Rationality quotes January 2012
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- Do not quote yourself.
- Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB.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 (462)
George Orwell
A stoic sage is one who turns fear into prudence, pain into information, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking.
Nasim Taleb
-- Deng Xioaping
Duplicate, but I like your translation better.
--Steve Sailer
Good chop, bro.
Bertrand Russell
Morton Blackwell
I might have upvoted the first sentence of this -- it's accurate, at least, if a little unproductive -- but out of context the rest is difficult to parse and might imply some seriously problematic attitudes. I take it political technology means something along the lines of "rhetoric"?
Sure, it probably does, on the part of Blackwell. He is something of a fairly mindless conservative, not much of a libertarian, and he supports central bankers. But this part of his philosophy is worthy. He believes that if you're in a fight for your life, you should fight hard. ...Similar to Penn Jillette's advocacy of evangelism, even evangelism that he personally disagrees with. If the stakes are high, then even those on the wrong side of the stakes should value their position enough to fight for it, or change their opinion.
Not necessarily so. Rhetoric is far from the only means of shifting a vote. It is one tool, there are many, many others. In fact, almost any vote can be shifted, given enough effort. Enough effort can be directed at nonvoters to mobilize them, etc...
So, if you're trying to do something important (such as end slavery, release the victimless crime offenders from prison, etc...) you should learn how to win elections, since that's easier than engaging in violence commensurate with the level of importance attached to the issue.
At some point, vital issues of life or death decay to violence (Civil War), if there is no political solution forthcoming. ---The victimized eventually refuse to stay victimized, or worse, the victimizers refuse to settle with too little victimization. (And then you have the Hutus outlawing Tutsi firearm possession, and hacking them apart with machetes.)
Breaking Bad, Season One Episode Three
Terry Pratchett
-- William of Baskerville, Played by Sean Connery, Name of the Rose (1986)
Reverend Theo: Wow, you really do think you've become a God.
Petey: I'm just trying to do what I think a god would do if he were in my position.
Schlock Mercenary MONDAY JULY 31, 2006
--Alfred Korzybski
It seems most common to mix those two modes as convenient.
A latin proverb, and I think part of Roman law, it means no-one should be a judge in their own cause.
--Aristotle
--Aristotle
John Hawks
--William F. Buckley
-- Dave Gottlieb
But warm fuzzies are bullshit.
Why?
I haven't once in my life made a good decision based on feel good thinking. Naturally I may be an outlier but overall models of the world that "feel good" are generally wrong models. I value having a accurate map even if it isn't useful (yes having a wrong map can be instrumentally valuable, and a positive outlook actually often is).
Also warm fuzzies are one of the easiest way to manipulate someone. When someone tries to shower me with them I nearly indistinctly try to counterbalance them. Hm, now that I think of it that pattern matches to being a cynic.
I would have expected things to go your way every now and then simply by chance.
But... feeling good for non-bullshit reasons is desirable, no?
(I do the counterbalancing thing too, but with the aim of editing praise so that it falls where I truly deserve it.)
Sure.
What about people who want to reject the claims of religion but still want warm fuzzies? Maybe atheism wouldn't get such a bad rap in the public eye if it felt more welcoming for people who want truths but also want the sense of community provided by religion.
Paganism? It seems like one of the more accepting groups, and you don't need to actually believe to celebrate/be in a community.
Interesting idea, but identifying as pagan will probably raise as many eyebrows as atheism, if not more. I think it would be better if there was more "The universe isn't concerned about us, so it's our job to be concerned about each other" among the atheist community, or something else that sounds welcoming and friendly.
Humanism?
So true, I totally think that way.
-Gene Ray, The Wisest Human
http://www.timecube.com/timecube2.html
-Cleverbot
http://cleverbot.com/cleverness
--Mencius Moldbug
Please remember sources; this is from "How I Stopped Believing in Democracy", 31 January 2008.
Is it conventional to add sources when it is an on-line? Sorry didn't know that was expected, since it wasn't in the posting rule set. Will remember to add sources in the future.
BTW gwern sometimes your attention to detail is as unnerving as it is helpful and impressive.
