Rationality Quotes June 2012

4 Post author: OpenThreadGuy 02 June 2012 05:14PM

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  • Do not quote yourself
  • Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB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 (413)

Sort By: Controversial
Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 03 June 2012 09:59:31AM *  0 points [-]

Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves.

-Eric Hoffer

Comment author: Stabilizer 03 June 2012 12:15:48AM *  1 point [-]

It was impossible for sure. OK. So, let’s start working.

-Philippe Petit. On the idea of walking rope in between the World Trade Center towers.

Comment author: wedrifid 03 June 2012 12:25:41AM *  1 point [-]

It was impossible for sure. OK. So, let’s start working.

-Philippe Petit. On the idea of walking rope in between the World Trade Center towers.

It's not impossible for sure now. If he thought it was impossible when they were actually in existence then he doesn't remotely understand the word. That is beyond even a "Shut up and do the impossible!" misuse.

Comment author: Stabilizer 03 June 2012 02:03:13AM 3 points [-]

I don't understand. Are you saying it wasn't impossible enough?

He actually did it in 1974. It took nearly six years of planning. In order to practice for the walk between the World Trade Center towers he first did tightrope walks between the towers of the Notre Dame and then the Sydney Harbor Bridge. All of these were of course illegal. In WTC case, he had to sneak in, tie the ropes between the towers without anyone knowing and walked between the towers without any harness for nearly 45 mins at that height with the wind and everything. For the complete details, watch the documentary 'Man on Wire'. I think it was as impossible as it got in his line of work.

Comment author: wedrifid 03 June 2012 09:02:32AM *  -1 points [-]

I don't understand.

How on earth could you not understand? If this is sincere incomprehension then all I can do is point to google: define.

Are you saying it wasn't impossible enough?

Yes. This quote is an example of nothing more than how to be confused about words and speak hyperbole for the sake of bravado.

If you have to ask whether something is "impossible enough" you have already answered your question.

Comment author: Stabilizer 03 June 2012 09:45:43PM *  2 points [-]

How on earth could you not understand?

Your sentence wasn't clear enough.

About your gripe with use of the word impossible: it's a quote. Most of the quotes are like applause-lights. Everybody who read that quote understood the intent and meaning. Philippe Petit didn't employ the literal meaning of impossible. But the literal meaning of 'impossible' is rarely used in colloquial contexts. Even in 'Shut up and do the impossible', the absolute literal meaning is not employed. Because if the literal meaning is used, then by definition you can't do it, ever. So the only thing left is the degree of impossibility. You say that the task was too doable to be considered 'impossible' under your standards. Fine. Just mentally replace 'impossible' in that sentence with 'really goddamn hard that no one's done before and everyone would call me crazy if I told them I'm going to do it' and you'd read it the way most people would read it. The spirit of the quote would still survive.

Comment author: wedrifid 03 June 2012 10:08:29PM *  -2 points [-]

About your gripe with use of the word impossible: it's a quote. Most of the quotes are like applause-lights.

Yes, it's an applause light. It isn't one that made me applaud. It isn't a rationalist quote. It doesn't belong here.

Just mentally replace 'impossible' in that sentence

No. I instead choose to mentally replace the quote entirely with a better one and oppose this one. Even Nike's "Just Do It" is strictly superior as rationalist quote, despite being somewhat lacking in actionable detail.

Comment author: kdorian 06 June 2012 03:13:54PM 2 points [-]

It isn't a rationalist quote. It doesn't belong here.

I am forced to disagree; a quote about conquering the (colloquially) impossible with sufficient thought and planning is very appropriate for this site.

Comment author: [deleted] 03 June 2012 09:45:47PM 4 points [-]

How on earth could you not understand? If this is sincere incomprehension then all I can do is point to google: define.

Have you seen Google's definitions yourself? Because 2. does seem to match what Stabilizer means.

Comment author: Multiheaded 05 June 2012 07:19:37AM *  2 points [-]

The Western World has been brainwashed by Aristotle for the last 2,500 years. The unconscious, not quite articulate, belief of most Occidentals is that there is one map which adequately represents reality. By sheer good luck, every Occidental thinks he or she has the map that fits. Guerrilla ontology, to me, involves shaking up that certainty.

