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: 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.

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.