Rationality Quotes April 2012

4 Post author: Oscar_Cunningham 03 April 2012 12:42AM

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  • Do not quote yourself
  • Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB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 (858)

Comment author: Kutta 01 April 2012 01:00:30PM *  11 points [-]

He who knows how to do something is the servant of he who knows why that thing must be done.

-- Isuna Hasekura, Spice and Wolf vol. 5 ("servant" is justified by the medieval setting).

Comment author: Bugmaster 01 April 2012 05:49:54PM 1 point [-]

I think the quote should start with, "he WHO knows...".

Comment author: John_Maxwell_IV 02 April 2012 06:12:57AM 3 points [-]

I don't get it.

Comment author: Vaniver 02 April 2012 05:21:34PM 3 points [-]

Short explanation: the person that knows why a thing must be done is generally the person who decides what must be done. Application to rationality: instrumental rationality is a method that serves goals. The part that values and the part that implements are distinct. (Also, you can see the separation of terminal and instrumental values.)

Comment author: gwern 04 April 2012 12:49:55AM 5 points [-]

And explains why businessmen keep more of the money than the random techies they hire.

Comment author: Blueberry 02 April 2012 07:48:02AM 2 points [-]

Would "servant" not otherwise be justified?

Comment author: Nornagest 02 April 2012 08:04:09AM 1 point [-]

It's fairly benign, but looks a little archaic -- not so archaic that it'd have to be medieval, though. The rest of the phrasing is fairly modern, or I'd probably have assumed it was a quote from anywhere from the Enlightenment up to the Edwardian period. It has the ring of something a Victorian aphorist might say.

Comment author: tgb 01 April 2012 01:30:37PM *  11 points [-]

Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you:
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.

Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.

-- Christina Rossetti, Who has seen the Wind?

Comment author: BlazeOrangeDeer 02 April 2012 05:44:59AM *  2 points [-]

Interestingly enough, this is my friend's parents response when asked why they believe in an invisible god. I suppose they haven't considered that the leaves and trees may be messed up enough to shake of their own accord.

Comment author: tgb 02 April 2012 11:12:25AM *  5 points [-]

Interesting.

It is rather unlikely that Christina Rossetti intended this to be a rationalist quote in a sense we would identify with. I do read it as an argument for scientific realism and belief in the implied invisible, but it seems likely that she was merely being poetic or that she was making a pro-religion argument, given her background. Of course the beauty of this system is that if someone quotes this to you as an argument for God (or anything), you can ask them what the leaves and trees are for their wind and thus get at their true argument.

Furthermore, the context in which I first read it is the video game Braid, juvpu cerfragrq vg va gur pbagrkg bs gur chefhvg bs fpvrapr. I would highly recommend this game, by the way.

Comment author: BlazeOrangeDeer 02 April 2012 07:00:26PM 0 points [-]

I love that game, it's been a while since I played it though.

Comment author: Oscar_Cunningham 01 April 2012 02:07:43PM 15 points [-]

You don't understand anything until you learn it more than one way.

Marvin Minsky

Comment author: Oscar_Cunningham 01 April 2012 02:08:01PM 44 points [-]

I understand what an equation means if I have a way of figuring out the characteristics of its solution without actually solving it.

Paul Dirac

Comment author: Manfred 01 April 2012 05:29:53PM *  0 points [-]

Excellent quote.

Comment author: [deleted] 01 April 2012 02:57:38PM *  3 points [-]

AG: You know very well the channels of possi8ility at that exact juncture resulted from her decision paths as well as yours.

AG: 8ut even so, when it comes to your key decisions, the possi8ilities are pro8a8ly fewer and more discrete than you have presumed.

AG: Otherwise you would not see results consolidated into those vortices, would you? Possi8ility would resem8le an enormous hazy field of infinitely su8tle variations and micro-choices.

AG: Imagine if at that moment you truly were capa8le of anything, no matter how outlandish, a8surd, or patently fruitless. How would this vast amount of information present itself to you through your senses? What difference would it make in your final decision if all other tri8utaries of whim spilled into the same decaying future? And what would this make of your agency as a hero meant to learn and grow?

AG: Look at it this way. Imagine that over the course of someone's life, they are truly capa8le of every conceiva8le action at any moment, and did indeed take each of those actions in different 8ranching realities. Doesn't a scenario like that deaden a person's agency just as much as one where their fate is decidedly etched in stone as a single path of unavoida8le decisions? Who exactly is that person who can and does take all conceiva8le actions, other than someone perfectly generic, who only appears to have unique predilections and motives when you examine the ar8itrary path they happen to occupy?

Andrew Hussie

Comment author: Randaly 01 April 2012 03:53:13PM 7 points [-]

Is there a reason all the b's have been replaced by 8's?

Comment author: David_Gerard 01 April 2012 04:56:21PM 4 points [-]

Character typing quirk in the original.

Comment author: Particleman 03 April 2012 07:59:05PM 0 points [-]

The typing quirks actually serve a purpose in the comic. Almost all communication among the characters takes place through chat logs, so the system provides a handy way to visually distinguish who's speaking. They also reinforce each character's personality and thematic associations - for example, the character quoted above (Aranea) is associated with spiders, arachnids in general, and the zodiac sign of Scorpio.

Unfortunately, all that is irrelevant in the context of a Rationality Quote.

Comment author: Normal_Anomaly 03 April 2012 11:47:54PM 0 points [-]

<nitpick> The character in question is named Vriska. You're thinking of Aradia. </nitpick>

Comment author: Nornagest 03 April 2012 11:52:45PM 1 point [-]

<nitpick> Actually, he's not -- the quote comes from Vriska's recently introduced pre-Scratch ancestor, who's got a similar but not identical typing style. </nitpick>

Comment author: Normal_Anomaly 04 April 2012 10:22:27AM 0 points [-]

You're right, never mind. Still internalizing the new set of ancestors.

Comment author: Bugmaster 01 April 2012 05:55:17PM 6 points [-]

I hate to downvote Homestuck, but there I go, downvoting it. The typing quirks and chatlog-style layout are too specific to the comic.

Comment author: arundelo 02 April 2012 03:38:56AM 3 points [-]

Every time someone mentions Homestuck I resist (until now) posting this image macro.

I spent a few minutes reading Homestuck from the beginning, but it did not grab me at all. Is there a better place to start, or is it probably just not my cup of tea?

(Speaking of webcomics, I have a similar question about Dresden Codak.)

Comment author: Nornagest 02 April 2012 04:14:53AM *  5 points [-]

I spent a few minutes reading Homestuck from the beginning, but it did not grab me at all. Is there a better place to start, or is it probably just not my cup of tea?

It starts pretty slow. Most of the really impressive bits, to my taste, don't start happening until well into act 4, but that's a few thousand (mostly single-panel, but still) pages of story to go through; unless you have a great deal of free time, I wouldn't hold it against you if you decided it's not for you by the end of act 2. Alternately, you might consider reading act 5.1 and going back if you like it; that's a largely independent and much more compressed storyline, although you'll lose some of the impact if you don't have the referents in the earlier parts of the story to compare against. You'll need to front-load a lot of tolerance for idiosyncratic typing that way, though.

Which brings me to quotes like MHD's: for quotation out of context, I would definitely have edited out the typing quirks (or ed8ed, if we're being cute). The quirks are more about characterization than content, and some of the characters are almost unreadable without a lot of practice.

Dresden Codak, incidentally, doesn't have this excuse. If you've read a couple dozen pages of that and didn't like it, you're probably not going to like the rest.

Comment author: khafra 02 April 2012 01:18:31PM 5 points [-]

Dresden Codak, incidentally, doesn't have this excuse. If you've read a couple dozen pages of that and didn't like it, you're probably not going to like the rest.

I've never been sure exactly where and how to get into the Dresden Codak storyline; but the one-offs like Caveman Science and the epistemological RPG are some of my favorite things on the internet.

Comment author: katydee 02 April 2012 03:15:45PM 4 points [-]

The first real "storyline" Dresden Codak comic can be found here, That said, a lot of people I've spoken with simply don't like the Dresden Codak storyline in any form, and prefer the funny one-offs to any of the continuity-oriented comics.

Comment author: Bugmaster 02 April 2012 08:11:53AM 2 points [-]

I disagree with Nornagest: I think the best place to start is at the beginning. They pretty much had me at "fetch modus", I was hooked from then on. A lot of really inspirational things start to happen later on, f.ex. the Flash animation "[S] WV: Ascend", but it might be difficult to comprehend without reading the earlier parts.