I thought it was, but then, I may be interested only because it makes it easier in the future to track down citations if there is a title and URL (and because if I click on a URL, it goes into my archive bot).
It's just time-wasting... Heck, I time-waste on my time-wasting, I'm supposed to be adding citations on how people are biased against spaced repetition even when their scores are better with SR to my respective article.
--Deng Xiaoping
-- David Hume
If he didn't use the word "merely," this would be an even more amazing rationality quote than it already is.
I don't think it's very good either way. It's just a flat statement - presumably it was the thesis or conclusion to some long chain of arguments proving it. But as a quote? It is not very memorable, or witty, or a novel argument or any of the usual criteria I judge our quotes on.
Agreed, it's not particularly insightful, but I liked it because it's an easy-to-understand and memorable example of the Mind Projection Fallacy.
--H.L. Mencken
"People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything. Because people are stupid, they will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they are afraid it might be true. People's heads are full of knowledge, facts, and beliefs, and most of it is false, yet they think it all true. People are stupid; they can only rarely tell the difference between a lie and the truth, and yet they are confident they can, and so are all the easier to fool." -- Zeddicus Zu'l Zorander from the book "Wizard's first rule" by Terry Goodkind.
I'm a little confused by why people are downvoting the quote. That the book has other problems is not a reason to downvote a genuinely accurate and succinct quote.
This is a useful quote when one remembers to apply it to oneself. "You know how transparently full of shit everyone else is? Guess how stupid you are yourself."
In case this gives anyone the false impression that the Sword of Truth series is good, let me advise you: it isn't. What starts out as a decent premise devolves into the most convoluted argument for Objectivism since Rand herself.
I didn't notice the Objectivism, since the S&M and scat play drove me away first. The first book was enjoyable.
I'd have to confirm that. It started out decent but I tired of the series a few books in.
At least the first book, is written nicely and tells a good traditional story as long as you don't go any deeper into the meanings of it all, though it gets worse as the series goes on. I find the last book hilarious as the main character defeats the communists by first beating them in a game of American football. All in all, it's actually decent, if a bit... Grim at times, if you only want a fantasy novel.
It could certainly be better, and a little less transparent, but it has some good, useable quotes.
See also http://lesswrong.com/lw/2ev/rationality_quotes_july_2010/28gb
--B.F. Skinner
--James Anthony Froude
-Winston Churchill
The rest of the story is interesting; from http://www.winstonchurchill.org/learn/speeches/quotations
An apt comparison would be Napoleon's reconstruction of Paris with broad straight streets, I think. (Code is Law.)
"We are shaped and fashioned by what we love." — Goethe
-Kvothe, The Name of the Wind
osewalrus
"A man's gotta know his limitations." - Dirty Harry
C.S. Lewis, Introduction to a translation of, Athanasius: On the Incarnation
If I may continue it:
From http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/athanasius/incarnation/incarnation.p.htm
Not likely to be much help if the new outlook is built upon the old in such a way that the mistakes of the old outlook are addressed by the new, but the mistakes of the new were not raised to the point of being able to be addressed within the old.
True, on the other hand, I suspect people around here tend to massively overestimate how often that happens.
Or, you know, some new books with a fresh outlook. Just saying.
Not written yet.
"A Confucian has stolen my hairbrush! Down with Confucianism!"
-GK Chesterton (on ad hominems)
In short, they made unrealistic demands on reality and reality did not oblige them.
Cory Doctorow talking about DRM, but I think there are some wider applications.
Reminiscent of one of my favorite Bruce Schneier quotes.
Sister Juana Inés de la Cruz, 1691 (tr. Pamela Kirk Rappaport)
John Philips, 1781
Dan Dennett
To explain: a "nominal essence" is just an abstract idea that humans have decided to use to pick out a particular type of thing. This is contrasted with a more Aristotelean view of essence.
Because I'm curious:
Is Dennett's position intended to be a response to the theory of scientific incommesurability, or some other aspect of philosophy of science?
His quote is about conceptual analysis and intuition's role in philosophy in general, and about where to draw the boundary.
It's clear to infer what he's getting at, but this reminds me of nothing quite so much as Timecube.
I think it would come across as less crazy if it didn't use the word "fiction." But then it probably wouldn't have gotten into MoMA.