I use what in modern physics is called the "multi-model" approach, which is the idea that there is more than one model to cover a given set of facts. As I've said, novel writing involves learning to think like other people. My novels are written so as to force the reader to see things through different reality grids rather than through a single grid. It's important to abolish the unconscious dogmatism that makes people think their way of looking at reality is the only sane way of viewing the world. My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone, but agnosticism about everything. If one can only see things according to one's own belief system, one is destined to become virtually deaf, dumb, and blind. It's only possible to see people when one is able to see the world as others see it.

That's what guerrilla ontology is — breaking down this one-model view and giving people a multi-model perspective.

Robert Anton Wilson, from an interview

Comment author: bramflakes 05 June 2012 11:49:04PM *  2 points [-]

"Most people have a wrong map, therefore we should use multiple maps" doesn't follow. Reversed stupidity isn't intelligence, and in this case Aristotle appears to have been right all along.

If I'm out charting the oceans, I'd probably need to use multiple maps because the curvature of the Earth makes it difficult to accurately project it onto a single 2D surface, but I do that purely for the convenience of not having to navigate with a spherical map. I don't mistake my hodge-podge of inaccurate 2D maps for the reality of the 3D globe.

Comment author: khafra 06 June 2012 06:13:43PM *  1 point [-]

If you're favoring hedgehogs over foxes, you're disagreeing with luminaries like Robin Hanson and billionaire investors like Charlie Munger. There is, in fact, far more than one globe--the one my parents had marked out the USSR, whereas ones sold today do not; and on the territory itself you won't see those lines and colorings at all.

Some recent quotes post here had something along the lines of "the only perfect map is a 1 to 1 correspondence with everything in the territory, and it's perfectly useless."

Comment author: [deleted] 06 June 2012 07:54:43PM *  2 points [-]

Isn't “convenience” also the reason not to use the territory itself as a map in the first place? You know, knowing quantum field theory and general relativity isn't going to give you many insights about (say) English grammar or evolutionary psychology.

Comment author: Snowyowl 24 June 2012 07:59:48PM 1 point [-]

I agree with Wilson's conclusions, though the quote is too short to tell if I reached this conclusion in the same way as he did.

Using several maps at once teaches you that your map can be wrong, and how to compare maps and find the best one. The more you use a map, the more you become attached to it, and the less inclined you are to experiment with other maps, or even to question whether your map is correct. This is all fine if your map is perfectly accurate, but in our flawed reality there is no such thing. And while there are no maps which state "This map is incorrect in all circumstances", there are many which state "This map is correct in all circumstances"; you risk the Happy Death Spiral if you use one of the latter. (I should hope most of your maps state "This map is probably correct in these specific areas, and it may make predictions in other areas but those are less likely to be correct".) Having several contradictory maps can be useful; it teaches you that no map is perfect.

Comment author: rocurley 13 June 2012 01:43:22AM *  5 points [-]

By sheer good luck, every Occidental thinks he or she has the map that fits.

This seems unfair. I have a map; it reperesents what I think the universe is like. Certainty it is not perfect, but if I thought a different one was better I would adopt it. There is a distinction between "this is correct" and "I don't know how to pick something more correct".

Comment author: Oscar_Cunningham 06 June 2012 06:59:10PM *  6 points [-]

It depends what kind of maps. Multiple consistent maps are clearly a good thing (like switching from geometry to coordinates and back). Multiple inconsistent ad-hoc maps can be good if you have a way to choose which one to use when.

Wilson doesn't say which he means, I think he's guilty of imprecision.

Comment author: John_Maxwell_IV 07 June 2012 11:54:40PM 1 point [-]

Or you could always just average your inconsistent maps together, or choose the median value. Should work better than choosing a map at random.

Comment author: Snowyowl 24 June 2012 07:47:24PM 1 point [-]

Or accept that each map is relevant to a different area, and don't try to apply a map to a part of the territory that it wasn't designed for.

And if you frequently need to use areas of the territory which are covered by no maps or where several maps give contradictory results, get better maps.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 25 June 2012 06:12:16AM 1 point [-]

Basically, keep around a meta-map that keeps track of which maps are good models of which parts of the territory.

Comment author: Snowyowl 26 June 2012 07:32:50PM 1 point [-]

Yeah, that should work.