I would also advise starting at the beginning because I'm starting to grow dissatisfied with the double-meta-reacharaound tack that the comic is taking now... The earlier chapters had a much more coherent story, IMO.

Comment author: A4FB53AC 01 April 2012 03:48:12PM *  26 points [-]

A faith which cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets.

Arthur C. Clarke

Comment author: dvasya 01 April 2012 04:01:25PM 17 points [-]

Our minds contain processes that enable us to solve problems we consider difficult. "Intelligence" is our name for whichever of those processes we don't yet understand.

Some people dislike this "definition" because its meaning is doomed to keep changing as we learn more about psychology. But in my view that's exactly how it ought to be, because the very concept of intelligence is like a stage magician's trick. Like the concept of "the unexplored regions of Africa," it disappears as soon as we discover it.

-- Marvin Minsky, The Society of Mind

Comment author: Alicorn 01 April 2012 06:08:56PM 7 points [-]

I was once a skeptic but was converted by the two missionaries on either side of my nose.

Robert Brault

Comment author: Ezekiel 01 April 2012 06:35:10PM 4 points [-]

Particularly interesting since I (and, I suspect, others on LW) usually attach positive affect to the word "skeptic", since it seems to us that naivete is the more common error. But of course a Creationist is sceptical of evolution.

(Apparently both spellings are correct. I've learned something today.)

Comment author: BlazeOrangeDeer 02 April 2012 05:39:47AM 2 points [-]

I'd call creatonists "evolution deniers" before I'd call them "evolution skeptics", but I suppose they'd do the same to me with God...

Comment author: Blueberry 01 April 2012 07:41:53PM -1 points [-]

I must be misinterpreting this, because it appears to say "religion is obvious if you just open your eyes." How is that a rationality quote?

Comment author: TheOtherDave 01 April 2012 07:47:25PM 6 points [-]

LW's standards for rationality quotes vary, but in any case this does allow for the reading of endorsing allowing perceived evidence to override pre-existing beliefs, if one ignores the standard connotations of "skeptic" and "missionary".

Comment author: Blueberry 01 April 2012 08:01:04PM 4 points [-]

I guess, but that seems like a strange interpretation seeing as the speaker says he's no longer "a skeptic" in general.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 01 April 2012 08:08:57PM 12 points [-]

The point of rationality isn't to better argue against beliefs you consider wrong but to change your existing beliefs to be more correct.

Comment author: Blueberry 02 April 2012 07:46:11AM 2 points [-]

That's a good reminder but I'm not sure how it applies here.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 03 April 2012 02:13:02AM 1 point [-]

A quote that calls the holder of a potentially wrong belief a "skeptic" rather than a "believer" is more useful since it makes you more likely to identify with him.

Comment author: Blueberry 01 April 2012 08:07:04PM 3 points [-]

Also judging from his other quotes I'm pretty sure that's not what he meant...

Comment author: Desrtopa 02 April 2012 04:20:55AM 9 points [-]

Am I the only one who didn't realize before reading other comments that he was not claiming to have been converted by his nostrils?

Comment author: Alicorn 01 April 2012 06:09:23PM 27 points [-]

Westerners are fond of the saying ‘Life isn’t fair.’ Then, they end in snide triumphant: ‘So get used to it!’
What a cruel, sadistic notion to revel in! What a terrible, patriarchal response to a child’s budding sense of ethics. Announce to an Iroquois, ‘Life isn’t fair,’ and her response will be: ‘Then make it fair!’

Barbara Alice Mann

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 01 April 2012 08:44:32PM *  37 points [-]

I agree with the necessity of making life more fair, and disagree with the connotational noble Pocahontas lecturing a sadistic western patriarch. (Note: the last three words are taken from the quote.)

Comment author: Alicorn 01 April 2012 09:54:15PM 11 points [-]

I didn't think I could remove the quote from that attitude about it very effectively without butchering it. I did lop off a subsequent sentence that made it worse.

Comment author: Nornagest 01 April 2012 10:59:04PM *  21 points [-]

Agree that that looks an awful lot like an abuse of the noble savage meme. Barbara Alice Mann appears to be an anthropologist and a Seneca, so that's at least two points where she should really know better -- then again, there's a long and more than somewhat suspect history of anthropologists using their research to make didactic points about Western society. (Margaret Mead, for example.)

Not sure I entirely agree re: fairness. "Life's not fair" seems to me to succinctly express the very important point that natural law and the fundamentals of game theory are invariant relative to egalitarian intuitions. This can't be changed, only worked around, and a response of "so make it fair" seems to dilute that point by implying that any failure of egalitarianism might ideally be traced to some corresponding failure of morality or foresight.

Comment author: ciphergoth 02 April 2012 07:36:02AM 2 points [-]

I think that Robert Smith has a much wiser take on this: "The world is neither fair nor unfair"

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 03 April 2012 12:42:56AM 1 point [-]

The world is neither F nor ~F?

Comment author: RolfAndreassen 03 April 2012 01:03:27AM 11 points [-]

That is indeed possible if F is incoherent or has no referent. The assertion seems equivalent to "There's no such thing as fairness".

Comment author: Oscar_Cunningham 03 April 2012 08:41:39AM *  26 points [-]

I'm confused because it was Eliezer who taught me this.

(P or ~P) is not always a reliable heuristic, if you substitute arbitrary English sentences for P.

EDIT: I'm now resisting the temptation to tell Eliezer to "read the sequences".

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 03 April 2012 11:49:40PM 11 points [-]

Original parent says, "The world is neither fair nor unfair", meaning, "The world is neither deliberately fair nor deliberately unfair", and my comment was meant to be interpreted as replying, "Of course the world is unfair - if it's not fair, it must be unfair - and it doesn't matter that it's accidental rather than deliberate." Also to counteract the deep wisdom aura that "The world is neither fair nor unfair" gets from counterintuitively violating the (F \/ ~F) axiom schema.

Comment author: ciphergoth 04 April 2012 08:12:54AM 4 points [-]

It matters hugely that it's not deliberately unfair. People get themselves into really awful psychological holes - in particular the lasting and highly destructive stain of bitterness - by noting that the world is not fair, and going on to adopt a mindset that it is deliberately unfair.

Comment author: wedrifid 04 April 2012 08:28:54AM 1 point [-]

It matters hugely that it's not deliberately unfair.

It matters a lot (to those who are vulnerable to the particular kind of irrational bitterness in question) that the universe is not deliberately unfair.

I took Eliezer's "it doesn't matter" to be the more specific claim "it does not matter to the question of whether the universe is unfair whether the unfairness present is deliberate or not-deliberate".

Comment author: ciphergoth 04 April 2012 08:15:03AM 1 point [-]

No, that fairness isn't a characteristic you can measure of the world. There's such a thing as fairness when it comes to eg dividing a cake between children.

Comment author: ciphergoth 03 April 2012 12:05:51PM 19 points [-]

Unfair is the opposite of fair, not the logical complement. The moon is neither happy nor sad.

Comment author: Multiheaded 03 April 2012 09:21:50PM *  2 points [-]

You are confusing "fairness" and egalitarianism. While everyone has their own definition of "fairness", it feels obvious to me that, even if you're correct about the cost of imposing reasonable egalitarianism being too high in any given situation, this does not absolve us from seeking some palliative measures to protect those left worst off by that situation. Reducing first the suffering of those who suffer most is an ok partial definition of fairness for me.

Despite (or due to, I'm too sleepy to figure it out) considering myself an egalitarian, I would prefer a world where the most achieving 10% get 200 units of income (and the top 10% of them get 1000), the least achieving 10% get 2 units and everyone else gets 5-15 units (1 unit supporting the lifestyle of today's European blue-collar worker) to a world where the bottom 10% get 0.2 units and everyone else gets 25-50. Isn't that more or less the point of charity (aside from signaling)?

Comment author: Nornagest 03 April 2012 11:11:39PM *  2 points [-]

even if you're correct about the cost of imposing reasonable egalitarianism being too high in any given situation

I didn't say this. Actually, I'd consider it somewhat incoherent in the context of my argument: if imposing reasonable egalitarianism (whatever "reasonable" is) was too costly to be sustainable, it seems unlikely that we'd have developed intuitions calling for it.