--Jean de la Bruyère
But we all die, so that makes death alright?
That is one source of acceptance of death.
--(The Science of Discworld, Ebury Press edition, quotes from pp 41-42)
--Bruce Schneier
-William James
Second slide of this powerpoint by Stanford's Persuasive Tech Lab.
--Peanuts (Nov. 23, 1981) by Charles Schulz
--Mencius Moldbug
This sounds like bad advice. In Moldbug's application of it, for example, making things "obvious" corresponds to making bad arguments - arguments that, in some alternate reality, possibly made of straw, would correspond to some possibly straw person who found the argument very obvious. And then you say "well, obvious argument #1 is awful, so by process of elimination let's go with obvious argument #2! Q.E.D."
Remember sources please; "How Dawkins got pwned (part 7)", 8 November 2007
You have a thing for Moldbug too, don't you? ^_^
Steven Pinker, Words and Rules
Invertible fact alert: I can't tell if Pinker means that as (mostly) a good or a bad thing!
I take it as ha ha only serious. Pinker knows that people are generally appallingly inaccurate and believe untruthful things, and that psychology is right to throw out every other belief and only depend on what it has rigorously verified; but he also knows the rigorous verification has been done on weird subjects and so psychology has thrown out a lot of correct beliefs as well. Accepting this tension is the mark of an educated man, as Aristotle says.
Given the history of psychology as a field, I'd assume he's praising the merits of experimental evidence.
Learning proceeds for all in this way--through that which is less knowable by nature to that which is more knowable; and just as in conduct our task is to start from what is good for each and make what is without qualification good for each, so it is our task to start from what is more knowable to oneself and make what is knowable by nature knowable to oneself.
-Aristotle, Metaphysics
Lack of experience diminishes our power of taking a comprehensive view of the admitted facts. Hence those who dwell in intimate association with nature and its phenomena grow more and more able to formulate, as the foundations of their theories, principles such as to admit of a wide and coherent development: while those whom devotion to abstract discussions has rendered unobservant of the facts are too ready to dogmatize on the basis of a few observations.
-Aristotle, On Generation and Corruption
Never work against Mother Nature. You only succeed when you're working with her. --Cesar Milan, quoting his grandfather in Cesar's Way, a book about rehabilitating dogs
Slavoj Žižek, Violence, emphasis added. Admittedly not the most clear elucidation of the subject of how urgency (fabricated or otherwise) should affect ethical deliberation, but see also his essay "Jack Bauer and the Ethics of Urgency" -- if you're into that sort of thing.
"When The War Came", by The Decemberists
(from memory, will fix any errors later)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Vavilov
"While developing his theory on the centres of origin of cultivated plants, Vavilov organized a series of botanical-agronomic expeditions, collected seeds from every corner of the globe, and created in Leningrad the world's largest collection of plant seeds. This seedbank was diligently preserved even throughout the 28-month Siege of Leningrad, despite starvation; one of Nikolai's assistants starved to death surrounded by edible seeds."
Thank you kind sir.
Can you elucidate the connection to rationality?
A few Google searches resolved this question for me, and proved very interesting besides. Vavilov was a Soviet botanist focused on the cultivation of efficient seeds to mitigate hunger. In World War Two, Vavilov's Leningrad seedbank came under siege by the Nazis, who apparently wanted to steal/destroy the seeds. Considering the supplies vital to Russia's long-term survival, several of the scientists swore oaths to protect the seedbank against German forces, starving foragers, and rats.
They succeeded in doing so. The scientist-guards were so loyal that many of them died of starvation despite being in a facility full of edible seeds, as well as potatoes, corn, rice, and wheat. The seedbank endured the siege and was replenished after the city was liberated.
Vavilov himself did not live to see the victory of his researchers, as he had been sent to a camp thanks to his disapproval of the scientific fraud of Lysenkoism and died (ironically, of malnutrition) before the war ended.
The Pavlovsk seed bank is at risk, but not yet doomed.
That is awesome. Thanks.
At first glance, it looks like a clear case of Bayesians vs. Barbarians to me.
Can? Of course. "Will?" Less likely.
Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the rule.