Comment author: witzvo 08 June 2012 06:19:10AM *  1 point [-]

Here, we report that colonization by gut microbiota impacts mammalian brain development and subsequent adult behavior. Using measures of motor activity and anxiety-like behavior, we demonstrate that germ free (GF) mice display increased motor activity and reduced anxiety, compared with specific pathogen free (SPF) mice with a normal gut micro- biota. ... Hence, our results suggest that the microbial colonization process initiates signaling mechanisms that affect neuronal circuits involved in motor control and anxiety behavior.

--Hejitz et.al.

Comment author: Oscar_Cunningham 08 June 2012 07:58:58AM 2 points [-]

What's the significance of this?

Comment author: witzvo 08 June 2012 08:06:31AM *  1 point [-]

Intestinal bacteria have an effect on the nervous system: they affect how we think and how we feel and how our mind develops. This is pretty recent science written by scientists about the function of our mind (or murine minds, at least). That makes it an interesting rationality quote, in my opinion.

Comment author: Nornagest 08 June 2012 09:04:25AM 8 points [-]

It's interesting, all right, but I think it would likely be better received as a standalone Discussion post (ideally with some more context and expansion). The rationality quotes threads tend to be more for quotes directly about rationality or bias than quotes indirectly contributing to our potential understanding of the same.

Comment author: CuSithBell 08 June 2012 01:05:57PM 1 point [-]

I think it could make a pretty interesting Discussion post, and would pair well with some discussion of how becoming a cyborg supposedly makes you less empathic.

Comment author: witzvo 09 June 2012 02:47:35AM 1 point [-]

Serious question: is the cyborg part a joke? I can't tell around here.

Comment author: CuSithBell 09 June 2012 03:55:38AM 3 points [-]

Fair question! I phrased it a little flippantly, but it was a sincere sentiment - I've heard somewhere or other that receiving a prosthetic limb results in a decrease in empathy, something to do with becoming detached from the physical world, and this ties in intriguingly with the scifi trope about cyborging being dehumanizing.

Comment author: Swimmer963 08 June 2012 01:46:15PM 1 point [-]

Really? If true, then that is fascinating... Can you link to any of the recent research, though?

Comment author: witzvo 09 June 2012 02:45:47AM *  2 points [-]

EDIT: by popular demand. I'll be moving this to a discussion instead.

EDIT: the discussion thread is here

As in the attribution, I'm quoting from: Hejitz et.al.: Normal gut microbiota modulates brain development and behavior, 2011.

Here is a review paper.

See also the current special section of science magazine, or google scholar.

Here's the abstract from The Relationship Between Intestinal Microbiota and the Central Nervous System in Normal Gastrointestinal Function and Disease00346-1/abstract):

Although many people are aware of the communication that occurs between the gastrointestinal (GI) tract and the central nervous system, fewer know about the ability of the central nervous system to influence the microbiota or of the microbiota's influence on the brain and behavior. Within the GI tract, the microbiota have a mutually beneficial relationship with their host that maintains normal mucosal immune function, epithelial barrier integrity, motility, and nutrient absorption. Disruption of this relationship alters GI function and disease susceptibility. Animal studies suggest that perturbations of behavior, such as stress, can change the composition of the microbiota; these changes are associated with increased vulnerability to inflammatory stimuli in the GI tract. The mechanisms that underlie these alterations are likely to involve stress-induced changes in GI physiology that alter the habitat of enteric bacteria. Furthermore, experimental perturbation of the microbiota can alter behavior, and the behavior of germ-free mice differs from that of colonized mice. Gaining a better understanding of the relationship between behavior and the microbiota could provide insight into the pathogenesis of functional and inflammatory bowel disorders.

Here are results from an RCT on humans with chronic fatigue syndrome

Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is complex illness of unknown etiology. Among the broad range of symptoms, many patients report disturbances in the emotional realm, the most frequent of which is anxiety. Research shows that patients with CFS and other so-called functional somatic disorders have alterations in the intestinal microbial flora. Emerging studies have suggested that pathogenic and non-pathogenic gut bacteria might influence mood-related symptoms and even behavior in animals and humans. In this pilot study, 39 CFS patients were randomized to receive either 24 billion colony forming units of Lactobacillus casei strain Shirota (LcS) or a placebo daily for two months. Patients provided stool samples and completed the Beck Depression and Beck Anxiety Inventories before and after the intervention. We found a significant rise in both Lactobacillus and Bifidobacteria in those taking the LcS, and there was also a significant decrease in anxiety symptoms among those taking the probiotic vs controls (p = 0.01). These results lend further support to the presence of a gut-brain interface, one that may be mediated by microbes that reside or pass through the intestinal tract.