On the other hand, I suppose one possible scenario where that'd make sense would be if some of the emotional architecture driving our sense of equity evolved in the context of band-level societies, and if that architecture turned out to scale poorly -- but that's rather speculative, somewhat at odds with my sense of history, and in any case irrelevant to the point I was trying to make in the grandparent.

Anyway, don't read too much into it. My point was about the relationship between the world and its mathematics and our anthropomorphic intuitions; I wasn't trying to make any sweeping generalizations about our behavior towards each other, except in the rather limited context of game theory and its various cultural consequences. I certainly wasn't trying to make any prescriptive statements about how charitable we should be.

Comment author: Multiheaded 04 April 2012 11:50:15AM *  0 points [-]

if imposing reasonable egalitarianism (whatever "reasonable" is) was too costly to be sustainable, it seems unlikely that we'd have developed intuitions calling for it.

Some of the local Right are likely to claim that we developed them just for the purpose of signaling, and that they're the worst thing EVAH when applied to reality. ;)

(Please don't take this as a political attack, guys, my debate with you is philosophical. I just need a signifier for you.)

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 02 April 2012 02:18:02AM 5 points [-]

Do people typically say "life isn't fair" about situations that people could choose to change?

Comment author: AspiringKnitter 02 April 2012 02:28:30AM 10 points [-]

Don't they usually say it about situations that they could choose to change, to people who don't have the choice?

Comment author: TimS 02 April 2012 02:52:41AM 4 points [-]

I agree, it's usually used as an excuse not to try to change things.

Comment author: BlazeOrangeDeer 02 April 2012 05:36:19AM 4 points [-]

Exactly. In my experience the people who say "life isn't fair" are the main reason that it still isn't.

Comment author: Tyrrell_McAllister 03 April 2012 09:10:25PM 3 points [-]

In my experience the people who say "life isn't fair" are the main reason that it still isn't.

How did you develop a sufficiently powerful causal model of "life" to establish this claim with such confidence?

Comment author: BlazeOrangeDeer 03 April 2012 10:51:24PM 4 points [-]

i mean that in almost all of the situations where I've heard that phrase used, it was used by someone who was being unfair and who couldn't be bothered to make a real excuse.

Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 02 April 2012 09:48:39AM *  9 points [-]

Do people typically say "life isn't fair" about situations that people could choose to change?

Introspection tells me this statement usually gets trotted out when the cost of achieving fairness is too high to warrant serious consideration.

EDIT: Whoops, I just realised that my imagination only outputted situations involving adults. When imagining situations involving children I get the opposite of my original claim.

Comment author: Multiheaded 03 April 2012 09:29:17PM *  0 points [-]

Introspection tells me this statement usually gets trotted out when the cost of achieving fairness is too high to warrant serious consideration.

Could you give an example of such a situation where the cost of achieving "fairness" is indeed too high for you? Because I have a hunch that we differ not so much in our assessment of costs but in our notions of "fairness". Oh, and what is "Serious consideration"? Is a young man thinking of what route he should set his life upon and wanting to increase "fairness" doing more or less serious consideration than an adult thinking whether to give $500 to charity?

Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 04 April 2012 05:43:24AM *  1 point [-]

I don't remember exactly what I imagined, but it was something like this:

Alice: I can't believe it! They chose that other guy for the job even though I have 6 more years of experience than him. It is so unfair... The only reason they picked him was because he went to the same school as the boss.

Bob: Well, life isn't fair sometimes. Just suck it up, work on your resume, and give the next interview your best shot.

Comment author: Multiheaded 04 April 2012 06:19:06AM *  0 points [-]

Actually, I'd say that it could be a case where justice can assert itself... the boss is, barring unusual circumstances, going to lose out on a skilled worker and that could impact his business.

(I mean, presumably the overly high cost of achieving fairness in that case would be passing a law telling employers how to make hiring decisions... but that idiot of a boss would benefit from such a law if the heuristics in it were good; now he's free to shoot himself in the foot!)

Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 04 April 2012 06:41:01AM *  3 points [-]

Bob is telling Alice that life isn't fair. Bob is Alice's friend; he is not the boss. Bob seems like he has Alice's interests in mind, since it is unlikely that Alice "doing something about it" would be worth it (such as confronting the boss, suing the company, picketing on the street outside the building, etc...). She is probably better off just continuing her job search. This is independent of whether or not Alice's decision is best for society as a whole.

Comment author: Multiheaded 04 April 2012 08:34:37AM 2 points [-]

Oh, that makes sense.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 04 April 2012 11:56:39AM 4 points [-]

Current example: A friend of mine telling her very intelligent son that he has to do boring schoolwork because life isn't fair.

It occurs to me to ask her whether a good gifted and talented program is available.

Comment author: Multiheaded 04 April 2012 12:07:23PM *  1 point [-]

Hmm? I know I'm no-one to tell you those things and it might sound odd coming from a stranger, but... please try persuading her to attend to the kid's special needs somehow. Ideally, I believe, he should be learning what he loves plus things useful in any career like logic and social skills, with moderate challenge and in the company of like-minded peers... but really, any improvement over either the boredom of standard "education" or the strain of a Japanese-style cram school would be fine. It pains me to see smart children burning out, because it happened to me too.

Comment author: John_Maxwell_IV 02 April 2012 05:51:00AM *  4 points [-]

I'm not convinced fairness is inherently valuable.

  • Envy is an unpleasant emotion that should probably be eliminated.
  • I like being part of egalitarian social groups, but I don't think status inequality has to follow inevitably from material inequality.
Comment author: ciphergoth 02 April 2012 07:35:21AM 7 points [-]

I don't think that fairness is terminally valuable, but I think it has instrumental value.

Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 02 April 2012 09:45:47AM 13 points [-]

The automatic pursuit of fairness might lead to perverse incentives. I have in mind some (non-genetically related) family in Mexico who don't bother saving money for the future because their extended family and neighbours would expect them to pay for food and gifts if they happen to acquire "extra" cash. Perhaps this "Western" patriarchal peculiarity has some merit after all.

Comment author: Nornagest 02 April 2012 10:03:01AM *  1 point [-]

One wonders whether food and gifts translate into status more or less effectively than whatever they might buy to that end in "Western" society would. Scare quotes because most of Mexico isn't much more or less Western than the US, all things considered.

Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 02 April 2012 10:19:01AM 1 point [-]

Yeah, the scare quotes are because I dislike the use of "Western" to mean English-speaking cultures rather than the Greek-Latin-Arabic influenced cultures.

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 03 April 2012 08:41:20AM *  12 points [-]

Is this really about fairness? Seems like different people agree that fairness is a good thing, but use different definitions of fairness. Or perhaps the word fairness is often used to mean "applause lights of my group".

For someone fairness means "everyone has food to eat", for another fairness means "everyone pays for their own food". Then proponents of one definition accuse the others of not being fair -- the debate is framed as if the problem is not different definitions of fairness, but rather our group caring about fairness and the other group ignoring fairness; which of course means that we are morally right and they are morally wrong.

Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 03 April 2012 01:50:52PM 2 points [-]

Is this really about fairness?

IDK, but I have heard people refer to fairness in similar situations, so I am merely adopting their usage.

Seems like different people agree that fairness is a good thing, but use different definitions of fairness. Or perhaps the word fairness is often used to mean "applause lights of my group".

I agree. To a large degree the near universal preference for "fairness" in humans is illusory, because people mean mutually contradictory things by it.

For someone fairness means "everyone has food to eat", for another fairness means "everyone pays for their own food". Then proponents of one definition accuse the others of not being fair -- the debate is framed as if the problem is not different definitions of fairness, but rather our group caring about fairness and the other group ignoring fairness; which of course means that we are morally right and they are morally wrong.

I believe "fairness" can be given a fairly rigorous definition (I have in mind people like Rawls), but the second you get explicit about it, people stop agreeing that it is such a good thing (and therefore, it loses its moral force as a human universal).

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 01 April 2012 07:40:33PM 18 points [-]

Truth must necessarily be stranger than fiction, for fiction is the creation of the human mind and therefore congenial to it.

G. K. Chesterton

Comment author: Ezekiel 01 April 2012 11:27:00PM 8 points [-]

Zach Wiener's elegant disproof:

Think of the strangest thing that's true. Okay. Now add a monkey dressed as Hitler.

(Although to be fair, it's possible that the disproof fails because "think of the strangest thing that's true" is impossible for a human brain.)

