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Will_Newsome comments on Rationality Quotes March 2012 - Less Wrong
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This might actually be the highest wisdom-to-length ratio I've ever seen in an English sentence. "Take heed therefore how ye hear: for whosoever hath, to him shall be given; and whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he seemeth to have" from Jesus is also pretty high up there.
Well let me impress you:
So heed this: whoever has, will be given to; and whoever has not, more will be taken from.
Exchanges like this make me wish we had a signalling-analysis novelty account, akin to reddit's joke-explainer.
Italian is even more awesome: the proverb Piove sempre sul bagnato (lit. ‘it always rain on the wet’) says the same thing in eight syllables. :-)
(There was once a discussion in Italy about whether to stop teaching Latin in a certain type of high schools. Someone said that Latin should be taught because it's the intellectual equivalent of high-nutrient food, giving the example of the proverb Homini fingunt et credunt and pointing out that a literal translation (‘People feign and believe’) would be nearly meaningless, and an actually meaningful translation (‘People make up things and then they end up believing them themselves’) wouldn't be as terse and catchy. But ISTM that all natural languages have proverbs whose point is not immediately obvious from the literal meaning, so that's hardly an argument as to why one particular language should be taught.)
Lolz, but the "how ye hear" part is actually an important nuance. (And sadly it doesn't appear in a few of the other gospels I think.) ETA: Also the "seemeth to have" part is actually an important nuance. (And sadly it doesn't appear in a few of the other gospels I think.)
Yeah, I couldn't parse "how ye hear" into English. I mean, I turned it into "Heed how you listen: " but that doesn't have any poignancy, any poetry to it at all.
The rich get rich, but the poor stay poor.
But that's not as abstract and makes it seem like it's literally only about money, rather than a general principle of credit assignment that has important implications for people who want to have better epistemic habits. That's why the "take heed therefore how ye hear" part is important.
Take heed therefore how ye hear: for whosoever hath good inductive biases, to him more evidence shall be given, and he shall have an abundance: but whosoever hath not good inductive biases, from him shall be taken away even what little evidence that he hath.
ETA: I feel like some pedantic snobbish artist going on about this sort of thing, it's kinda funny.
It's conceivable that "take care" is also a clue that this process will just happen-- it's not your job to be taking advantage of those who have little.
What is Jesus even talking about? Arguing that capitalism leads to monopolistic capitalism? Arguing against economic inequality? Discussing utility monsters? Ordering followers to strengthen the economic inequality by giving to the rich?
Imagine the LW, after fall of civilization, became a cult of Eliezer, misquoting and taking out of context anything said at any topics... after destruction of internet, relying on the memories.
You can improve the wisdom to length ratio just by taking the "so" out of the whosoevers.
Edit: already done, and right below me too.
Length isn't measured in number of letters, it's measured in ease of memorization, the encoding scheme of the brain. "Whosoever" flows better.
Probably because you've already heard that quotation with the whosoever. In the encoding scheme where 0 encodes the lyrics to “Bohemian Rhapsody” and the encodings of all other messages start with 1, the lyrics to “Bohemian Rhapsody” have the shortest “length” in your sense of the word.
I'm talking about writing to memory, not reading from it. I don't think it's just because I've heard it with "whosoever", I think it's because "whosoever" is more poetic and distinct in context.