Rationality quotes January 2012

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

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  • Do not quote yourself.
  • Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB.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.

Comments (462)

Comment author: [deleted] 01 January 2012 12:04:04AM *  3 points [-]

Human behavior is predictable if sad. As much as we like to delude ourselves we are rational thinkers we usually tend to fall back on habit and mental shortcuts. You can easily train your brain to overcome this but it does take some work on your part. So it probably isn’t going to happen. But I’ll do my part trying to point out your many and varied shortcomings and you can go along, nodding wisely and congratulating me on my benevolent teachings while all the while planning to ignore me and do things the same way as before. [...]

The family house you grow up in is what you see as normal. That is the definition of shelter in your life. If you encounter a new product, that first price is what you use as a “normal” one. So everything can suffer from your first encounters ( or look better in comparison ). This is why most people won’t look for shelter. They look for a house. Or an apartment. Whatever they are used to. They are not used to finding a way to keep the elements out, they are used to finding a house or apartment. This is the way it is done and any suggestion otherwise is ignored. They might pretend to be open to new ideas but once they find fault with any way other than their own they can claim to be objective while remaining safely cocooned in their normal world.

People don’t look at how to get from one point to another. They don’t look at the need for transportation, they look at the need for a car. So by comparison shopping for cars they ignore scooters or bicycles or public transport or even carpooling. They are used to having a car and that is the only way to do it. People don’t look at how to become secure, they look at how to make money. To them money equals security and there is no other way. They ignore being out of debt, they ignore decreasing dependence on a paycheck ( note I said decrease, not eliminate ). They ignore all but getting money. This is how it was done before and it is how they are going to continue to do it.

~James Dakin, throwing the anchor overboard

Comment author: Nominull 01 January 2012 07:30:38AM 1 point [-]

There is something to be said for the wisdom of crowds. Information cascades are a thing, but the reason they happen is that it's rational for each individual to go along with the crowd, and you're not going to form a new equilibrium by yourself.

Comment author: Manfred 03 January 2012 09:30:21AM 1 point [-]

Following the crowd is often rational, but not so often that you can just state it universally. Sometimes the crowd is simply wrong, and you're better off buying a bike. People, they crazy.

Comment author: MixedNuts 02 January 2012 02:48:32AM 3 points [-]

Recomputing everything/random things/currently unsatisfying things is expensive and error-prone. The standard for new good ideas may be to look at other cultures. For example, public transport was my first thought (I've lived in large cities in Western Europe). If nobody anywhere has implemented your awesome suggestion, maybe it's a rare problem so few solutions have been tried, maybe everyone got stuck in poor local optima, or maybe it sucks.

Comment author: [deleted] 03 January 2012 01:11:31AM *  2 points [-]

I agree that such looking ought to be one's first recourse, for exactly the reasons you cite. I note, however, that one should look at subcultures for ideas as well, not just at the mainstream cultures of different geographical regions. For example, if I were to look at methods of solving the issue of shelter mentioned in the quote, I would not just look at how regular people lived in the cities of Japan or the countryside of North America, but also at how, say, people in the frugality movement or soldiers in the military dealt with it. Maybe some historical cultures, too, if I could easily find enough information about them.

Comment author: [deleted] 01 January 2012 12:17:44AM 14 points [-]

Science isn't just a job, it's a means of determining truth. Methods of determining truth that aren't trustworthy in the laboratory don't become trustworthy when you leave it. There is no doctrine of applying scientific methodology to every aspect of one's life, you either follow trustworthy methods of investigation or you don't, and "follow trustworthy methods of investigation" is the core of science.

~Desertopa, TVTropes Forum

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 01 January 2012 07:32:54PM 9 points [-]

There are types of valid evidence that aren't scientific. In particular science is also partially a social process, whereas you trying to find the truth for yourself is not.

Comment author: tingram 01 January 2012 12:38:52AM *  44 points [-]

Everyday words are inherently imprecise. They work well enough in everyday life that you don't notice. Words seem to work, just as Newtonian physics seems to. But you can always make them break if you push them far enough.

--Paul Graham, How to Do Philosophy

[surprisingly not a duplicate]

Comment author: tingram 01 January 2012 12:39:11AM *  18 points [-]

Use only that which works, and take it from any place you can find it.

--Bruce Lee

Comment author: MixedNuts 02 January 2012 02:39:19AM 5 points [-]

That seems rather applause-lighty. The reversal is abnormal; who would say "Use some things that don't work"? Maybe in some traditionalist cultures "Resist the appeal of using things that work but come from unworthy places" would sound wise, but on LessWrong it would likely get stares.

Comment author: fortyeridania 02 January 2012 11:45:04AM 11 points [-]

That seems rather applause-lighty.

I think many cited quotations sound applause-lighty. They are meant to by pithy encapsulations of LW themes, after all. And I don't think that's necessarily a problem; applause lights are a problem for things that might be taken as reasoning, like posts.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 04 January 2012 02:22:18AM 14 points [-]

Bruce Lee was a martial artist, and martial arts is a field where a lot of people go by tradition rather than checking on what works.

Comment author: tingram 01 January 2012 12:41:45AM *  8 points [-]

They often do [scramble the reels] at art houses, and it would seem that the more sophisticated the audience, the less likely that the error will be discovered.

--Pauline Kael, Zeitgeist and Poltergeist; or, Are Movies Going to Pieces?

Related

Comment author: [deleted] 01 January 2012 12:46:20AM *  5 points [-]

Professor: So, the invalidation of the senses and cognition as a means of knowing reality is a common thread through eastern mysticism and platonic philosophy. We will study the resurgence of these ideas within secular western philosophies starting with the explanation of how it's impossible to know things "as they are" versus things as they are within the bounds of our minds.
Phone: Beep Beep Beep ♪
Professor: See you on Monday.
(He answers)
Professor: Yes?
Wife: Honey, Angelica is having trouble with her vision. I'm going to use some of the rainy day account to take her to the optometrist.
Professor: Hahah! Actually, vision is merely a sense that supplies the mind with perceptions, interpreting with all biases and forming only-
Wife: Honey.
Professor: Oh. Yes dear. Go ahead.