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 02 April 2012 12:24:19AM 8 points [-]

This quote seems relevant:

They must be true because, if there were not true, no one would have the imagination to invent them.

G. H. Hardy, upon receiving a letter containing mathematical formulae from Ramanujan

Comment author: Blueberry 02 April 2012 07:44:37AM 13 points [-]

It also fails in the case where the strangest thing that's true is an infinite number of monkeys dressed as Hitler. Then adding one doesn't change it.

More to the point, the comparison is more about typical fiction, rather than ad hoc fictional scenarios. There are very few fictional works with monkeys dressed as Hitler.

Comment author: Ezekiel 02 April 2012 11:05:42AM 2 points [-]

Depends on the infinity. Ordinal infinities change when you add one to them.

If we're restricting ourselves to actual published fiction, I present Cory Doctorow's Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town. The protagonist's parents are a mountain and a washing machine, it gets weirder from there, and the whole thing is played completely straight.

Comment author: gjm 03 April 2012 10:58:12AM 2 points [-]

Ordinal infinities change when you add one to them.

Depends on which end you add one at. :-)

(I mention this not because I think there's any danger Ezekiel doesn't know it, but just because it might pique someone's curiosity.)

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 03 April 2012 02:19:38AM 6 points [-]

Indeed, I posted this quote partially out of annoyance at a certain type of analysis I kept seeing in the MoR threads. Namely, person X benefited from the way event Y turned out; therefore, person X was behind event Y. After all, thinking like this about real life will quickly turn one into a tin-foil-hat-wearing conspiracy theorist.

Comment author: FiftyTwo 03 April 2012 09:52:54PM *  5 points [-]

Yes but in real life the major players don't have the ability to time travel, read minds, become invisible, manipulate probability etcetera, these make complex plans far more plausible than they would be in the real world. (That and conservation of detail.)

Comment author: gwern 04 April 2012 12:51:09AM 2 points [-]

Namely, person X benefited from the way event Y turned out; therefore, person X was behind event Y.

Which is exactly what MoR tells us to do to analyze it, is it not?

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 04 April 2012 03:53:01AM 2 points [-]

That's still not a reason for assuming everyone is running perfect gambit roulettes.

Comment author: BlazeOrangeDeer 02 April 2012 05:59:01AM 0 points [-]

"Reality is the thing that surpises me." - Paraphrase of EY

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 04 April 2012 05:57:08AM 1 point [-]

Also:

Truth is stranger than fiction, because fiction has to make sense.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 04 April 2012 06:32:15AM 2 points [-]

I was originally going to post that one, but decided to go with Chesterton's version since it better explains what is meant. (At the expense of loosing some of the snappiness.)

Comment author: Andy_McKenzie 01 April 2012 10:09:05PM 1 point [-]

I adore Western medicine. I trust my doctor with my life. I’m just not sure I trust her with my death. Keep in mind that when it comes to your body and those of your family and who’s dead and who’s alive, who’s conscious and who’s not, your own judgment may be better than anyone else’s.

Dick Teresi, The Undead

Comment author: Andy_McKenzie 01 April 2012 10:10:38PM 42 points [-]

A few years into this book, I was diagnosed as diabetic and received a questionnaire in the mail. The insurance carrier stated that diabetics often suffer from depression and it was worried about me. One of the questions was “Do you think about death?” Yes, I do. “How often?” the company wanted to know. “Yearly? Monthly? Weekly? Daily?” And if daily, how many times per day? I dutifully wrote in, “About 70 times per day.” The next time I saw my internist, she told me the insurer had recommended psychotherapy for my severe depression. I explained to her why I thought about death all day—merely an occupational hazard—and she suggested getting therapy nonetheless. I thought, fine, it might help with the research.

The therapist found me tragically undepressed, and I asked her if she could help me design a new life that would maximize the few years that I had left. After all, one should have a different life strategy at sixty than at twenty. She asked why I thought I was going to die and why I had such a great fear of death. I said, I am going to die. It’s not a fear; it’s a reality. There must be some behavior that could be contraindicated for a man my age but other normally dangerous behavior that takes advantage of the fact that I am risking fewer years at sixty or sixty-five years of age than I was at twenty or twenty-five (such as crimes that carry a life sentence, crushing at age twenty but less so at age sixty-five). Surely psychology must have something to say on the topic. Turns out, according to my therapist, it does not. There was therapy for those with terminal illness, for the bereaved, for the about-to-be-bereaved, for professionals who dealt with terminal patients, and so on, but there was nothing for people who were simply aware that their life would come to a natural end. It would seem to me that this is a large, untapped market. The therapist advised me not to think about death.

Dick Teresi, The Undead

Comment author: John_Maxwell_IV 02 April 2012 06:02:54AM 3 points [-]
Comment author: Nisan 02 April 2012 05:51:56PM 5 points [-]

I like the first video, but I wish it ended at 4:20. It reminds me a lot of Ecclesiastes, which is a refreshingly honest essay about the meaning of life, with the moral "and therefore you should do what God wants you to do" tacked on at the end by an anonymous editor.

Comment author: Vaniver 01 April 2012 11:20:25PM 16 points [-]

For those who feel deeply about contemporary politics, certain topics have become so infected by considerations of prestige that a genuinely rational approach to them is almost impossible.

-George Orwell

Comment author: Mark_Eichenlaub 02 April 2012 12:03:19AM *  27 points [-]

Gene Hofstadt: You people. You think money is the answer to every problem.

Don Draper: No, just this particular problem.

Mad Men, "My Old Kentucky Home"

Comment author: FiftyTwo 03 April 2012 09:47:12PM *  15 points [-]

Another good one from Don Draper:

I hate to break it to you, but there is no big lie, there is no system, the universe is indifferent.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 02 April 2012 01:47:30AM *  -2 points [-]

You think me reckless, desperate and mad.
You argue by results, as this world does,
To settle if an act be good or bad.
You defer to the fact. For every life and every act
Consequence of good and evil can be shown.
And as in time results of many deeds are blended
So good and evil in the end become confounded.
It is not in time that my death shall be known;
It is out of time that my decision is taken
If you call that decision
To which my whole being gives entire consent.
I give my life
To the Law of God above the Law of Man.
Those who do not the same
How should they know what I do?

T. S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral

Comment author: BlazeOrangeDeer 02 April 2012 05:54:29AM 8 points [-]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but does this seem like an affirmation of religious morality and denouncement of consequentialism? I'm failing to see the rationality here.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 02 April 2012 07:29:28AM *  0 points [-]

Rationality in: Recognition of timeless/timeful distinction (Law of God, Law of Man), Emphasizing timeless effects even when they're heavily discountable, Pointing out that history tends to make fools of the temporally good, Touching on the touchy theme of consent, Proposing arguments about when it is or is not justified to take-into-account or ignore the arguments of others who seem to be acting in good faith.

Also, even a simple counter-affirmation to local ideology is itself useful if it's sufficiently eloquently-stated.

(Pretty drunk, apologies for any errors.)

Comment author: wedrifid 02 April 2012 08:07:58AM 7 points [-]

(Pretty drunk, apologies for any errors.)

You mean the part where you equate 'timeless' considerations with the Law of God?

Comment author: Will_Newsome 02 April 2012 07:42:52PM 1 point [-]

That's definitely not an error. Have you read much T. S. Eliot? He was obsessed with the timeful/timeless local/global distinction. Read Four Quartets.

Comment author: wedrifid 02 April 2012 09:55:03PM 2 points [-]

That's definitely not an error. Have you read much T. S. Eliot? He was obsessed with the timeful/timeless local/global distinction. Read Four Quartets.

I wasn't trying to imply you misrepresented T.S.Eliot's obsession. Just that you make an error in advocating it as an example of a "Rationality Quote". Because it's drivel.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 02 April 2012 10:07:49PM -2 points [-]

0_o

/sigh...

Comment author: Will_Newsome 02 April 2012 07:46:32PM *  1 point [-]

Wait, it explicitly says that his decision (if you call that "decision" to which his whole being gives entire consent) to give his life to the Law of God should (and is to) be taken timelessly ("out of time"). ...I don't see how that's not clear. Most of the time when people complain about equivocation/syncretism it's because the (alleged) meaning is implicit or hidden one layer down, but that's not the case here.