Comment author: Multiheaded 06 June 2012 07:55:28AM -1 points [-]

By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth.

George Carlin

Comment author: wmorgan 01 June 2012 02:27:20PM 0 points [-]

You have to know exactly what you want, and you have to know exactly how to get it.

Eben Moglen, on how to change the world

Comment author: ChristianKl 03 June 2012 05:44:30PM 1 point [-]

When it comes to big things I don't think that you often know beforehand exactly how to get it. As you progress you learn more and it makes often sense to change course. A lot of startups have to pivot to find their way to change the world.

Comment author: Gastogh 09 June 2012 04:15:59PM *  -1 points [-]

Whatever doubt or doctrinal Atheism you and your friends may have, don't fall into moral atheism.

-Charles Kingsley

Comment author: TimS 08 June 2012 07:40:40PM -1 points [-]

What do we mean when we say that first of all we seek liberty? I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws, and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there, it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it.

Judge Learned Hand

Comment author: Gust 11 June 2012 04:44:42AM 1 point [-]

I like the quote, but I don't see how it relates to rationality.

Comment author: TimS 11 June 2012 11:18:52AM *  1 point [-]

There are people in the real world who think that having a good enough decision-making process for making moral decisions (like deciding the right result in litigation) ensures a morally upright decision.

Up to this point, decision-making procedures have always been implemented by humans, so the quality of the decision-making process is not enough to ensure that a morally upright decision will be made. The better guarantee of morally upright decision-making is morally upright decision-makers.

Comment author: Mass_Driver 15 June 2012 03:10:51AM 7 points [-]

I like Judge Learned Hand, but I think this particular quote is just Deep Wisdom. Living in a pleasant society requires both good laws and good people. There is very little substantive content in LH's oratory. He could just as easily have made the opposite point:

What does it mean to strive for fairness or impartiality? I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon virtue, upon self-discipline, and upon honor. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Justice is simply a matter of fair play; when the rules are made to be broken, no amount of personal virtue can keep a man from temptation, and when the rules are honestly followed by one's peers, no special virtue is needed to join them.

Comment author: James_Miller 01 June 2012 04:27:55PM 2 points [-]

Humor is the brain rewarding us for finding errors and inconsistencies in our thinking.

Eric Barker

Comment author: fubarobfusco 01 June 2012 06:34:49PM 8 points [-]

How does this account for the use of humor in mocking outgroup members?

Comment author: James_Miller 01 June 2012 07:04:37PM 11 points [-]

It doesn't.

Comment author: [deleted] 20 June 2012 02:36:24AM 0 points [-]

I love truth. It's such a wonderful thing. It makes you sane, helps you make better, more effective decisions and it irks all the right people. -Aaron Clarey aka "Captain Capitalism"

Comment author: Nornagest 13 June 2012 03:36:21AM *  0 points [-]

There is no evidence to show that man is created and accoutered to serve as God's vice-regent upon the earth. There is no reason to believe that he is naturally good and kind and brave and wise, or ever was. On the contrary, there is much to show that he is a beast, that has taken a strange turning in the jungle and blundered rather aimlessly into a mental world in which he is certainly not at home. [...]

That is his beauty and his significance: that out of the primordial forces of sex and survival he has forged reason and science, and spun the gossamer splendor of art and love. [...]

If we wish identity with a greater power, let us seek a union with ourself -- our total self raised to its highest potential of wisdom, knowledge, and experience. If we wish to unite with the universe, let us court the whole of nature, all experience, all truth, the wonder and the terror, the splendor and the pity and the pain of the awesome cosmos itself.

Jack Parsons

Comment author: stcredzero 15 June 2012 06:24:29PM *  1 point [-]

I think this quote is like a paraphrase of, "a sense that something more is possible." Imagine if someone invented a drug that gave chimpanzees the highest human levels of rationality at random intervals, for a total of about a half hour per day. They'd be pretty much like humans, only physically stronger.

EDIT: Downvoted? My comment is negative about humans, but it's hopeful. Human nature is pretty squalid, but there is plenty of opportunity for improvement. (Imagine if we could get the median human to the point where they're operating with clarity twice as much as they are now. Or for that matter, imagine myself.)