~Jay Naylor, Original Life

Comment author: gwern 01 January 2012 01:25:43AM 1 point [-]

'withing'. Also, I don't entirely understand - is the point that the professor, contra his students, argues in the reliability and objectivity of vision and then turns around and argues the opposite against his wife?

Comment author: katydee 01 January 2012 05:21:49AM *  6 points [-]

I think the point is that the professor's stated philosophical beliefs (that sense-perceptions are an invalid means of knowing reality) contradict his commonsense desire for his daughter to have good vision, and thus his elaborate arguments are shown to be disconnected from reality.

Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 02 January 2012 08:52:06AM *  6 points [-]

I think the point is that the professor's stated philosophical beliefs (that sense-perceptions are an invalid means of knowing reality) contradict his commonsense desire for his daughter to have good vision, and thus his elaborate arguments are shown to be disconnected from reality.

The professor's hypocrisy isn't (non-negligible) evidence for or against the connectedness of his arguments to reality. Instead, it is evidence that there is divergence between the professor's stated beliefs and his actual beliefs (assuming he that he cares about his daughters eyesight, believes an optometrist can help her eyesight, etc...).

Comment author: katydee 02 January 2012 09:06:58AM 1 point [-]

True, good point.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 03 January 2012 10:37:09AM *  -2 points [-]

"A professor from Columbia University had an offer from Harvard. He couldn't make up his mind--whether he should accept or reject... So a colleague took him aside and said, 'What is your problem? Just maximise your expected utility! You always tell your students to do so.' Exasperated, the professor responded, 'C'mon, this is serious.'" -- Gigerenzer

Comment author: gwern 03 January 2012 03:07:02PM 2 points [-]
Comment author: [deleted] 01 January 2012 04:35:28PM *  3 points [-]

Fixed, thanks!

The professor isn't arguing a different point to his wife than he was lecturing to his students; he's just responding to her from the viewpoint of the philosophy he is teaching. Interestingly, some of what he says isn't that different from LW ideas. His problem is that he forgets that his view of reality should add up to normality. Just because people can't see things directly but must instead look at copies of things within their own brain does not make vision "mere" or mean that fixing his daughter's eyesight is somehow less important (as his wife amusingly reminds him).

Comment author: gwern 01 January 2012 01:24:02AM 15 points [-]

“The general method that Wittgenstein does suggest is that of ’shewing that a man has supplied no meaning for certain signs in his sentences’.

I can illustrate the method from Wittgenstein’s later way of discussing problems. He once greeted me with the question: ‘Why do people say that it was natural to think that the sun went round the earth rather than that the earth turned on its axis? I replied: ‘I suppose, because it looked as if the sun went round the earth.’ ‘Well,’ he asked, ‘what would it have looked like if it had looked as if the earth turned on its axis?’

This question brought it out that I had hitherto given no relevant meaning to ‘it looks as if’ in ‘it looks as if the sun goes round the earth’.

My reply was to hold out my hands with the palms upward, and raise them from my knees in a circular sweep, at the same time leaning backwards and assuming a dizzy expression. ‘Exactly!’ he said.”

–Elizabeth Anscombe, An Introduction To Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (1959); apropos of a recent Scot Sumner blog post

Comment author: Alejandro1 01 January 2012 05:26:12PM 11 points [-]

Another great quote by Sumner in that same post:

The Great Depression was originally thought to be due to the inherent instability of capitalism. Later Friedman and Schwartz blamed it on a big drop in M2. Their view is now more popular, because it has more appealing policy implications. It’s a lot easier to prevent M2 from falling, than to repair the inherent instability of capitalism. Where there are simple policy implications, a failure to do those policies eventually becomes seen as the “cause” of the problem, even if at a deeper philosophical level “cause” is one of those slippery terms that can never be pinned down. [Bold added]

Comment author: gwern 01 January 2012 01:28:20AM 17 points [-]

"Don't ask whether predictions are made, ask whether predictions are implied."

--Steven Kaas

Comment author: gwern 01 January 2012 01:28:47AM 18 points [-]

"When picking fruit, an excellent first choice is the low-hanging ladderfruit. It is especially delicious."

--Frank Adamek

Comment author: Grognor 01 January 2012 01:33:05AM *  9 points [-]

A man said to the universe:
"Sir, I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."

-Stephen Crane

Comment author: peter_hurford 01 January 2012 11:28:16PM *  15 points [-]

More accurate:

A man said to the universe: "Sir, I exist!"

The universe says nothing.

Comment author: SilasBarta 02 January 2012 04:45:17PM 6 points [-]

Right, because Eliezer Yudkowsky wasn't addressing it.

Comment author: Dorikka 03 January 2012 04:02:07AM 7 points [-]

groan

Comment author: Bugmaster 04 January 2012 01:14:25AM 0 points [-]

There's no Universe; there's only a set of things which Eliezer Yudkowsky allows to exist !

Comment author: IlyaShpitser 04 January 2012 03:40:18AM 4 points [-]

Note from a "sympathetic outsider": I know you are joking, but the sorts of things like this subthread sometimes come across more creepy than funny.

Comment author: Bugmaster 04 January 2012 03:46:33AM -1 points [-]

I was making an allusion...

Comment author: dbaupp 04 January 2012 05:02:26AM 2 points [-]

There's a whole page of them too!

Comment author: quinox 01 January 2012 01:46:52AM *  18 points [-]

"Is it hard?"

"Not if you have the right attitudes. It’s having the right attitudes that’s hard."

-- Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Comment author: Nornagest 01 January 2012 02:06:20AM *  5 points [-]

By convention there is color, by convention sweetness, by convention bitterness; but in reality there are atoms and space.

-- Democritus

Comment author: MarkusRamikin 01 January 2012 08:44:24AM 3 points [-]

How are those things "convention"? Did all sentience have a pow-wow some time back and decide to experience such and such sensations when confronted with such and such physical things?

Comment author: Nornagest 01 January 2012 09:43:04AM *  5 points [-]

I read it as saying they're conventional in the sense that the lines between categories of sensory experience are drawn by consensus, lacking direct access to the experiences of others.