Comment author: gjm 03 April 2012 10:53:50AM 1 point [-]

Conditional on the existence of a Law of God (and the sort of god in whom Eliot believed) that's not so very unreasonable. It's worth distinguishing between "irrational" and "rational but based on prior assumptions I find very improbable".

(None the less, I don't think there's much rationality in the lines Will_Newsome quoted, though it does gesticulate in the general direction of an important difficulty with consequentialism: a given action has a lot of consequences and sorting out the net effect is difficult-to-impossible; so we have to make do with a bunch of heuristic approximations to consequentialism. I'll still take that over a bunch of heuristic approximations to the law of a probably-nonexistent god, any day.)

Comment author: Incorrect 02 April 2012 10:16:27PM 2 points [-]

What is the empirical difference between a person who is temporally vs timelessly good?

Comment author: Will_Newsome 02 April 2012 01:49:13AM 2 points [-]

In the small circle of pain within the skull
You still shall tramp and tread one endless round
Of thought, to justify your action to yourselves,
Weaving a fiction which unravels as you weave,
Pacing forever in the hell of make-believe
Which never is belief: this is your fate on earth
And we must think no further of you.

T. S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral

Comment author: Spurlock 02 April 2012 04:44:28AM 15 points [-]

“The mind commands the body and it obeys. The mind orders itself and meets resistance. ”

-St Augustine of Hippo

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 03 April 2012 09:45:19PM 9 points [-]

The mind commands the body and it obeys.

Augustine has obviously never tried to learn something which requires complicated movement, or at least he didn't try it as an adult.

Comment author: Spurlock 02 April 2012 04:45:14AM 22 points [-]

"Muad’Dib learned rapidly because his first training was in how to learn. And the first lesson of all was the basic trust that he could learn. It is shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult. Muad‘Dib knew that every experience carries its lesson"

Frank Herbert, Dune

Comment author: John_Maxwell_IV 02 April 2012 06:10:24AM *  19 points [-]

It took me years to learn not to feel afraid due to a perceived status threat when I was having a hard time figuring something out.

A good way to make it hard for me to learn something is to tell me that how quickly I understand it is an indicator of my intellectual aptitude.

Comment author: Spurlock 02 April 2012 03:32:25PM 18 points [-]

Interesting article about a study on this effect:

Dweck’s researchers then gave all the fifth-graders a final round of tests that were engineered to be as easy as the first round. Those who had been praised for their effort significantly improved on their first score—by about 30 percent. Those who’d been told they were smart did worse than they had at the very beginning—by about 20 percent.

Dweck had suspected that praise could backfire, but even she was surprised by the magnitude of the effect. “Emphasizing effort gives a child a variable that they can control,” she explains. “They come to see themselves as in control of their success. Emphasizing natural intelligence takes it out of the child’s control, and it provides no good recipe for responding to a failure.”

Comment author: TheOtherDave 02 April 2012 04:23:00PM 8 points [-]

This seems like a more complicated explanation than the data supports. It seems simpler, and equally justified, to say that praising effort leads to more effort, which is a good thing on tasks where more effort yields greater success.

I would be interested to see a variation on this study where the second-round problems were engineered to require breaking of established first-round mental sets in order to solve them. What effect does praising effort after the first round have in this case?

Perhaps it leads to more effort, which may be counterproductive for those sorts of problems, and thereby lead to less success than emphasizing intelligence. Or, perhaps not. I'm not making a confident prediction here, but I'd consider a praising-effort-yields-greater-success result more surprising (and thus more informative) in that scenario than the original one.

Comment author: Spurlock 02 April 2012 05:07:46PM 6 points [-]

I agree that the data doesn't really distinguish this explanation from the effect John Maxwell described, mainly I just linked it because the circumstances seemed reminiscent and I thought he might find it interesting. Its worth noting though that these aren't competing explanations: your interpretation focuses on explaining the success of the "effort" group, and the other focuses on the failure of the "intelligence" group.

To help decide which hypothesis accounts for most of the difference, there should really have been a control group that was just told "well done" or something. Whichever group diverged the most from the control, that group would be the one where the choice of praise had the greatest effect.

Comment author: undermind 03 April 2012 01:50:27PM *  7 points [-]

I've seen this study cited a lot; it's extremely relevant to smart self- and other-improvement. But there are various possible interpretations of the results, besides what the authors came up with... Also, how much has this study been replicated?

I'd like to see a top-level post about it.

Comment author: gwern 04 April 2012 12:53:26AM 8 points [-]
Comment author: John_Maxwell_IV 02 April 2012 05:39:48AM *  10 points [-]

Don't kid yourself, just because you got the correct numerical answer to a problem is not justification that you understand the physics of the problem. You must understand all the logical steps in arriving at that solution or you have gained nothing, right answer or not.

My old physics professor David Newton (yes, apparently that's the name he was born with) on how to study physics.

Comment author: BlazeOrangeDeer 02 April 2012 05:57:41AM 2 points [-]

My physics teacher is always sure to clarify which parts of a problem are physics and which are math. Physics is usually the part that allows you to set up the math.

Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 02 April 2012 05:54:48AM 6 points [-]

Seek knowledge, even as far as China.

-A Weak Hadith of the Prophet Muhammad

Comment author: taelor 02 April 2012 09:02:20AM *  0 points [-]

He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.

-- John McCarthy

Comment author: Nominull 02 April 2012 04:05:24PM 3 points [-]

Repeat

Comment author: MarkusRamikin 04 April 2012 11:48:21AM 0 points [-]

I'm starting to feel it was a mistake to have so many of those threads instead of a single one.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 04 April 2012 11:58:12AM 4 points [-]

A single thread would have been of unmanageable size.

Comment author: MarkusRamikin 04 April 2012 12:06:56PM *  1 point [-]

In what sense unmanageable? What would it make harder to do that is easy to do now?

It seems to me the current setup makes it harder to know if you're posting a repeat, or to display a list of all top quotes.

Also, I think it leads to more barrel-scraping this way; it seems to me that for the most part we ran out of the really great quotes and now often things get posted that have no special rationality lesson, but instead appeal to the tastes and specific beliefs common in our particular community.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 04 April 2012 12:44:39PM *  4 points [-]

Unmanageable because the site software doesn't show more than 500 (top-level?) comments, and because large numbers of comments load more slowly.

There's a way to find top-voted quotes-- Best of Rationality Quotes 2009/2010 (Warning: 750kB page, 774 quotes). This could be considered a hint about the quantity problem.

There is another one for 2011.

As for dupes, the search on the site is adequate for finding them-- what's needed is a recommendation on the quotes page for people to check before posting.

I think the quotes continue to be somewhat interesting, but it's not so much that there are no great ones left (though I was surprised to discover recently that "Nature to be commanded must be obeyed" hadn't been listed) as that they tend to keep hitting the same points.

Comment author: Yvain 02 April 2012 12:55:42PM 36 points [-]

On counter-signaling, how not to do:

US police investigated a parked car with a personalized plate reading "SMUGLER". They found the vehicle, packed with 24 lb (11 kg) of narcotics, parked near the Canadian border at a hotel named "The Smugglers' Inn." Police believed the trafficker thought that being so obvious would deter the authorities.

-- The Irish Independent, "News In Brief"

Comment author: Alejandro1 02 April 2012 07:06:46PM *  9 points [-]

Maybe the guy had been reading too much Edgar Allan Poe? As a child, I loved "The Purloined Letter" and tried to play that trick on my sister - taking something from her and hiding it "in plain sight". Of course, she found it immediately.

ETA: it was a girl, not a guy.

Comment author: RobertLumley 03 April 2012 01:32:15AM 3 points [-]

I find it highly unlikely that this is the whole story. Surely the police are not licensed to investigate a car based solely on its vanity plate and where it was parked...

Comment author: TimS 03 April 2012 01:44:35AM 9 points [-]

You are probably right that more information drew police attention to the car, but "near the border" gets one most of the way to legally justified. In the 1970s, the US Supreme Court explicitly approved a permanent checkpoint approximately 50 miles north of the Mexican border.

Comment author: RobertLumley 03 April 2012 01:49:42AM 6 points [-]

Well that's a rather depressing piece of law...

Comment author: EditedToAdd 02 April 2012 04:51:17PM 17 points [-]

But, the hard part comes after you conquer the world. What kind of world are you thinking of creating?