Comment author: beoShaffer 12 June 2012 02:29:40AM 0 points [-]

When you choose technology, you have to ignore what other people are doing, and consider only what will work the best. -Paul Graham

Comment author: robertskmiles 15 June 2012 03:22:25PM 3 points [-]

Unless your technology will be required to interact with the technology other people are using, which is most of the time. "What will work best" often depends heavily on "what other people are doing".

Comment author: shokwave 15 June 2012 03:33:02PM 3 points [-]

No, at that point you still only consider what will work the best. It's a nitpick, but "what will work the best when others do this" is a different question to "what are the other people doing".

Comment author: robertskmiles 15 June 2012 04:11:11PM *  3 points [-]

Absolutely. What I mean is that they are incompatible. In the common case, it's impossible to simultaneously "consider what will work best" and "ignore what other people are doing". Figuring out what will work best requires paying attention to what other people are doing.

Comment author: soreff 14 June 2012 06:54:45PM 2 points [-]

One of the things that other people do is to build standard parts. If one has an unlimited budget, one can ignore them, and build everything in a project from optimized custom parts. This is rare.

Comment author: wedrifid 12 June 2012 02:58:19AM 3 points [-]

When you choose technology, you have to ignore what other people are doing, and consider only what will work the best. -Paul Graham

I find myself doing the latter via reference to the former.

Comment author: kdorian 06 June 2012 02:48:55PM *  0 points [-]

Very few people see their own actions as truly evil.... It is left to their victims to decide what is evil and what is not.

Laurell K. Hamilton

A quote I find useful when considering both rationalizing, and the differences of relative perspective.

Comment author: [deleted] 02 June 2012 05:39:30AM 2 points [-]

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

Comment author: [deleted] 26 June 2012 09:10:46PM 1 point [-]

On lost purposes:

The therapy changed my life. It feels as if I added a new sense to my palate of senses. I feel as if I was color blind for many years and at last I can see every color. Now that I’ve learned to recognize my pain, I can do something about it. I am so much happier today than I ever was before. While my friends may not have consciously recognized the big change in me, they have stopped calling me clueless and now often come to me for advice.

Did this solve my problem of tiredness? When Ella Friedman told me that I was no longer depressed, I still felt tired. I started investigating it further. It turns out that the depression was a result of the tiredness, not the other way around. It seems that I have a sleeping disorder and an iron problem.

-- Tanya Khovanova

Comment author: thespymachine 15 June 2012 08:27:57PM -1 points [-]

"I must die. But must I die bawling?"

  • Epictetus
Comment author: kdorian 06 June 2012 02:42:53PM -1 points [-]

Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative.

William S. Burroughs

Comment author: shokwave 07 June 2012 07:48:22PM 1 point [-]

My immediate reaction was "No, my knowledge of what is going on starts out superficial and relative, but it sure doesn't stay that way". (I object to the "only").

Comment author: Grognor 01 June 2012 01:46:09PM 5 points [-]

To change your mind it does not suffice to change your opinion.

-Aaron Haspel

Comment author: MixedNuts 01 June 2012 02:05:13PM 5 points [-]

There's no context in the source, so: WTF?

Comment author: shminux 04 June 2012 07:14:13AM *  7 points [-]

"Rich people plan for three generations. Poor people plan for Saturday night." -- Gloria Steinem

The rest of her quotes are pretty good, too.

Comment author: pnrjulius 09 June 2012 01:10:17AM 5 points [-]

Here's what I don't like about that quote: It doesn't tell me which way the causation goes (or if it's feedback, or a lurking variable, or a coincidence). Does being rich make you plan better? Or does planning better make you rich?

Comment author: Grognor 06 June 2012 02:17:21PM 5 points [-]

The presupposition is that passing judgment on somebody’s “lifestyle” (for those who do not speak psychobabble, this means the English word behaviors) is an activity which is forbidden. It follows immediately that when the person says to you “Don’t be all judgmental” they are in fact passing judgment on your behavior. In other words, they are “being all judgmental.” It is, therefore, impossible not to pass judgment. I do not mean “impossible” in the colloquial sense of “unlikely”, but in the logical sense of “certainly cannot be no matter what.”

-William M. Briggs

Comment author: John_Maxwell_IV 07 June 2012 11:58:43PM -1 points [-]

It's possible that the strategy of only judging those who break the anti-judgment norm is the optimal one. Kind of like how most people only condone violence against those who break the anti-violence norm.