We of course lack direct access to the atomic-scale world as well, but I imagine that's the point -- atomism was a lot more abstract to the likes of Democritus than atomic theory is to us. The underlying physical reality is in a certain sense abstracted away from us, and we reflect that by talking about physical experiences in a conventional way, but those experiences are still rooted in the reality of atoms and space -- or distributions of probability density, if you prefer.

Comment author: latanius 01 January 2012 03:04:12PM 1 point [-]

Including three kinds of light sensors, including one for around 700 nm electromagnetic waves (also called "red"), is a common design convention for humans (for reference, see "Further Random Experiments with Photoreceptors in Furry Legged Things", in Proceedings of the Council of Azathoth, 63 million y. BC)

Comment author: soreff 01 January 2012 03:20:37PM 0 points [-]

Three types of cones, plus one type of rod....

Comment author: latanius 01 January 2012 03:31:48PM 1 point [-]

woops I indeed forgot the "Enhancements for Night Vision" part...

Comment author: Will_Newsome 03 January 2012 08:56:27AM *  -2 points [-]

Yes. (Democritus was at least essentially wrong about the atoms and space thing upon a somewhat naive interpretation, but he was right about convention. And I say this as someone who dislikes Democritus.)

Comment author: James_Miller 01 January 2012 02:45:56AM *  7 points [-]

The existence of gray does not preclude the existence of black and white.

The existence of dawn and dusk does not preclude the existence of noon and midnight.

I'm not sure who originally said this but I vaguely remember the quotes from law school.

Comment author: torekp 02 January 2012 12:39:59AM 2 points [-]

I like to say "there are such things as dawn and dusk, but the difference between night and day is like ..." - and here I pause just long enough for the audience to mentally anticipate me - "the difference between night and day."

Comment author: [deleted] 01 January 2012 02:51:00AM *  20 points [-]

AUGUSTUS: I've had premonitions. Premonitions of death.

FABIUS MAXIMUS: We all have them.

AUGUSTUS: No, no, no. This is serious. Listen, old friend, let me tell you. Two weeks after we came back from you know where, I was in Mars Field giving a libation. A little ceremony. You remember?

FABIUS MAXIMUS: I remember, but I wasn't there.

AUGUSTUS: No? Well. nearby, there's a temple built in memory of Marcus Agrippa.

FABIUS MAXIMUS: Yes, I know it.

AUGUSTUS: An eagle circled me five times, then flew off and settled on the "A" of Agrippa's name.

FABIUS MAXIMUS: Well. Caesar...

AUGUSTUS: No, don't lie to me. It's clear what it means. It was telling me that my time had come and that I must give way to someone by the name of Agrippa.

FABIUS MAXIMUS: Postumus?

AUGUSTUS: Who else?

FABIUS MAXIMUS: Did you consult an augur?

AUGUSTUS: No. I don't need an augur.

FABIUS MAXIMUS: Well. you're not an expert on the interpretation of signs.

AUGUSTUS: Then listen to this. The following day, lightning melted the "C" on my name on a statue nearby. It struck the "C" off "Caesar". Do you follow? What does "C" mean?

FABIUS MAXIMUS: A hundred.

AUGUSTUS: A hundred. Exactly! Livia saw it. She went to an augur to find out what it meant. She wouldn't tell me, but I forced it out of her. It means that I have only a hundred days to live. I shall die in a hundred days.

(long pause)

FABIUS MAXIMUS: Or weeks.

AUGUSTUS: Eh?

FABIUS MAXIMUS: Why shouldn't it be weeks? Or months? Why shouldn't it mean that you'll live to be a hundred?

--I, Claudius, "Poison Is Queen"

Comment author: Will_Newsome 03 January 2012 02:10:27AM *  3 points [-]

Because days is the Schelling point interpretation, and if gods are communicating with you they'll probably go for the Schelling point. Lightning implies Zeus-Jupiter, so Augustus should look into historical examples of Zeus talking to people to see if Zeus tends to be misleading in ways similar to those Fabius warns of; in fact the augur had probably already considered things like this before speaking with Livia. And Fabius should trust the augur, who is a specialist in the interpretation of signs and probably has more details of the case than he does. I mean seriously, what are the chances that the letter C would get struck by lightning? We are beyond the point of arbitrary skepticism. Deny the data or trust the professionals. (I'm not familiar with the series in question, I'm just filling in details in the most likely way I can think of.)

ETA: Wait, maybe Fabius is trolling Augustus/me? ...Nice one Fabius! I approve of your trolling. Downvote retracted. (Oh yeah and this is an excuse to link to the Wiki article on assassination markets.)

Comment author: Alejandro1 03 January 2012 04:18:45AM 1 point [-]

For everyone who knows that Livia is the Magnificent Bastard of the series (which is made clear from the first episode, so no spoiler there), the highest probability mass goes to the hypothesis that was lying about having spoken to an augur or about what he told her, and that she wanted Augustus to question her and only feigned to resist. And "everyone who knows" at this stage probably includes Fabius, and every other character but Augustus.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 03 January 2012 08:00:49AM *  1 point [-]

So the leader of the relevant transhumanly intelligent entities is on the side of the Magnificent Bastard? If I was Augustus I'd seriously consider being nice to the Jews and asking YHWH for guidance.

(Rationality: it works even better in magical universes! (Like, ahem, the one we're in.))

Comment author: [deleted] 03 January 2012 03:12:27PM *  5 points [-]

I shall henceforth call you Robert Anton Willnewsome.

EDIT: I mean this affectionately.

Comment author: James_Miller 01 January 2012 02:57:20AM *  3 points [-]

Life can be a challenge. Life can seem impossible. It's never easy when there's so much on the line. But you and I can make a difference. There's a mission just for you and me.

Former U.S. Presidential Candidate Herman Cain who was quoting from the movie Pokémon 2000.

A Pokémon quote Cain didn't repeat:

I pitted them against each other, but not until they set aside their differences did I see the true power they all share deep inside. I see now that the circumstances of one's birth are irrelevant; it is what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are.

Comment author: [deleted] 01 January 2012 03:01:09AM 0 points [-]

Perhaps he needs a new direction. Is SIAI hiring?

Comment author: J_Taylor 01 January 2012 08:35:29AM 27 points [-]

“A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.”

