khafra comments on Rationality quotes January 2012 - Less Wrong

9 Post author: Thomas 01 January 2012 10:28AM

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Comment author: khafra 03 January 2012 05:02:23AM 30 points [-]

An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.

-- H. L. Mencken, describing halo bias before it was named

Comment author: majus 13 January 2012 05:26:04PM 8 points [-]

I like the pithy description of halo bias. I don't like or agree with Mencken's non-nuanced view of idealists. it's sarcastically funny, like "a liberal is one who believes you can pick up a dog turd by the clean end", but being funny doesn't make it more true.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 17 January 2012 06:30:30PM 1 point [-]

The point is that idealists suffer from a halo bias around their chosen ideal.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 04 January 2012 01:08:40AM 4 points [-]

Do roses make for good soup? They make for good chocolate.

Comment author: scmbradley 17 January 2012 05:11:59PM 3 points [-]

I've had rosewater flavoured ice cream.

I bet cabbage ice cream does not taste as nice.

Comment author: Vaniver 04 January 2012 04:35:33AM 5 points [-]

Do roses make for good soup?

Rose water is used for flavoring, sometimes. Roses have essentially no nutritional value, though, and cabbages are widely held to taste better than they smell.