Francis Bacon
Wow, I'm surprised this had not been posted before. Good catch.
I was very surprised, too. I'd found a similar quote-- one that that I'll put in a top-level comment-- and checked for the Bacon quote.
While this quote isn't directly about rationality, it reminds me a good deal of Tsuyoku Naritai!.
~ Theodore Roosevelt, The Man in the Arena
(Edit: Just to clarify as some might misinterpret the posting of this to be a knock on rationality, the relevance of this quote is that what counts is trying to solve problem. While with hindsight it's easy to say how (to pick a mundane example) one might work out the area under a curve once you already know calculus, it's not so easy to do it without that knowledge.)
Prompted by Maniakes', but sufficiently different to post separately:
Daniel Dennett, "Get Real" (emphasis added).
Bloody p-zombies. Argh. Yes.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
(Some discussions here, such as those involving such numbers as 3^^^3, give me the same feeling.)
I don't understand that quote. A good Bayesian should still pick the aposteriori most probable explanation for an improbable event, even if that explanation has very low prior probability before the event.
I suspect the point is that it's not worthwhile to look for potential explanations for improbable events until they actually happen.
I think it's more than that - he's saying that if you have a plausible explanation for an event, the event itself is plausible, explanations being models of the world. It's a warning against setting up excuses for why your model fails to predict the future in advance - you shouldn't expect your model to fail, so when it does you don't say, "Oh, here's how this extremely surprising event fits my model anyway." Instead, you say "damn, looks like I was wrong."
I don't, however, think it's meant to be a warning against contrived thought experiments.
It's Yudkowsky. Sorry, pet peeve.
Fixed.
Is Eliezer claiming that we aren't living in a simulation, claiming that if we are living in a simulation, it's extremely unlikely to generate wild anomalies, or claiming that anything other than those two is vanishingly unlikely?
Sorry to be so ignorant but what is 3^^^3? Google yielded no satisfactory results...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuth_arrow
TheOtherDave's other comment summed up what it means practically. Also, see http://lesswrong.com/lw/kn/torturevsdust_specks/.
Ah thank you, that clarifies things greatly! Up-voted for the technical explanation.
A number so ridiculously big that 3^^^3 * X can be assumed to be bigger than Y for pretty much any values of X and Y.
Absolutely: I strongly recommend you not try to explain how 3^^^3 people might all get a dustspeck in their eye without anything else happening as a consequence, for example.
— Bertrand Russell History of Western Philosophy (from the introduction, again.)
Generalization'd.
Sorry I'm new. I don't understand. What do you mean?
Um, so the " 'd " suggests that something has been affected by a noun.
In this case, the statement "every disputant is partly right and partly wrong" is affected by generalization. In that it is, er, a false generalization.
What do you mean "the statement is affected by a generalisation"? What does it mean for something to be "affected by a generalisation"? What does it mean for a statement to be "affected"?
The claim is a general one. Are general claims always false? I highly doubt that. That said, this generalisation might be false, but it seems like establishing that would require more than just pointing out that the claim is general.
Right. So calling it a "false generalization" needed two words.
Anyhow: Where does the sun go at night? How big is the earth? Is it harmful to market cigarettes to teenagers? Is Fermat's last theorem true? Can you square the circle? Will heathens burn in hell for all eternity?
Er. What? You can call it a false generalisation all you like, that isn't in itself enough to convince me it is false. (It may well be false, that's not what's at stake here). You seem to be suggesting that merely by calling it a generalisation is enough to impugn its status.
And in homage to your unconvential arguing style, here are some non sequituurs: How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? Did Thomas Aquinas prefer red wine or white wine? Was Stalin lefthanded? What colour were Sherlock Holmes' eyes?
Suppose that I wanted to demonstrate conclusively that a generalization was false. I would have to provide one or more counterexamples. What sort of thing would be a counterexample to the claim "each party to all disputes that persist through long periods of time is partly right and partly wrong?" Well, it would have to be a dispute that persisted through long periods of time, but in which there was a party that was not partly right and partly wrong.
So in my above reply, I listed some disputes that persisted for long periods of time, but in which there was (or is) a party that was not partly right and partly wrong.
Ah I see now. Glad we cleared that up.
