khafra comments on Rationality quotes January 2012 - Less Wrong
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-- H. L. Mencken, describing halo bias before it was named
Do roses make for good soup? They make for good chocolate.
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.
I've had rosewater flavoured ice cream.
I bet cabbage ice cream does not taste as nice.
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.
The point is that idealists suffer from a halo bias around their chosen ideal.