.
And everything scatters some of the incident light and absorbs some. But this doesn't mean we should never call anything “black” or “white”.
If it is both then you are more likely to solve the problem by saying "It's both" than by saying "it's one!"
Since my sibling reply got voted up a lot, I want to follow up: it seems that not only is the question not wrong, the "dissolving" answer is itself wrong, or at least very misleading. (Naturally, I have to tread cautiously, since I'm not an Expert in this area.)
As I said in my other reply, the defining characteristic of life is its ability to maintain a low-entropy island against the entropizing forces of nature. So there must be some range of environments in which an organism (via genes) is able to produce the same phenotype regardless of where its environment falls within that range. In effect, the genes allow the phenotype to be "screened off" (d-separated, whatever) from its environment (again, within limits).
A thing that truly allows the environment equal influence in its final form as the thing itself (as suggested by the T&C answer) is not what we mean by "life". It's the hot water that eventually cools to a temperature somewhere between its current temperature and that of its initial environment. It's the compressed gas molecules in the corner of a chamber that eventually spread out evenly throughout the chamber. It is, in short, not the kind of self-replicating, low entropy island we associate with life, and so has no basic units thereof, be they genes or memes.
That sounds like less of a wrong question and more of a "right question with surprising (low prior) answer". As far as the asker knew, the answer could have turned out to be, "Genes produce the same organism phenotype across virtually all environments, so genes are more important because changing them is much more likely to change the expressed phenotype than changing the environment." (and indeed, life would not be life if genes could not force some level of environment-invariance, thereby acting as a control system for a low-entropy island)
I don't see what's wrong with answering this question with "neither [i.e., they're equal], because they jointly determine phenotype, as independent changes in either have the same chance of affecting phenotype".
An example of a wrong question, by contrast, would be something like, "Which path did the electron really take?" because it posits an invalid ontology of the world as a pre-requisite. The question about phenotypes doesn't do that.
~ Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book
"I did not think; I investigated."
Wilhelm Roentgen, when asked by an interviewer what he thought on noticing some kind of light (X-ray-induced fluorescence) apparently passing through a solid opaque object. Quoted in de Solla Price, Science Since Babylon, expanded edition, p. 146.
Thomas Carew
~Epictetus
This is rather self-serving: the Stoics in general were renowned (and well-paid) teachers. (More practically, I've seen some articles suggesting that, in the US, the cost of some majors now outweighs the monetary benefits. The cost of education should at least be considered.)
More like a causation, I'd say: causation causes correlation.
But correlation only correlates with causation.
The way I like to put it is this: "correlation correlates with causation because causation causes correlation." :)
I believe that both of them also sell sea shells by the sea shore :-)
Thomas Jefferson, to John Adams, August 15, 1820.
I had thought that Jefferson and Adams were bitter political rivals and so was very surprised to read this. With a quick check from Wikipedia, I learned that, "[after being] defeated for re-election by Thomas Jefferson and retir[ing] to Massachusetts, he later resumed his friendship with Jefferson."
Anyway, I like the quote for rationality purposes as well as for the fact that I now have a start on quote-mining if I ever need to write terrifying Jefferson/Adams shipping fanfiction. Why I would need to do so is nonobvious to me right now, but it is one of many contingencies for which I am now prepared.
Tom Lehrer, "That's Mathematics"
(If one were so inclined, one could give a quasi-rationalist commentary on practically every lyric in that song.)
Anatole France, Le livre de mon ami (1885)
I can't see how this is a rationality quote. This would imply that humans have a hard time controlling their actions. How else could someone who thinks wisely act in an absurd fashion? Isn't rationality about how to overcome that humans don't think wisely?
--Arthur Schopenhauer
Knutson and Tuleya, Journal of Climate, 2005.
But they are observable later. For example, we can observe now the predictions from 2005, when this quote originates.
It's like saying "should we trust our model or the actual results?" The point is that you can only rely on models when making predictions, if you have the results you don't need a model to come up with the results.