Comment author: steven0461 08 June 2012 12:36:38AM 8 points [-]

most people only condone violence against those who break the anti-violence norm

Most people condone violence for a lot more reasons than that.

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 08 June 2012 07:32:32AM 1 point [-]

A good example would be using violence to prevent or punish theft.

Some people solve this by stretching the meaning of "violence" to include theft... but if one follows this path, the word becomes increasingly unrelated to its original meaning.

Generally, it seems like a good heuristics to define a set of "forbidden behavior", with the exception that some kinds of "forbidden behavior" are allowed as a response to someone else's "forbidden behavior". This can help reduce the amount of "forbidden behavior" in society.

The only problem is that the definition of the "forbidden behavior" is arbitrary. It reflects the values of some part of the society, but some people will disagree and suggest changes to the definition. The proponents of given definition will then come with rationalizations why their definition is correct and the other one is not.

I guess it's the same with "judgement". The proponents of non-judgement usually have a set of exceptions: behaviors so bad that it is allowed to judge them. (Being judgemental, that is judging things not belonging to this set of exceptions, is usually one of them.) They just don't want to admit that this set is arbitrary, based on their values.

Comment author: pnrjulius 09 June 2012 01:04:07AM 1 point [-]

I was with you until you said the choice of forbidden behaviors was arbitrary.

No, it's not arbitrary; indeed, it's remarkably consistent across societies. Societies differ on their approaches to law, but in almost every society, randomly assaulting strangers is not allowed. Societies differ on their ideas on sex, but in almost every society, parents are forbidden from having sex with their children. Societies differ on their systems of property, in almost every society, it's forbidden to grab food out of other people's hands.

There are obviously a lot of biological and cultural reasons for the rules people choose, and rule systems do differ, so we have to decide which to use (is gay sex allowed? is abortion legal? etc.). But they're clearly not arbitrary; even the most radically different societies agree on a lot of things.

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 09 June 2012 03:44:34PM 2 points [-]

I don't have enough data about behaviors in different cultures, but I suspect they are rather different. (I wish I had better data, such as a big table with cultures in columns, behaviors in rows, and specific norms in the cells.)

Of course it depends on how many details do we specify about the behavior. The more generally we speak, the more similar results will we get. For example if I ask "is it OK to have sex with anyone anytime, or is it regulated by some rules?", then yes, probably everywhere it is regulated. The more specific questions will show more disagreement, such as "is it OK for a woman to marry a man from a lower social class?" or "is it OK if a king marries his own sister?" or "if someone is dissatisfied with their sexual partner, is it OK to find another one?" (this question may have different answers for men and women).

Also it will depend on the behavior; some behaviors would have obvious disadvantages, such as anyone randomly attacking anyone... though it may be considered OK if a person from a higher class randomly attacks a person from a lower class, or if the attacked person is a member of a different tribe.

I guess there is a lot of mindkilling and disinformation involved in this topic, because if someone is a proponent of a given social norm, it benefits them to claim (truly or falsely) that all societies have the same norm; and if someone is an opponent, it benefits them to claim (truly or falsely) that some other societies have it differently. Even this strategy may be different in different cultures: some cultures may prefer to signal that they have universal values, other cultures may prefer to signal that they are different (read: better) than their neighbors.

Comment author: pnrjulius 11 June 2012 01:30:26AM 3 points [-]

I'm sure that's right.

And my point wasn't to claim that there is no variation in moral values between societies; that's obviously untrue.

My main objection was to the word arbitrary; no, they're not arbitrary, they have causes in our culture and evolutionary history and some of these causes even rise to the level of justifications.

Comment author: TimS 11 June 2012 01:56:52AM *  0 points [-]

Who says that a society's moral values don't have causes? The issue is whether those causes are historically contingent (colloquailly, whether history could have happened in a way that different moral positions were adopted in a particular time and place).

Alternatively, can I suggest you taboo the word justification? The way I understand the term, saying moral positions are justified is contradicted by the proliferation of contradictory moral positions throughout time. (But I'm out of the mainstream in this community because I'm a moral anti-realist)

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 11 June 2012 02:28:05AM 2 points [-]

The way I understand the term, saying moral positions are justified is contradicted by the proliferation of contradictory moral positions throughout time.

