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shokwave comments on Rationality Quotes March 2012 - Less Wrong
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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.