No, what Thomas is saying is that we should compare the model's predictions with the actual results and use that to calibrate how much we should trust the model.
--The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
This is my father's favorite quote from his favorite movie.
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Because... it's not real?
Just sayin'.
What Harry should've asked isn't where the experience was taking place but whether the Dumbledore he was talking to was the model of Dumbledore in his head, which only knows things that Harry knows, or enough of the actual Dumbledore to know things that Harry doesn't know. That is, what's relevant isn't the location of the experience but the source of the information feeding into that experience. That would also be the relevant criterion for distinguishing between, for example, a message from God and a hallucination.
That's like saying is depression real, or is it just happening inside the patient's head?
The correct answer is yes and yes.
I held off reading this series (my children being in their 30s and having no grandchildren) until several months ago when I realized that just because I didn't watch television or go to many movies, I should not be totally left out of modern culture. And so I started the first year. I could not put these books down and more or less inhaled all seven as fast as I could. What an excellent choice of quotations for this thread.
--Hokusai and Hiroshige
-- Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men
And they'll be beaten in turn by people who were in the right place at the right time, or won the genetic lottery. A little luck can make up for a lot of laziness, and working hard and learning things can just leave you digging ditches and able to quote every Simpsons episode verbatim.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/01/geeks-lose-minds-recreate-first-level-of-super-mario-land-with/
What? They didn't implement the gameboy in minecraft? The bums!
I suspect it can be done programmatically, by wiring MC server to emulator, in less than 50 hours.
---"Culture in Economics and the Culture of Economics: Raquel Fernández in Conversation with The Straddler"
-- Joseph de Maistre (St. Petersburg Dialogues, No. 7)
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.
[citation needed]
It doesn't seem at all uncommon for someone from domain A to present a problem and for someone from domain B to immediately reply "Oh, we have just the perfect tool for that in my field!".
Aretae
(I can't give the exact quote, as it's hearsay, and I'm translating it back into English from Russian)
During WW2, British aircraft engineers had to reach a compromise between an airplane's structural durability and other uses of weight such as armor, defensive armament, etc. The odds of losing a bomber due to its structure falling apart were much less than those of it simply being shot down; 1:10000 and 1:20 respectively. Yet when the designers proposed sacrificing some structural integrity to improve the bomber's armor plating or machineguns, the pilots were adamant. They hated the thought of their plane breaking up on its own so much that they passed up the opportunity to reduce a MUCH more likely risk.
(I suspect that the bias here had to do with risks somewhat dependent on the subject seeming much more controllable and less abhorrent).
"'...You are now nearly at childhood's end; you are ready for the truth's weight, to bear it. The truth is that the heroism of your childhood entertainments was not true valor. It was theater. The grand gesture, the moment of choice, the mortal danger, the external foe, the climactic battle whose outcomes resolve all-- all designed to appear heroic, to excite and gratify an audience. An audience.' He made a gesture I can't describe: 'Gentlemen, welcome to the world of reality-- there is no audience. No one to applaud, to admire. No one to see you. Do you understand? Here is the truth-- actual heroism receives no ovation, entertains no one. No one queues up to see it. No one is interested.'"
"'Routine, repetition, tedium, monotony, ephemeracy, inconsquence, abstraction, disorder, boredom, angst, ennui-- these are the true hero's enemies, and make no mistake, they are fearsome indeed. For they are real.'"
David Foster Wallace, The Pale King, p. 232
--Christopher Hitchens (Dec. 15 December 2011) The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Non-believer
--Gregory Cochran
-- Steven Kaas
Old joke, but a good one.
After describing an odd subjective experience:
-- Aleister Crowley here
"If a theory has a lot of parameters, you adjust their values to fit a lot of data, and your theory is not really predicting those things, just accommodating them. Scientists use words like “curve fitting” and “fudge factors” to describe that sort of activity. On the other hand, if a theory has just a few parameters but applies to a lot of data, it has real power. You can use a small subset of the measurements to fix the parameters; then all other measurements are uniquely predicted. " Frank Wilczek
"With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk."
John von Neumann