Still, I think there's something to the idea that if there is a genuine debate about some claim that lasts a long time, then there might well be some truth on either side. So perhaps Russell was wrong to universally quantify over "debates" (as your counterexamples might show), but I think there is something to the claim.
— Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy (from the introduction)
-- Milton Friedman
That since their preference harms nobody (apart from unadopted cats) and the utility function is not up for grabs, I have no grounds to criticize them?
The preference alone is mostly harmless. When the preference is combined with the misapprehension that the preference can be fulfilled, it may harm the person asserting the preference if it leads them to make a bad choice between a meowing cat, a barking dog, or delaying the purchase of a pet.
If the preference order were (1. Barking Cat, 2. Barking Dog, 3. Meowing Cat, 4. No Pet), then the belief that a cat could be taught to bark could lead to the purchase/adoption of a meowing cat instead of the (preferred) barking dog.
Likewise, in the above preference order, or with 2 and 3 reversed, the belief in barking cats could also lead to the person delaying the selection of a pet due to the hope that a continued search would turn up a barking cat.
The problem is magnified, and more failure modes added, when we consider cases of group decision-making.
"I would like to have a cat, provided it barked" states that U(barking cat) > U(no cat) > U(nonbarking* cat). Preferring a meowing cat to no cat is a contradiction of what was stated. The issue you raise can still be seen with U(barking cat) > U(barking dog) > U(no pet) > U(nonbarking cat), however - a belief in the attainability of the barking cat may cause someone to delay the purchase of a barking dog that would make them happier.
*In common usage, I expect that we should restrict it from "any nonbarking cat" to "ordinary cat", based on totally subjective intuitions. I would not be surprised by someone who said "I would like an X, provided it Y" for a seemingly unattainable Y, and would not have considered whether they would want an X that Z for some other seemingly unattainable Z. I think they just would have compared the unusual specimen to the typical specimen and concluded they want the former and don't want the latter. This is mostly immaterial here, I think.
I stand corrected.
That's strictly ruled out by the wording in the quote. While people often miscommunicate their preferences, I don't see particular evidence of it there, or even that the hypothetical person is under a misapprehension.
To take it back to metaphor: the flip side of wishful thinking is the sour grapes fallacy, and while the quote doesn't explicitly commit it, without context it's close enough to put me moderately on guard.
Here is the full article from which the quote was taken: http://www.johnlatour.com/barking_cats.htm
One of these things is not like the others, one of these things does not belong.
There are valid quibbles and exceptions on both counts. Some breeds of cats make vocalizations that can reasonably be described as "barking", and water will burn if there are sufficient concentrations of either an oxidizer much stronger than oxygen (such as chlorine triflouride) or a reducing agent much stronger than hydrogen (such as elemental sodium).
In the general case, though, water will not burn under normal circumstances, and most cats are physiologically incapable of barking.
The point of the quote is that objects and systems do have innate qualities that shape and limit their behaviour, and that this effect is present in social systems studied by economists as well as in physical systems studied by chemists and biologists. In the original context (which I elided because politics is the mind killer, and because any particular application of the principle is subject to empirical debate as to its validity), Friedman was following up on an article about how political economy considerations incline regulatory agencies towards socially suboptimal decisions, addressing responses that assumed that the political economy pressures could easily be designed away by revising the agencies' structures.
pfsch. You can burn water if you add salt and radio waves. Or if you put it in an atmosphere containing a reactive fluorine compound. Etc etc etc.
Relevant.
I was actually thinking in terms of 'cats can deliberately meow in an annoying fashion (abstract) like human infants and this behaviors seems perfectly modifiable, so a transhumanist could have a decent reason for preferring cats to bark than meow; and this is really stupid anyway, since we can change cats easily - we certainly can demand cats bark - but we can't change physis easily and can't demand water burn'.
-- H. L. Mencken, describing halo bias before it was named
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.
Do roses make for good soup? They make for good chocolate.
I've had rosewater flavoured ice cream.
I bet cabbage ice cream does not taste as nice.
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.
--William Ransom Johnson Pegram
--Piet Hein
Lesswrong!
This has been quoted by Yvain before, but not here.
