Rationality Quotes May 2012

OpenThreadGuy

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Do not quote yourself
Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB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

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Do not quote yourself
Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB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

If people feel they don’t have the power to change a situation, they stop thinking about it.

Interpreted as a conditional statement this is almost certainly false (I completed a degree in political science even though half-way through I understood that me trying to achieve "positive change" was hopeless). What do you think he means? How could we test such a claim?

I think the quote can be interpreted as likely to be true of many people rather than absolutely true of everyone.

6Multiheaded14y

One rather large-scale example, discussed in this community since the beginning of time: deathism and the general public's attitude (or lack thereof) to cryonics. "You know, given human nature, if people got hit on the head by a baseball bat every week, pretty soon they would invent reasons why getting hit on the head with a baseball bat was a good thing." - Eliezer

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Rationality Quotes May 2012

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