  • Friedrich Nietzsche
Comment author: Will_Newsome 02 January 2012 05:04:28AM *  2 points [-]

That would seem to be an odd notion of "faith"; is the translation untrue to the original or is Nietzsche just being typically provocative? (I also personally don't see how the quote is at all profound or interesting but that's a separate issue and more a matter of taste.)

Comment author: taelor 02 January 2012 06:24:41AM 4 points [-]

I'd parse the quote as meaning "Believing in something doesn't make it true", in which case it's something that pretty much everyone on this site takes for granted, but that the average person hasn't necessarily fully internalized. Yudkowsky felt the need to make a similar point near the end of this article, and philosophers as diverse as St. Anselm and William James have built entire epistemologies around the notion that faith is sufficient to justify belief, so obviously it's a point that needs to be made.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 02 January 2012 07:43:50AM *  4 points [-]

I dunno about St. Anselm but I found James's "The Will to Believe" essay reasonable as a matter of practical rationality. The sort of Bayesian epistemology that is Eliezer's hallmark isn't exactly fundamental, and the map-territory distinction isn't either, so I don't find it too surprising that e.g. Kantian epistemology looks a lot more like modern decision theory than it does Bayesian probability theory. I suspect a lot of "faith"-like behaviors don't look nearly as insane when seen from this deeper perspective. So on one level we have day-to-day instrumental rationality where faith tends to make sense for the reasons James cites, and on a much deeper level there's uncertainty about what beliefs really are except as the parts of your utility function that are meant for cooperation with other agents (ETA: similar to Kant's categorical imperative). On top of that there are situations where you have to have something like faith, e.g. if you happen upon a Turing oracle and thus can't verify if it's telling you the truth or not but still want to do hypercomputation. Things like this make me hesitant to judge the merits of epistemological ideas like faith which I don't yet understand very well.

Comment author: fortyeridania 02 January 2012 11:34:03AM 4 points [-]

This sort of taxonomy seems to deserve a more thorough treatment in a separate post.

Comment author: J_Taylor 03 January 2012 04:53:22AM *  10 points [-]

I apologize for practicing inferior epistemic hygiene. Thank you for indirectly bringing this to my attention. I knew that the quote was commonly attributed to Nietzsche, but I had never seen the original source. It would seem to be a rephrasing of this quote from The Antichrist:

The fact that faith, under certain circumstances, may work for blessedness, but that this blessedness produced by an idée fixe by no means makes the idea itself true, and the fact that faith actually moves no mountains, but instead raises them up where there were none before: all this is made sufficiently clear by a walk through a lunatic asylum.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 03 January 2012 07:22:30AM *  2 points [-]

Ah, that sounds a bit more like the Nietzsche I know and kinda like! Thanks for digging up the more accurate quote.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 01 January 2012 08:39:52AM 0 points [-]

Reply to Objection 3. Free-will is the cause of its own movement, because by his free-will man moves himself to act. But it does not of necessity belong to liberty that what is free should be the first cause of itself, as neither for one thing to be cause of another need it be the first cause. God, therefore, is the first cause, Who moves causes both natural and voluntary. And just as by moving natural causes He does not prevent their acts being natural, so by moving voluntary causes He does not deprive their actions of being voluntary: but rather is He the cause of this very thing in them; for He operates in each thing according to its own nature.

Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Question 83, Article 1

Comment author: khafra 03 January 2012 05:00:37AM *  6 points [-]

Is that just a theist version of compatibilist free will? Or an assertion that somehow you could create something without being responsible for its future actions, either by creating the policy that decided them or making them dependent on a source of randomness?

Comment author: Jack 03 January 2012 06:17:40AM 5 points [-]

The former.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 03 January 2012 07:18:56AM *  6 points [-]

As Jack says, it's the "theist version" of compatibilist free will, but you can replace "God" with "the universe" and the point goes through, Aquinas uses God because he's trying to build up a coherent metaphysics. And quite successfully! He gave the "right answer" to the "free will problem" off-the-cuff as if it was no big deal. This raises my confidence that Aquinas is also insightful when he discusses things I don't yet understand, like faith.

Comment author: Jack 03 January 2012 08:38:44AM 1 point [-]

Aquinas gives all his answers off-the-cuff as if they were no big deal.

As far as early compatibilists go I prefer Chrysippus.

Comment author: MarkusRamikin 01 January 2012 08:41:55AM 1 point [-]

Each man would like to be happy. But if you try to make it so that all men can be happy, each will grab you by the hands like one whose aching tooth is being pulled.

Bolesław Prus, "The Pharaoh" (translation mine)

Comment author: [deleted] 02 January 2012 12:16:43AM 7 points [-]

I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean.

Comment author: Kutta 01 January 2012 11:23:25AM *  9 points [-]

Most people you know are probably weak skeptics, and I would probably fit this definition in several ways. "Strong skeptics" are the people who write The Skeptics' Encyclopedia, join the California Skeptics' League, buy the Complete Works of James Randi, and introduce themselves at parties saying "Hi, I'm Ted, and I'm a skeptic!". Of weak skeptics I approve entirely. But strong skeptics confused me for a long while. You don't believe something exists. That seems like a pretty good reason not to be too concerned with it.

Edit: authorial instance specified on popular demand.

Comment author: MixedNuts 02 January 2012 02:28:32AM 14 points [-]

The next sentence is

It's not like belief in UFOs killed your pet hamster when you were a kid or something and you've had a terrible hatred of it ever since.

Skeptics will tell you that yes, it did. Belief that the Sun needs human sacrifices to rise in the morning killed their beloved big brother, and they've had a terrible hatred of it ever since. And they must slay all of its allies, everything that keeps people from noticing that Newton's laws have murder-free sunrise covered. Even belief in the Easter bunny, because the mistakes you make to believe in it are the same. That seems like a pretty good reason to be concerned with it.

Comment author: James_K 02 January 2012 03:31:11AM 11 points [-]

Indeed. In fact there's a website: What's the Harm? that explains what damage these beliefs cause.

Comment author: zntneo 02 January 2012 04:08:18AM 4 points [-]

I would say that for instance I don't believe that most alt med stuff works but this is exactly the reason I care that others know this and how we know this. This attitude infuriates me.