Would you apply the same logic to physical propositions? Would you claim that, for example, saying that astronomical positions are justified is contradicted by the proliferation of contradictory astronomical positions throughout time?

Comment author: ChristianKl 06 June 2012 11:23:05PM -1 points [-]

No, the only things that follows logically is that not being judgemental is something that you can't teach someone else directly without judging yourself.

The zen monk that sits in his monastery can be happy and accepting of everyone who visits him.

Explaining what it means to not passing judgment to someone who never experienced it is like telling a blind person about the colors of the rainbow. If you talk about something being blue they don't mean what you are talking about.

If you ask the zen monk to teach you how to be nonjudgmental he might tell you that he's got nothing to teach. He tell you that you can sit down when you want. Relax a bit.

After an hour you ask him impatiently: "Why can't you help me?" He answers: "I have nothing to teach to you."

Then you wait another two hours. He asks you: "Have you learnt something?" You say: "Yes". You go home a bit less judgmental than when you were at the beginning.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 06 June 2012 04:44:04PM 1 point [-]

It doesn't follow, from the fact that passing judgment on someone else's act of passing judgment on people is itself an act of passing judgment on people, that it is impossible not to pass judgment on people.

I'm also not quite clear on whether "passing judgment on" is denotatively the same or different from "judging." (I understand the connotative differences.)

All that said, for my own part, I want to be judged. I want to be judged in certain ways and not in others, certainly, and the possibility of being judged in ways I reject can cause me unhappiness, and I might even say "don't judge me!" as shorthand for "don't apply the particular decision procedure you're applying to judgments of me!" or as a non-truth-preserving way of expressing "your judgment of me upsets me!", but if everyone I knew were to give up having judgments of me at all, or to give up expressing them, that would be a net loss for me.

Comment author: steven0461 08 June 2012 12:22:32AM 14 points [-]

I am a Norman. It is the immemorial custom of my people to conquer our neighbours, seize their land, suppress their culture, and impose our rule as aristocrats. By the principle of cultural relativity this way of life is no worse than any other.

Brett Evill

Comment author: roystgnr 08 June 2012 10:20:53PM 11 points [-]

The best similar cultural-relativity-based deduction I've read, as introduced by Wikipedia:

A story for which [Charles James] Napier is often noted involved Hindu priests complaining to him about the prohibition of Sati by British authorities. This was the custom of burning a widow alive on the funeral pyre of her husband. As first recounted by his brother William, he replied:

"Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs."

Comment author: [deleted] 09 June 2012 08:02:35AM 0 points [-]

Let us all act according to national customs.

Why the national customs of Britain should apply in India? :-)

Comment author: taelor 09 June 2012 10:55:00AM 15 points [-]

Because Britain has a national custom saying that they do.

Comment author: DanielLC 07 June 2012 12:13:17AM *  2 points [-]

You can refrain from passing judgment yourself, but allow others to pass judgement.

For example, rocks are not judgmental.

Comment author: Emile 01 June 2012 08:14:26PM *  6 points [-]

If you want something to exist, make it!

-Vincent Baker

Comment author: wedrifid 01 June 2012 09:43:44PM 7 points [-]

No. If I want something to exist I'll offer a reward or plain and simple pay someone to build it.

Comment author: billswift 03 June 2012 12:52:11AM 1 point [-]

Any muttonhead with money can have a nice house or car or airplane, but how many can build one?

Dean Ing, The Ransom of Black Stealth One

Comment author: Fyrius 19 June 2012 02:03:30PM 2 points [-]

I read the quote as "make it (exist)!", instead of "create it". But whether that's what was meant or not, I think that to the basic idea, it doesn't matter all that much whether you cause it to exist directly or via someone else.

As an addition: when I come up with something cool that I wish existed, my first step is to google around if someone else has ever invented it and sells it. : ) Twice so far the answer has been yes.

Comment author: pnrjulius 09 June 2012 01:38:49AM -2 points [-]

I can't afford to pay someone to do cognitive science, so I'd better try to do it myself.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 14 June 2012 01:52:02PM 2 points [-]

Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.

--Marie Curie

Comment author: Bakkot 24 June 2012 12:11:51AM 9 points [-]

Given that she died from overexposure to radiation, I'm not sure how seriously I can take this.