Johan Liebert, Monster

Comment author: [deleted] 02 April 2012 05:13:52PM *  11 points [-]

I first encountered this in a physics newsgroup, after some crank was taking some toy model way too seriously:

Analogies are like ropes; they tie things together pretty well, but you won't get very far if you try to push them.

Thaddeus Stout Tom Davidson

(I remembered something like "if you pull them too much, they break down", actually...)

Comment author: [deleted] 02 April 2012 06:37:29PM 9 points [-]

All fiction needs to be taken both seriusly and not seriously.

Seriously because even the silliest of art can change minds.

Not seriously because no matter the delusions of the author, or the tone of the work, it's still fiction; entertainment, simulated on an human brain.

Rasmus Eide aka. Armok_GoB.

PS. This is not taken from an LW/OB post.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 02 April 2012 08:45:17PM 1 point [-]

Everything needs to be taken both seriously and not-seriously. Tepid unreflective semi-seriousness is always a mistake.

Comment author: Alejandro1 02 April 2012 07:08:33PM 21 points [-]

On politics as the mind-killer:

We’re at the point where people are morally certain about the empirical facts of what happened between Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman on the basis of their general political worldviews. This isn’t exactly surprising—we are tribal creatures who like master narratives—but it feels as though it’s gotten more pronounced recently, and it’s almost certainly making us all stupider.

-- Julian Sanchez (the whole post is worth reading)

Comment author: RobertLumley 03 April 2012 01:42:13AM 4 points [-]

It starts to seem, as Albert Camus once put it, that we’ve made the mind into an armed camp—in which not only politicians and legislative proposals, but moral philosophies, artworks, even scientific theories, have to wear the insignia of one or the other army

Does anyone know the exact quote to which he is referring here?

Comment author: RobertLumley 03 April 2012 01:55:58AM 4 points [-]

I think it's this but I'm not sure:

The Greeks never made the human mind into an armed camp, and in this respect we are inferior to them.

Comment author: FiftyTwo 03 April 2012 09:55:58PM 4 points [-]

Given that they supposedly drowned people for discussing irrational numbers that seems false.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 04 April 2012 03:46:26AM 8 points [-]

Tell that to Socrates.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 03 April 2012 09:47:52PM 10 points [-]

We've reached the point where the weather is political, and so are third person pronouns.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 02 April 2012 08:21:11PM 8 points [-]

The majority of mankind is lazy-minded, incurious, absorbed in vanities, and tepid in emotion, and is therefore incapable of either much doubt or much faith; and when the ordinary man calls himself a sceptic or an unbeliever, that is ordinarily a simple pose, cloaking a disinclination to think anything out to a conclusion.

T. S. Eliot

Comment author: Stabilizer 02 April 2012 08:39:55PM *  8 points [-]

Uxbal: I don't want to die, Bea. I'm afraid to leave the children on their own... I can't.
Bea: You think you take care of the children Uxbal. Don't be naive. The universe takes care of them.
Uxbal: Yes... but the universe doesn't pay the rent.

-Biutiful

Comment author: Will_Newsome 02 April 2012 09:40:56PM 2 points [-]

Oh my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger.
Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.

T. S. Eliot, The Rock

Comment author: J_Taylor 02 April 2012 11:59:04PM 0 points [-]

The chess board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just and patient. We also know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance.

-Thomas Huxley

Comment author: Will_Newsome 03 April 2012 12:56:06AM *  3 points [-]

I've traditionally gone with: the board is the space of/for potentially-live hypotheses/arguments/considerations, pieces are facts/observations/common-knowledge-arguments, moves are new arguments, the rules are the rules of epistemology. This lets you bring in other metaphors: ideally your pieces (facts/common-knowledge-arguments) should be overprotected (supported by other facts/common-knowledge-arguments); you should watch out for zwichenzugs (arguments that redeem other arguments that it would otherwise be justified to ignore); tactics/combinations (good arguments or combinations of arguments) flow from strategy/positioning (taking care in advance to marshal your arguments); controlling the center (the key factual issues/hypotheses at stake) is important; tactics (good arguments) often require the coordination of functionally diverse pieces (facts/common-knowledge-arguments), and so on.

The subskills that I use to play chess overlap a lot with the subskills I use to discover truth. E.g., the subskill of thinking "if I move here, then he moves there, then I move there, then he moves there, ..." and thinking through the best possible arguments at each point rather than just giving up or assuming he'll do something I'd find useful, i.e. avoiding motivated stopping and motivated continuation, is a subskill I use constantly and find very important. I constantly see people only thinking one or two moves (arguments) ahead, and in the absence of objective feedback this leads to them repeatedly being overconfident in bad moves (bad arguments) that only seem good if you're not very experienced at chess (argumentation in the epistemic sense).

Oh, a rationality quote: Bill Hartson: "Chess doesn't make sane people crazy; it keeps crazy people sane."

And Bobby Fischer: "My opponents make good moves too. Sometimes I don't take these things into consideration."

Comment author: Maniakes 03 April 2012 12:51:28AM 30 points [-]

There are big differences between "a study" and "a good study" and "a published study" and "a study that's been independently confirmed" and "a study that's been independently confirmed a dozen times over." These differences are important; when a scientist says something, it's not the same as the Pope saying it. It's only when dozens and hundreds of scientists start saying the same thing that we should start telling people to guzzle red wine out of a fire hose.

Chris Bucholz

Comment author: Elithrion 03 April 2012 01:38:31AM *  23 points [-]

"What really is the point of trying to teach anything to anybody?" This question seemed to provoke a murmur of sympathetic approval from up and down the table. Richard continued, "What I mean is that if you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else. That forces you to sort it out in your mind. And the more slow and dim-witted your pupil, the more you have to break things down into more and more simple ideas. And that's really the essence of programming. By the time you've sorted out a complicated idea into little steps that even a stupid machine can deal with, you've learned something about it yourself."

Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Comment author: jsbennett86 03 April 2012 02:17:07AM *  13 points [-]

But when we have these irrational beliefs, these culturally coded assumptions, running so deep within our community and movement, how do we actually change that? How do we get people to further question themselves when they’ve already become convinced that they’re a rational person, a skeptic, and have moved on from irrationality, cognitive distortion and bias?

Well I think what we need to do is to change the fundamental structure and values of skepticism. We need to build our community and movement around slightly different premises.

As it has stood in the past, skepticism has been predicated on a belief in the power of the empirical and rational. It has been based on the premise that there is an empirical truth, and that it is knowable, and that certain tools and strategies like science and logic will allow us to reach that truth. In short, the “old guard” skepticism was based on a veneration of the rational. But the veneration of certain techniques or certain philosophies creates the problematic possibility of choosing to consider certain conclusions or beliefs to BE empirical and rational and above criticism, particularly beliefs derived from the “right” tools, and even more dangerously, to consider oneself “rational”.

...

I believe that in order to be able to question our own beliefs as well as we question those of others, we need to restructure skepticism around awareness of human limitation, irrationality and flaws. Rather than venerating the rational, and aspiring to become some kind of superhuman fully rational vulcan minds, we need to instead create a more human skepticism, built around understanding how belief operates, how we draw conclusions, and how we can cope with the human limitations. I believe we need to remove the focus from aspiring towards ridding ourselves of the irrational, and instead move the focus towards understanding how this irrationality operates and why we believe all the crazy things we believe. We need to position as our primary aspiration not the achievement of a perfect comprehending mind, but instead an ability to maintain constant hesitation and doubt, to always always ALWAYS second-guess our positions and understand that they’re being created through a flawed mind, from flawed perceptions.

Science and reason are excellent tools to allow us to cope with being crazy, irrational human beings, but it CANNOT allow us to transcend that. The instant we begin to believe that we have become A Skeptic, A Rational Person, that is when we’ve fucked up, that is when we stop practicing skepticism, stop keeping an eye out for our mistakes, and begin to imagine our irrational perceptions as perfect rational conclusions. It’s only by building a skepticism based on the practice of doubt, rather than the state of Skeptic, that we’ll truly be able to be move on from our assumptions.

Comment author: Thomas 03 April 2012 06:24:39AM 4 points [-]

Memory locations are just wires turned sideways in time.

  • Danny Hillis
Comment author: Mass_Driver 03 April 2012 10:03:04PM 4 points [-]

Can you please explain this, slowly and carefully? It sounds plausible, and I'm trying to improve my understanding of space-time / 4-D thinking.