I was very surprised to see this was not a dupe; checking, the copy in my Mnemosyne was simply taken straight from a collection of his grooks. A missed opportunity.
Do you mean you have a deck for quotes? As I'm just getting into trying out spaced repetition and trying to come up with things to memorize, I'm wondering about your reasons for memorizing quotes (if that is indeed what you're doing). Do you have some sort of system of question/answer pairs that help you remember quotes that are applicable to certain situations? Or are you trying to memorize quote authors? Or what?
I add quotes because it's a handy sort of quotes file (many people keep them) and because I like being able to reel off quotes or just have them handy in my memory for writing.
There's nothing fancy about them: the question is the quote, and the answer is all the sourcing and bibliographi information. I grade them based on whether I feel I could paraphrase them in a relevant context. ("Ah yes, good old Box's quote about how 'all models are wrong but some are useful'. Good to remember for statistical discussions. Mark that one a 4.")
Are the decks you personally use available anywhere?
http://www.gwern.net/Spaced%20repetition#see-also
Thanks a bunch :)
--Piet Hein
Lesswrong!
You can edit your own comments, for future reference. There's an icon in the bottom right of the comment that looks like a pencil over some paper.
Edit: Wait, you crossed out this comment so you must already know that. I am confused!
I knew that it was possible to edit comments. It was just that it didn't occur to me at that particular point of time. I saw 'Retract' and thought it was my best bet.
Getting crossed out is what happens to comments when they're retracted.
Ah, thank you for clarifying.
Lance Parkin, Above us only sky
This is less a rationality quote than a "yay science" quote, but I find that impressive beyond words. For millenia that was a huge and frightening question, and then we went and answered it, and now it's too trivial to point out. We found out where the sun goes at night. I want to carve a primer on cosmology in gold letters on a mountain, entitled something in all caps along the lines of "HERE IS THE GLORY OF HUMANKIND".
Do you mean cosmology or astronomy?
Both. Cosmological content: "stuff goes around other stuff"; astronomical content: "this applies to the stuff we sit on"; philosophical content: "finding this out proves we are awesome"; gastronomical content: "here's a recipe for cake to celebrate".
Is it excessive nitpicking to point out that the daily disappearance and reappearance of the Sun has to do with the Earth's rotation on its axis, not its rotation about the Sun? (Probably not, as the first comment on Parkin's blog posting points out the same.)
Is it excessive nitpicking to note that not only did he misuse the word "ultimate", he used it to mean basically the opposite of what it actually means?
No. Thank you for inspiring me to look up the word and learn its true meaning.
Songs can be Trojan horses, taking charged ideas and sneaking past the ego's defenses and into the open mind.
John Mayer, Esquire (the magazine, not the social/occupational title)
The truth is common property. You can't distinguish your group by doing things that are rational, and believing things that are true.
Paul Graham, Lies We Tell Kids
It would seem that if no other humans are behaving rationality and your group is behaving rationally then even Sesame St could tell you which of these things is not the same.
If no other groups of humans are behaving as rationally as yours is, then it's likely no other humans are capable of easily identifying that your group is the one with the high level of uniquely rational behavior. To the extent that other groups can identify rational behaviors of yours, they will have already adopted them and will not consider you unique for having adopted them too.
You can signal the uniqueness your group by believing and doing things that are both rational and unpopular, but to most outsiders this only signals uniqueness, not rationality, because the reason such things are unpopular is because most people don't find them to be obviously rational. And the outsiders are usually right: even though they're wrong in your particular actually-is-rational case, that's outnumbered by the other cases which, from the outside, all appear to be similar arational group-identifying behaviors and rationalizations thereof. E.g. at first glance there's not a huge difference between "I'm going to get frozen after I die", "I don't eat pork", "I avoid caffeine and hot drinks", etc.
Depends on how immediate and/or dramatic the benefits of the rational behavior are.
Not actually true. I'd like it to be!
Damn skippy.
I'd even settle for the above being true of my group with respect to other groups.
then you're probably insanely wrong.
Why do you say that? That doesn't sound true. Humans are monkeys - I should be surprised if a group of monkeys acts perfectly rational. I suggest that any insanity that however insane I may be this issue is straightforward.