Comment author: machrider 02 January 2012 05:27:53PM *  4 points [-]

The fact is that there are many battles worth fighting, and strong skeptics are fighting one (or perhaps a few) of them. (As I was disgusted to see recently, human sacrifice apparently still happens.) However, I also think it's ok to say that battle is not the one that interests you. You don't have the capacity to be a champion for all possible good causes, so it's good that there is diversity of interest among people trying to improve the human condition.

Comment author: zntneo 03 January 2012 01:08:43AM 4 points [-]

I totally agree if its not your cup of tea fine. What pisses me off is the line about " if you don't believe it exists it seems like a good reason to not be concerned with it"

Comment author: Yvain 02 January 2012 05:40:15AM *  12 points [-]

More accurately, Yvain-2004

Comment author: fortyeridania 02 January 2012 11:49:23AM 6 points [-]

Is it more accurate to put it thus because Yvain-2012 disagrees with Yvain-2004 on this issue?

Comment author: Stabilizer 02 January 2012 05:45:36PM 7 points [-]

Well, even if Yvain-2012 does not disagree with Yvain-2004, it would be nice to have the year attached. I would like that the year-attachment convention for attributing quotes and ideas becomes more widespread. Right now, the default assumption that everybody makes is that people are consistent over time. In reality, people almost surely change over time, and it is unreasonable to expect them to justify something which their earlier selves said. So, it would be really nice if the default was year-attachment.

Comment author: Yvain 03 January 2012 02:12:29AM *  29 points [-]

I don't know if there's enough of a specific, meaningful claim there for me to disagree with, but Yvain-2012 probably would not have written those same words. Yvain-2012 would probably say he sometimes feels creeped out by the levels of signaling that go on in the skeptical community and thinks they sometimes snowball into the ridiculous, but that the result is prosocial and they are still performing a service.

(really I can only speak for Yvain-2011 at this point; my acquaintance with Yvain-2012 has been extremely brief)

Comment author: fortyeridania 02 January 2012 11:50:15AM 1 point [-]

The previous quotation would seem to speak in favor of more strong skeptics.

Comment author: gjm 01 January 2012 11:45:18AM 6 points [-]

The English mob preferred their calendar to disagree with the sun than to agree with the pope.

Attributed to Voltaire (referring of course to the Gregorian calendar reform) though evidence that Voltaire actually said or wrote any such thing seems scanty. Reversed stupidity is not intelligence.

Comment author: Lightwave 01 January 2012 12:24:52PM *  35 points [-]

Do not accept any of my words on faith,
Believing them just because I said them.
Be like an analyst buying gold, who cuts, burns,
And critically examines his product for authenticity.
Only accept what passes the test
By proving useful and beneficial in your life.

-- The Buddha, Jnanasara-samuccaya Sutra

Comment author: Nick_Roy 02 January 2012 04:11:06AM 2 points [-]

Good instrumental rationality quote; not so good for epistemic rationality.

Comment author: fortyeridania 02 January 2012 11:31:49AM 3 points [-]

Why do you say that?

Comment author: Nick_Roy 03 January 2012 02:50:14AM 2 points [-]

"Proving useful in your life" (but not necessarily "proving beneficial") is the core of instrumental rationality, but what's useful is not necessarily what's true, so it's important to refrain from using that metric in epistemic rationality.

Example: cognitive behavioral therapy is often useful "to solve problems concerning dysfunctional emotions", but not useful for pursuing truth. There's also mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for an example more relevant to Buddhism.

Comment author: wedrifid 04 January 2012 12:33:58AM 2 points [-]

Example: cognitive behavioral therapy is often useful "to solve problems concerning dysfunctional emotions", but not useful for pursuing truth.

It is useful for pursuing truth to the extent that it can correct actually false beliefs when they happen to tend in one direction.

Comment author: Oscar_Cunningham 01 January 2012 03:53:09PM *  29 points [-]

...when you do have a deep understanding, you have solved the problem and it is time to do something else. This makes the total time you spend in life reveling in your mastery of something quite brief. One of the main skills of research scientists of any type is knowing how to work comfortably and productively in a state of confusion.

-Anon http://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-have-an-understanding-of-very-advanced-mathematics#ans873950

(emphasis mine)

Comment author: Stabilizer 02 January 2012 05:36:28PM 14 points [-]

Teaching, for me and several other people I know, serves the purpose of reveling in your mastery. In fact, Feynman said it best:

In any thinking process there are moments when everything is going good and you've got wonderful ideas. Teaching is an interruption, and so it's the greatest pain in the neck in the world. And then there are the longer period of time when not much is coming to you. You're not getting any ideas, and if you're doing nothing at all, it drives you nuts! You can't even say "I'm teaching my class."

If you're teaching a class, you can think about the elementary things that you know very well. These things are kind of fun and delightful. It doesn't do any harm to think them over again. Is there a better way to present them? The elementary things are easy to think about; if you can't think of a new thought, no harm done; what you thought about it before is good enough for the class. If you do think of something new, you're rather pleased that you have a new way of looking at it.

Teaching helps me a lot in this respect, because I become very insecure sometimes when I do my research.

Comment author: Alejandro1 01 January 2012 07:54:02PM 6 points [-]

Am I sure that there is no mind behind our existence and no mystery anywhere in the universe? I think I am. What joy, what relief it would be, if we could declare so with complete conviction. If that were so I could wish to live forever. How terrifying and glorious the role of man if, indeed, without guidance and without consolation he must create from his own vitals the meaning for his existence and write the rules whereby he lives.

Thornton Wilder, The Ides of March.

Comment author: gwern 01 January 2012 07:58:04PM 17 points [-]

"The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death"

--1 Corinthians 15:26

(I wonder what Eliezer would've made of it - as far as I know, he never read Deathly Hallows and so never read about the tombstone.)

Comment author: Raemon 03 January 2012 01:19:22AM *  6 points [-]

Well, he knows about the Hallows themselves via wiki-readings. I think he would have written the story the way it is whether he knew about the tombstone or not, but I put fairly high probability that he does know about the tombstone and how fantastically awesome an endcap it's going to be on the story.

