Will_Newsome comments on Rationality Quotes February 2012 - Less Wrong

5 [deleted] 01 February 2012 09:03PM

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Comment author: Will_Newsome 05 February 2012 02:25:29PM *  2 points [-]

What makes a subject difficult to understand — if it is significant, important — is not that some special instruction about abstruse things is necessary to understand it. Rather it is the contrast between the understanding of the subject and what most people want to see. Because of this the very things that are most obvious can become the most difficult to understand. What has to be overcome is not difficulty of the intellect but of the will.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Occasions

Comment author: Will_Newsome 05 February 2012 02:29:29PM 2 points [-]

The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice.

Arthur Schopenhauer, Counsels and Maxims