Comment author: Thomas 04 April 2012 07:28:28AM 0 points [-]

Ponder only the one dimensional time for now. At every point of time, you have only this moment and nothing more. But with the memories, you have same previous moments cached. Stored somewhere "orthogonal" to the timeline.

I've heard it here: http://edge.org/conversation/a-universe-of-self-replicating-code

On a site even better than this and quite unpopular on this site, also. Read or watch Dyson there. As many others.

Comment author: VKS 03 April 2012 07:32:16AM *  5 points [-]

The last level of metaphor in the Alice books is this: that life, viewed rationally and without illusion, appears to be a nonsense tale told by an idiot mathematician. At the heart of things science finds only a mad, never-ending quadrille of Mock Turtle Waves and Gryphon Particles. For a moment the waves and particles dance in grotesque, inconceivably complex patterns capable of reflecting on their own absurdity.

  • Martin Gardner, The Annotated Alice
Comment author: Stephanie_Cunnane 03 April 2012 07:51:19AM 13 points [-]

In short, and I can't emphasize this strongly enough, a fundamental issue that any theory of psychology ultimately has to face is that brains are useful. They guide behavior. Any brain that didn't cause its owner to do useful--in the evolutionary sense--things, didn't cause reproduction.

-Robert Kurzban, Why Everyone (Else) is a Hypocrite: Evolution and the Modular Mind

Comment author: VKS 03 April 2012 07:51:55AM 18 points [-]

Pedantry and mastery are opposite attitudes toward rules. To apply a rule to the letter, rigidly, unquestioningly, in cases where it fits and in cases where it does not fit, is pedantry. ... To apply a rule with natural ease, with judgment, noticing the cases where it fits, and without ever letting the words of the rule obscure the purpose of the action or the opportunities of the situation, is mastery.

  • George Pólya, How to Solve It
Comment author: scav 03 April 2012 07:53:33AM 6 points [-]

Clearly, Bem’s psychic could bankrupt all casinos on the planet before anybody realized what was going on. This analysis leaves us with two possibilities. The first possibility is that, for whatever reason, the psi effects are not operative in casinos, but they are operative in psychological experiments on erotic pictures. The second possibility is that the psi effects are either nonexistent, or else so small that they cannot overcome the house advantage. Note that in the latter case, all of Bem’s experiments overestimate the effect.

Returning to Laplace’s Principle, we feel that the above reasons motivate us to assign our prior belief in precognition a number very close to zero.

Why Psychologists Must Change the Way They Analyze Their Data: The Case of Psi

Eric–Jan Wagenmakers, Ruud Wetzels, Denny Borsboom, & Han van der Maas

Comment author: FiftyTwo 03 April 2012 09:40:35PM 4 points [-]

I don't see why the first hypothesis should necessarily be rejected out of hand. If the supposed mechanism is unconscious then having it react to erotic pictures and not particular casino objects seems perfectly plausible. Obviously the real explanation might be that the data wasn't strong enough to prove the claim, but we shouldn't allow the low status of "psi theories" to distort our judgement.

Comment author: scav 04 April 2012 08:12:28AM 1 point [-]

One good thing about Bayesian reasoning is that assigning a prior belief very close to zero isn't rejecting the hypothesis out of hand. The posterior belief will be updated by evidence (if any can be found). And even if you start with a high prior probability and update it with Bem's evidence for precognition, you would soon have a posterior probability much closer to zero than your prior :)

BTW there is no supposed mechanism for precognition. Just calling it "unconscious" doesn't render it any more plausible that we have a sense that would be super useful if only it even worked well enough to be measured, and yet unlike all our other senses, it hasn't been acted on by natural selection to improve. Sounds like special pleading to me.

Comment author: Grognor 03 April 2012 11:50:17AM 3 points [-]

To a large degree, our values "just happen"—like our brains. When our values conflict—the value of preventing suffering versus the value of preserving the human species—we are tempted to choose the latter because it feels axiomatic to us. But that is a reason to treat it with extra suspicion, not to treat it as axiomatic.

-Sister Y

Comment author: Alejandro1 03 April 2012 05:01:58PM 17 points [-]

‘I’m exactly in the position of the man who said, ‘I can believe the impossible, but not the improbable.’’

‘That’s what you call a paradox, isn’t it?’ asked the other.

‘It’s what I call common sense, properly understood,’ replied Father Brown. ’It really is more natural to believe a preternatural story, that deals with things we don’t understand, than a natural story that contradicts things we do understand. Tell me that the great Mr Gladstone, in his last hours, was haunted by the ghost of Parnell, and I will be agnostic about it. But tell me that Mr Gladstone, when first presented to Queen Victoria, wore his hat in her drawing-room and slapped her on the back and offered her a cigar, and I am not agnostic at all. That is not impossible; it’s only incredible.

-G. K. Chesterton, The Curse of the Golden Cross

Comment author: gwern 04 April 2012 12:57:19AM 8 points [-]

The ghost of Parnell is Far, the presentation to the Queen is Near?

Comment author: Alejandro1 04 April 2012 03:34:04AM *  2 points [-]

Perhaps. I had thought of the quote in the context of a distinction between epistemic/Bayesian probability and physical possibility or probability. For us (though perhaps not for Father Brown) the ghost story is physically impossible, it contradicts the basic laws of reality, while the presentation story does not. (In terms of the MWI we might say that there is a branch of the wavefunction where Gladstone offered the Queen a cigar, but none where a ghost appeared to him.) However, we might very well be justified in assigning the ghost story a higher epistemic probability, because we have more underlying uncertainty about (to use your words) Far concepts like the possibility of ghosts than about Near ones like how Gladstone would have behaved in front of the Queen.

Comment author: cousin_it 04 April 2012 09:50:05AM *  1 point [-]

I seem to instinctively assign the ghost story a lower probability. The lesson of the quote might still be valid, can you come up with an example that would work for me?

Comment author: CronoDAS 04 April 2012 03:13:41AM 25 points [-]

"What was the Sherlock Holmes principle? 'Once you have discounted the impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.'"

"I reject that entirely," said Dirk sharply. "The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it which the merely improbable lacks. How often have you been presented with an apparently rational explanation of something that works in all respects other than one, which is just that it is hopelessly improbable? Your instinct is to say, 'Yes, but he or she simply wouldn't do that.'"

"Well, it happened to me today, in fact," replied Kate.

"Ah, yes," said Dirk, slapping the table and making the glasses jump. "Your girl in the wheelchair -- a perfect example. The idea that she is somehow receiving yesterday's stock market prices apparently out of thin air is merely impossible, and therefore must be the case, because the idea that she is maintaining an immensely complex and laborious hoax of no benefit to herself is hopelessly improbable. The first idea merely supposes that there is something we don't know about, and God knows there are enough of those. The second, however, runs contrary to something fundamental and human which we do know about. We should therefore be very suspicious of it and all its specious rationality."

-- Douglas Adams. The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988) p.169

Comment author: Alejandro1 04 April 2012 03:27:20AM 1 point [-]

Yes, exactly the same idea. Partial versions of your quote have been posted twice in LW already, and might have inspired me to post the Chesterton prior version, but I liked seeing the context for the Adams one that you provide.

Comment author: CronoDAS 04 April 2012 08:24:45AM *  2 points [-]

Out of context, the quote makes much less sense; the specific example illustrates the point much better than the abstract description does.

Just for fun, which of the following extremely improbable events do you think is more likely to happen first:
1) The winning Mega Millions jackpot combination is 1-2-3-4-5-6 (Note that there are 175,711,536 possible combinations, and drawings are held twice a week.)
2) The Pope makes a public statement announcing his conversion to Islam (and isn't joking).

Comment author: Alejandro1 04 April 2012 08:55:53AM 5 points [-]

Assuming that the 123456 winning must occur by legit random drawing (not a prank or a bug of some kind that is biased towards such a simple result) then I'd go for the Pope story as ]more likely to happen any given day in the present. After all, there have been historically many examples of highly ranked members of groups who sincerely defect to opposing groups, starting with St. Paul. But I confess I'm not very sure about this, and I'm too sleepy to think about the problem rigorously.

In the form you posed the question ("which is more likely to happen first") it is much more difficult to answer because I'd have to evaluate how likely are institutions such as the lottery and the Catholic Church to persist in their current form for centuries or millennia.