Comment author: gwern 03 January 2012 02:02:23AM 1 point [-]
Comment author: Raemon 03 January 2012 02:21:40AM *  5 points [-]

I think there's a close to 100% chance that the tombstone will be alluded to, because even if Eliezer DIDN'T know about it before, he will by the time the story ends (because I will have questioned and informed him about this), and after that I just can't imagine him making such a terrible mistake as to NOT include the tombstone's quote.

I do think a simple bet of "did he already plan this?" is feasible. We can just ask him. (I put odds at 75%).

(By "close to 100%" I mean maybe 95. I can think of scenarios where he hadn't originally planned for the tombstone and where it would be hard to integrate it)

Comment author: gwern 03 January 2012 04:13:11AM 2 points [-]

Oh fine: http://predictionbook.com/predictions/5124 But you'd better ask him now!

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 04 January 2012 07:12:07AM *  4 points [-]

I was already aware of the quote. It's on James and Lily's tombstone (in canon).

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 01 January 2012 08:05:18PM *  11 points [-]

As in the Roman empire age, the theoretical concepts, taken out of the theories assigning their meaning and considered instead real objects, whose existence can be apparent only to the initiated people, are used to amaze the public. In physics courses the student (now unaware of the experimental basis of heliocentrism or of atomic theory, accepted on the sole basis of the authority principle) gets addicted to a complex and mysterious mythology, with orbitals undergoing hybridization, elusive quarks, voracious and disquieting black holes and a creating Big Bang: objects introduced, all of them, in theories totally unknown to him and having no understandable relation with any phenomenon he may have access to.

Lucio Russo, The Forgotten Revolution: How Science Was Born in 300 BC and Why it Had to Be Reborn

Comment author: Manfred 03 January 2012 10:38:17AM *  9 points [-]

Some people will always have to take most of natural science on authority. Sure you can make that sound bad, but to me it sounds like "children take 9*9=81 on authority! spoooooky."

Ye gots to wiggle yer fingers when ye say it.

Comment author: jsbennett86 01 January 2012 08:17:36PM 4 points [-]

In every branch of knowledge the progress is proportional to the amount of facts on which to build, and therefore to the facility of obtaining data.

— James Clerk Maxwell

Comment author: arundelo 01 January 2012 10:28:31PM 6 points [-]

[I]ntractable problems are not a good reason to attempt impossible "solutions".

-- Eric Raymond

Comment author: wedrifid 01 January 2012 10:34:54PM 6 points [-]

Don't shut up and do the impossible!

Comment author: peter_hurford 01 January 2012 11:23:36PM 44 points [-]

"if we offer too much silent assent about mysticism and superstition – even when it seems to be doing a little good – we abet a general climate in which skepticism is considered impolite, science tiresome, and rigorous thinking somehow stuffy and inappropriate. Figuring out a prudent balance takes wisdom.”

– Carl Sagan

Comment author: torekp 02 January 2012 12:50:30AM 26 points [-]

"Never interrupt your enemy while he is making a mistake." -- Napoleon Bonaparte

(This has been mentioned before on LW but not in a quote thread. I figured it was fair game.)

Comment author: dspeyer 04 January 2012 07:16:07AM 6 points [-]

Just make sure to only apply this one to your actual enemies, and not to people who generally wish you well but disagree on some key point.

Comment author: wedrifid 04 January 2012 07:35:11AM 4 points [-]

Just make sure to only apply this one to your actual enemies, and not to people who generally wish you well but disagree on some key point.

Interrupting even neutral associates when they are making a mistake does not necessarily have good outcomes for you either. Being the messenger has a reputation...

Comment author: torekp 02 January 2012 01:00:11AM *  7 points [-]

"Hit 'em where they ain't". --Douglas MacArthur commenting on his island-hopping strategy in WW2.

Comment author: gwern 02 January 2012 01:16:24AM *  15 points [-]

Sun Tzu said it better; VI, 'Weak Points and Strong':

  1. Appear at points which the enemy must hasten to defend; march swiftly to places where you are not expected.
  2. An army may march great distances without distress, if it marches through country where the enemy is not.
  3. You can be sure of succeeding in your attacks if you only attack places which are undefended. You can ensure the safety of your defense if you only hold positions that cannot be attacked.
  4. Hence that general is skillful in attack whose opponent does not know what to defend; and he is skillful in defense whose opponent does not know what to attack.
Comment author: fortyeridania 02 January 2012 01:29:13PM 0 points [-]

I think Willie Keeler said it first. (I think I saw Babe Ruth, played by John Goodman, say it in The Babe, but that was a long time ago.)

Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 02 January 2012 07:11:34AM *  32 points [-]

Not everything that is more difficult is more meritorious.

-Saint Thomas Aquinas

I wish I would have memorized this quote before attending university.

*This comment was inspired by Will_Newsome's attempt to find rationality quotes in Summa Theologica.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 03 January 2012 08:19:48AM *  0 points [-]

If I was copying over rationality quotes from the Summa I'd have gone for way different stuff, Aquinas was a fucking beast of a rationalist. I was just testing LW. Karma is not nearly as useful as accurate beliefs.

Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 03 January 2012 08:41:18AM 3 points [-]

If I was copying over rationality quotes from the Summa I'd have gone for way different stuff, Aquinas was a fucking beast of a rationalist. I was just testing LW. Karma is not nearly as useful as accurate beliefs.

I don't know about a beast, but in general philosophers from the Middle Ages are far underrated compared to, say, philosophers from the "Enlightenment".

Comment author: summerstay 03 January 2012 01:26:22PM *  7 points [-]

Summa Theologica is a good example of what happens when you have an excellent deductive system (Aquinas was great at syllogisms) and flawed axioms (a literal interpretation of the Bible).

Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 03 January 2012 02:19:27PM *  5 points [-]

Summa Theologica is a good example of what happens when you have an excellent deductive system (Aquinas was great at syllogisms) and flawed axioms (a literal interpretation of the Bible).

Aquinas probably meant something different by "literal interpretation" than you think. For instance, I'm pretty sure he agreed with Augustine that the six days of creation were not literally six periods of 24 hours.

Comment author: fortyeridania 02 January 2012 12:03:22PM 14 points [-]

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

Comment author: satt 02 January 2012 01:47:22PM 2 points [-]

It's been a while since I read that essay. I can't tell whether that quotation's meant to be an example of a lie we tell kids, or one of Paul Graham's own beliefs! (An invertible fact?)

Comment author: fortyeridania 02 January 2012 03:32:57PM 2 points [-]

It is Graham's own belief.

Comment author: satt 02 January 2012 06:59:27PM 0 points [-]

Yes, a look at it in context in the essay confirms that — but isn't it a strange belief for someone like Paul Graham to have? It looks false to me (although "truth is common property" is ambiguous). I think a group could make itself very distinct by believing certain truths and doing certain rationally justified things.

Comment author: soreff 04 January 2012 02:56:42AM 1 point [-]

I think a group could make itself very distinct by believing certain truths and doing certain rationally justified things.

Most groups of weapon developers probably hope to keep their knowledge distinct from that of other groups for as long as they can...

Comment author: wedrifid 02 January 2012 01:59:13PM 11 points [-]

The truth is common property. You can't distinguish your group by doing things that are rational, and believing things that are true.

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.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 03 January 2012 08:57:42AM 2 points [-]

It would seem that if no other humans are behaving rationally

then you're probably insanely wrong.

Comment author: wedrifid 03 January 2012 09:11:54AM *  1 point [-]

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.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 03 January 2012 09:17:16AM *  -2 points [-]

Trust in me, just in me. Dude people are still doing karmassassination! Even without voting buttons on profile pages. Crazy.

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.

Assuming infinite cognitive resources or something? What's your standard?

Comment author: wedrifid 03 January 2012 09:25:06AM *  0 points [-]

Assuming infinite cognitive resources or something? What's your standard?

Does it matter? If the standard chosen is such that humans behave perfectly rationally according to it then they are completely free of bias and 'rational' has taken on a bizarre redefinition to equal to whatever humans are already achieving. The time to be particular about whether rational means 'optimal use of cognitive resources' or 'assuming infinite cognitive resources' is when the behavior in question is anywhere remotely near either.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 03 January 2012 09:34:20AM 1 point [-]

This idea of rationality is somewhat broken because we lack baselines except those we get from intuitive feelings of indignation or at best expected utility calculations about how manipulable others' belief states are. We have no idea what 'optimal use of cognitive resources' would look like and our intuitions about it are likely to be tinged with insane unreflected-upon moral judgments.

Um I don't think we significantly disagree about anything truly important and this conversation topic is kinda boring. My fault.

Comment author: wedrifid 03 January 2012 09:30:39AM 2 points [-]

Trust in me, just in me.

No? You don't even try to be trustworthy here!

Comment author: Will_Newsome 03 January 2012 09:38:10AM *  -2 points [-]

Of course I do. I barely ever lie here in the morally relevant sense of the word lie. I'm not even sure if I've ever purposefully lied here. That would be pretty out-of-character for me.

Comment author: wedrifid 03 January 2012 06:55:12PM 5 points [-]

Of course I do.

The evaluation of whether it is sensible to "trust in you, only you" isn't based only on whether you are lying. When you aren't even trying to communicate on the object level the interpretation of your words consists of creating a probability distribution over possible meanings vaguely related to the words that could correspond to what you are thinking. I can't trust noisy data, even if it is sincere noisy data. I mean, given the sentence "Trust in me, just in me" I only had 60% confidence that you meant "I attest that the next sentence is veritable" (more now that you are talking about how you never lie).

I barely ever lie here in the morally relevant sense of the word lie. I'm not even sure if I've ever purposefully lied here. That would be pretty out-of-character for me.

Trustworthiness isn't just a moral question. Choosing what to trust is a practical question.

For what it is worth of course I believe that you are likely experiencing karmassassination. I noticed that some of your non-downvote-worthy comments are taking a hit.

Even without voting buttons on profile pages. Crazy.

It takes the assassin a few more clicks. But if they want to assassinate I don't expect that it would stop them. Actually that feature removal is just damn annoying. I often read through the comments of users that I like/respect/find-interesting. Naturally I'm even more likely to want to vote up comments from such a stream than I am when reading the general recent comments stream. So now I have to go and open up each comment specifically and vote it up.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 04 January 2012 01:16:49AM 0 points [-]

Upvoted, good point re noise and trust.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 04 January 2012 01:18:10AM 0 points [-]

I'm so glad that "re" is a word.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 03 January 2012 10:04:43AM *  0 points [-]

Apparently they stopped after downvoting about 30 comments. Maybe it was too much work.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 03 January 2012 02:25:46PM 8 points [-]

The role of laziness in preventing bad acts rarely gets enough credit.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 04 January 2012 01:18:46AM *  0 points [-]

Words to model ones life around. Well I did anyway. Laziness and fear.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 03 January 2012 09:29:06AM *  0 points [-]

My original comment was meant to be a mildly elaborate adianoeta that is more than the sum of its parts (except that the addition of "insanely" was a regrettable and meaningless rhetorical flourish). So if I seem straightforwardly wrong then maybe something was lost in interpretation or I just didn't do it right.

Comment author: fortyeridania 02 January 2012 12:04:37PM 10 points [-]

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)

Comment author: MixedNuts 02 January 2012 02:20:33PM 13 points [-]

The ultimate theological question is: ‘Where does the Sun go at night?’.

The answer that so many civilisations agreed for so long was: ‘The Sun is driven by one of the gods, and at night it goes under the Earth to fight a battle. There is at least some risk that the god will lose this battle, and so the Sun may not rise tomorrow’. It’s something the human race understood was a cast iron fact before they knew how to cast iron. It survived as the working model twenty-five times longer than the four hundred years we’ve understood the Earth goes around the Sun.

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".

Comment author: RichardKennaway 03 January 2012 01:19:03PM *  8 points [-]

It survived as the working model twenty-five times longer than the four hundred years we’ve understood the Earth goes around the Sun.

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.)

Comment author: Will_Newsome 04 January 2012 01:12:43AM *  5 points [-]

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?