Comment author: CronoDAS 04 April 2012 09:38:02AM 4 points [-]

In the form you posed the question ("which is more likely to happen first") it is much more difficult to answer because I'd have to evaluate how likely are institutions such as the lottery and the Catholic Church to persist in their current form for centuries or millennia.

Good point.

Comment author: sixes_and_sevens 04 April 2012 10:46:40AM 1 point [-]

1-2-3-4-5-6 is a Schelling point for overt tampering with a lottery. That makes it considerably more likely to be reported as the outcome to a lottery, even if it's not more likely to be the outcome of a stochastic method of selecting numbers.

After seeing quite a few examples, I've recently become very sensitive to comparisons of an abstract idea of something with an objective something, as if they were on equal footing. Your question explicitly says the Pope conversion is a legitimate non-shenanigans event, while not making the same claim of the lottery result. Was that intentional?

Comment author: APMason 04 April 2012 11:52:35AM 1 point [-]

1-2-3-4-5-6 is a Schelling point for overt tampering with a lottery.

I don't think that's true. If you were going to tamper with the lottery, isn't your most likely motive that you want to win it? Why, then, set it up in such a way that you have to share the prize with the thousands of other people who play those numbers?

Comment author: sixes_and_sevens 04 April 2012 12:00:42PM 1 point [-]

I specified "overt tampering" rather than "covert tampering". If you wanted to choose a result that would draw suspicion, 1-2-3-4-5-6 strikes me as the most obvious candidate.

Comment author: [deleted] 04 April 2012 12:49:51PM 2 points [-]

Just for fun

It'd be even more fun if you replaced "1-2-3-4-5-6" with "14-17-26-51-55-36". (Whenever I play lotteries I always choose combinations like 1-2-3-4-5-6, and I love to see the shocked faces of the people I tell, tell them that it's no less likely than any other combination but it's at least easier to remember, and see their perplexed faces for the couple seconds it takes them to realize I'm right. Someone told me that if such a combination ever won they'd immediately think of me. (Now that I think about it, choosing a Schelling point does have the disadvantage that should I win, I'd have to split the jackpot with more people, but I don't think that's ever gonna happen anyway.))

more likely to happen first

Dunno how you would count the (overwhelmingly likely) case where both Mega Millions and the papacy cease to exist without either of those events happening first, but let's pretend you said "more likely to happen in the next 10 years"... Event 1 ought to happen 0.6 times per million years in average; I dunno about the probability per unit time for Event 2, but it's likely about two orders of magnitude larger.

Comment author: Particleman 03 April 2012 07:40:16PM 3 points [-]

Dear, my soul is grey
With poring over the long sum of ill;
So much for vice, so much for discontent...
Coherent in statistical despairs
With such a total of distracted life,
To see it down in figures on a page,
Plain, silent, clear, as God sees through the earth
The sense of all the graves, - that's terrible
For one who is not God, and cannot right
The wrong he looks on. May I choose indeed
But vow away my years, my means, my aims,
Among the helpers, if there's any help
In such a social strait? The common blood
That swings along my veins, is strong enough
To draw me to this duty.

-Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh, 1856

Comment author: VKS 03 April 2012 08:52:49PM 13 points [-]

Don't just read it; fight it! Ask your own questions, look for your own examples, discover your own proofs. Is the hypothesis necessary? Is the converse true? What happens in the classical special case? What about the degenerate case? Where does the proof use the hypothesis?

  • Paul Halmos
Comment author: FiftyTwo 03 April 2012 09:31:53PM 15 points [-]

I know a lot of scientists as well as laymen are scornful of philosophy - perhaps understandably so. Reading academic philosophy journals often makes my heart sink too. But without exception, we all share philosophical background assumptions and presuppositions. The penalty of _not _ doing philosophy isn't to transcend it, but simply to give bad philosophical arguments a free pass.

David Pearce

Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 04 April 2012 09:57:59AM 5 points [-]

This is analogous to my main worry as someone who considers himself a part of the anti-metaphysical tradition (like Hume, the Logical Positivists, and to an extent Less Wrongers): what if by avoiding metaphysics I am simply doing bad metaphysics.

Comment author: VKS 04 April 2012 10:43:59AM *  1 point [-]

As an experiment, replace 'metaphysics' and 'metaphysical' with 'theology' and 'theological' or 'spirituality' and 'spiritual'. Then the confusion is obvious.

Unless I don't understand what you mean by metaphysics, and just have all those terms bunched up in my head for no reason, which is also possible.

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 04 April 2012 10:56:51AM *  4 points [-]

Yes. There is a difference between speaking imprecisely because we don't know (yet) how to express it better, and speaking things unrelated to reality. The former is worth doing, because a good approximation can be better than nothing, and it can help us to avoid worse approximations.

Comment author: VKS 04 April 2012 12:11:38PM 1 point [-]

Well, but what it that is meant by metaphysics? I've heard the word many times, seen its use, and I still don't know what I'm supposed to do with it.


Ok, so now I've read the Wikipedia article, and now I'm unconvinced that when people use the term they mean what it says they mean. I know at least some people who definitely used "metaphysical" in the sense of "spiritual". What do you mean by metaphysics?

Also unconvinced that it has any reason to be thought of as a single subject. I get the impression that the only reason these topics are together is that they feel "big".

But I will grant you that given Wiki's definition of metaphysics, there is no reason to think that it is in principle incapable of providing useful works. I revise my position to state that arguments should not be dismissed because they are metaphysical, but rather because they are bad. Furthermore, I suspect that "metaphysics" is just a bad category, and should, as much as possible, be expunged from one's thinking.

Comment author: CronoDAS 04 April 2012 01:17:03AM 8 points [-]

Any “technology” which claims miraculous benefits on a timescale longer than it takes to achieve tenure and retire is vaporware, and should not be taken seriously.

-- Scott Locklin

Comment author: lsparrish 04 April 2012 03:19:15AM 22 points [-]

What really matters is:–

  1. Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure your sentence couldn't mean anything else.

  2. Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don't implement promises, but keep them.

  3. Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean "More people died" don't say "Mortality rose."

  4. In writing. Don't use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was "terrible," describe it so that we'll be terrified. Don't say it was "delightful"; make us say "delightful" when we've read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers, "Please will you do my job for me."

  5. Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

-- C. S. Lewis

Comment author: Stephanie_Cunnane 04 April 2012 03:27:55AM 32 points [-]

Another learning which cost me much to recognize, can be stated in four words. The facts are friendly.

It has interested me a great deal that most psychotherapists, especially the psychoanalysts, have steadily refused to make any scientific investigation of their therapy, or to permit others to do this. I can understand this reaction because I have felt it. Especially in our early investigations I can well remember the anxiety of waiting to see how the findings came out. Suppose our hypotheses were disproved! Suppose we were mistaken in our views! Suppose our opinions were not justified! At such times, as I look back, it seems to me that I regarded the facts as potential enemies, as possible bearers of disaster. I have perhaps been slow in coming to realize that the facts are always friendly. Every bit of evidence one can acquire, in any area, leads one that much closer to what is true. And being closer to the truth can never be a harmful or dangerous or unsatisfying thing. So while I still hate to readjust my thinking, still hate to give up old ways of perceiving and conceptualizing, yet at some deeper level I have, to a considerable degree, come to realize that these painful reorganizations are what is known as learning, and that though painful they always lead to a more satisfying because somewhat more accurate way of seeing life. Thus at the present time one of the most enticing areas for thought and speculation is an area where several of my pet ideas have not been upheld by the evidence, I feel if I can only puzzle my way through this problem that I will find a much more satisfying approximation to the truth. I feel sure the facts will be my friends.

-Carl Rogers, On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy (1961)

Comment author: pleeppleep 04 April 2012 03:41:52AM 6 points [-]

"An organized mind is a disciplined mind. And a disciplined mind is a powerful mind."

-- Batman (Batman the Brave and the Bold)

Comment author: Arran_Stirton 04 April 2012 07:07:46AM 0 points [-]

So says a man-dressed-like-a-bat.

(That's not a jibe aimed at the quote but rather a reference to this.)

Comment author: VKS 04 April 2012 10:23:55AM 32 points [-]

Just as there are odors that dogs can smell and we cannot, as well as sounds that dogs can hear and we cannot, so too there are wavelengths of light we cannot see and flavors we cannot taste. Why then, given our brains wired the way they are, does the remark, "Perhaps there are thoughts we cannot think," surprise you?

  • Richard Hamming