Comment author: tut 03 January 2012 06:29:45PM 2 points [-]

I want to carve a primer on cosmology in gold letters on a mountain

Do you mean cosmology or astronomy?

Comment author: Stabilizer 02 January 2012 05:57:00PM 0 points [-]

The road to wisdom? — Well, it's plain and simple to express: Err and err and err again but less and less and less.

--Piet Hein

Lesswrong!

Comment author: Stabilizer 02 January 2012 05:58:19PM 30 points [-]

The road to wisdom? — Well, it's plain
and simple to express:
Err
and err
and err again
but less
and less
and less.

--Piet Hein

Lesswrong!

Comment author: gwern 03 January 2012 06:42:04PM 1 point [-]

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.

Comment author: lessdazed 02 January 2012 09:26:01PM 4 points [-]

A soldier should always seek the most desperate post that has to be filled.

--William Ransom Johnson Pegram

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: 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: Maniakes 03 January 2012 08:24:54PM 12 points [-]

I replied as follows: "What would you think of someone who said, "I would like to have a cat, provided it barked"? [...] As a natural scientist, you recognize that you cannot assign characteristics at will to chemical and biological entities, cannot demand that cats bark or water burn. Why do you suppose that the situation is different in the "social sciences?"

-- Milton Friedman

Comment author: gwern 03 January 2012 10:09:27PM 2 points [-]

cannot demand that cats bark or water burn

One of these things is not like the others, one of these things does not belong.

Comment author: [deleted] 03 January 2012 10:25:44PM 7 points [-]
Comment author: gwern 03 January 2012 10:59:34PM 1 point [-]

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'.

Comment author: Manfred 03 January 2012 10:55:21PM 3 points [-]

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.

Comment author: Maniakes 03 January 2012 11:01:32PM 11 points [-]

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.

Comment author: scmbradley 03 January 2012 11:12:02PM *  9 points [-]

Uncertainty, in the presence of vivid hopes and fears, is painful, but must be endured if we wish to live without the support of comforting fairy tales

— Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy (from the introduction)

Comment author: scmbradley 03 January 2012 11:13:21PM *  -1 points [-]

it is clear that each party to this dispute – as to all that persist through long periods of time – is partly right and partly wrong

— Bertrand Russell History of Western Philosophy (from the introduction, again.)

Comment author: Alejandro1 03 January 2012 11:56:30PM *  12 points [-]

Prompted by Maniakes', but sufficiently different to post separately:

It cannot have escaped philosophers' attention that our fellow academics in other fields--especially in the sciences--often have difficulty suppressing their incredulous amusement when such topics as Twin Earth, Swampman, and Blockheads are posed for apparently serious consideration. Are the scientists just being philistines, betraying their tin ears for the subtleties of philosophical investigation, or have the philosophers who indulge in these exercises lost their grip on reality?

These bizarre examples all attempt to prove one "conceptual" point or another by deliberately reducing something underappreciated to zero, so that What Really Counts can shine through. Blockheads hold peripheral behavior constant and reduce internal structural details (and--what comes to the same thing--intervening internal processes) close to zero, and provoke the intuition that then there would be no mind there; internal structure Really Counts. Manthra is more or less the mirror-image; it keeps internal processes constant and reduces control of peripheral behavior to zero, showing, presumably, that external behavior Really Doesn't Count. Swampman keeps both future peripheral dispositions and internal states constant and reduces "history" to zero. Twin Earth sets internal similarity to maximum, so that external context can be demonstrated to be responsible for whatever our intuitions tell us. Thus these thought experiments mimic empirical experiments in their design, attempting to isolate a crucial interaction between variables by holding other variables constant. In the past I have often noted that a problem with such experiments is that the dependent variable is "intuition"--they are intuition pumps--and the contribution of imagination in the generation of intuitions is harder to control than philosophers have usually acknowledged.

But there is also a deeper problem with them. It is child's play to dream up further such examples to "prove" further conceptual points. Suppose a cow gave birth to something that was atom-for-atom indiscernible from a shark. Would it be a shark? What is the truth-maker for sharkhood? If you posed that question to a biologist, the charitable reaction would be that you were making a labored attempt at a joke. Suppose an evil demon could make water turn solid at room temperature by smiling at it; would demon-water be ice? Too silly a hypothesis to deserve a response. All such intuition pumps depend on the distinction spelled out by McLaughlin and O'Leary-Hawthorne between "conceptual" and "reductive" answers to the big questions. What I hadn't sufficiently appreciated in my earlier forthright response to Jackson is that when one says that the truth-maker question requires a conceptual answer, one means an answer that holds not just in our world, or all nomologically possible worlds, but in all logically possible worlds. Smiling demons, cow-sharks, Blockheads, and Swampmen are all, some philosophers think, logically possible, even if they are not nomologically possible, and these philosophers think this is important. I do not. Why should the truth-maker question cast its net this wide? Because, I gather, otherwise its answer doesn't tell us about the essence of the topic in question. But who believes in real essences of this sort nowadays? Not I.

Daniel Dennett, "Get Real" (emphasis added).

Comment author: [deleted] 04 January 2012 12:13:56AM *  6 points [-]

"How would I explain the event of my left arm being replaced by a blue tentacle? The answer is that I wouldn't. It isn't going to happen."

Eliezer Yudkowsky

(Some discussions here, such as those involving such numbers as 3^^^3, give me the same feeling.)

Comment author: TheOtherDave 04 January 2012 12:32:02AM *  5 points [-]

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.

Comment author: Arran_Stirton 04 January 2012 04:05:28AM 0 points [-]

Sorry to be so ignorant but what is 3^^^3? Google yielded no satisfactory results...

Comment author: TheOtherDave 04 January 2012 04:18:07AM 1 point [-]

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.

Comment author: MinibearRex 04 January 2012 04:22:00AM 4 points [-]

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/.

Comment author: Arran_Stirton 04 January 2012 04:47:27AM 1 point [-]

Ah thank you, that clarifies things greatly! Up-voted for the technical explanation.

Comment author: Arran_Stirton 04 January 2012 04:57:26AM *  6 points [-]

While this quote isn't directly about rationality, it reminds me a good deal of Tsuyoku Naritai!.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

~ 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.)