Comment author: gwern 24 June 2012 03:10:51AM 3 points [-]

So the science gets done, and you make a neat quote, for the people who are still alive.

Comment author: Desrtopa 24 June 2012 03:23:34AM 2 points [-]

Well, now people who are in the know can avoid fear by knowing to avoid doing the stuff that she did. It's mostly the people who believe that radiation is dangerously little understood to whom it seems scary.

Of course, I'd have to say the quote is still incorrect. If I understand that I'm a prisoner of war who's going to be tortured to make my superiors want to ransom me more, I'm damn well going to be afraid.

But I still find "Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less" awfully uplifting.

Comment author: Alicorn 19 June 2012 06:46:23PM *  6 points [-]

"But say an assembled force of divine beings had teamed up and got everybody to evacuate the coasts.”

“Yeah, say they did,” I said. “Where’s the downside?”

“Maybe there isn’t one,” Steff said. “But if they’re doing that, what about all the people who died from fires or plagues or war or basic stupidity at the same time?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe the gods should just a more pro-active stance on that stuff anyway.”

“Okay, but… where does it stop?”

“Maybe it stops when everybody’s safe!” I said...

(I read it for the worldbuilding...)

Comment author: taelor 21 June 2012 11:41:11PM -2 points [-]

(I read it for the worldbuilding...)

That is the exact same justification, to the word, that I give for reading it.

Comment author: Alicorn 22 June 2012 12:53:58AM -2 points [-]

It's a good reason!

Comment author: Thomas 04 June 2012 09:21:43PM 6 points [-]

No experiment should be believed until it has been confirmed by theory!

  • Arthur S. Eddington
Comment author: Eugine_Nier 16 June 2012 09:57:19PM 7 points [-]

Indeed the authority of those who profess to teach is often a positive hindrance to those who desire to learn; they cease to employ their own judgement, and take what they perceive to be the verdict of their chosen master as settling the question. In fact I am not disposed to approve the practice traditionally ascribed to the Pythagoreans, who, when questioned as to the grounds of any assertion that they advanced in debate, are said to have been accustomed to reply 'He himself said so', 'he himself' being Pythagoras. So potent was an opinion already decided, making authority prevail unsupported by reason.

Cicero, De Natura Deorum

Comment author: Alejandro1 02 June 2012 12:35:00AM 11 points [-]

"The veil before my eyes dropped. I saw he was insincere ... a liar. I saw marriage with him would have been marriage to a worthless adventurer. I saw all this within five minutes of that meeting.” As if she heard a self-recriminatory bitterness creep into her voice again, she stopped; then continued in a lower tone. “You may wonder how I had not seen it before. I believe I had. But to see something is not the same as to acknowledge it."

-- John Fowles, The French Lieutenant's Woman

Comment author: kdorian 06 June 2012 02:53:10PM 4 points [-]

There is a condition worse than blindness, and that is seeing something that isn't there.

Thomas Hardy

Comment author: MixedNuts 07 June 2012 02:35:51PM 3 points [-]

Pretty sure most people would pick hallucinations over blindness. Easier to correct for.

Comment author: [deleted] 07 June 2012 06:59:05PM *  0 points [-]

Well, I would, but “pretty sure most people” sounds like blatant generalizing from one example to me.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 07 June 2012 04:54:02PM 5 points [-]

Hallucinations are easier to correct for?
Hm.
So, I start out with an input channel whose average throughput rate is T1, and whose reliability is R1.
Case 1, I reduce that throughput to T2.
Case 2, I reduce the reliability to R2.

A lot seems to depend on T2/T1 and R2/R1.
From what I've gathered from talking to blind people, I'd estimate that T2/T1 in this case is ~.1. That is, sighted people have approximately an order of magnitude more input available to them than blind people. (This varies based on context, of course, but people have some control over their context in practice.)
Hallucinations vary. If I take as my example the week I was in the ICU after my stroke, I'd estimate that R2/R1 is ~.1. That is, any given input was about ten times more likely to not actually correlate to what another observer would see than it usually is.

Both of these estimates are, of course, pulled out of my ass. I mention them only to get some precision around the hypothetical, not as an assertion about what blindness and hallucination are like in the real world. If you prefer other estimates, that's fine.

Given those estimates... hm.
Both of them suck.
I think I would probably choose hallucination, in practice.
I think I would probably be better off choosing blindness.

Comment author: pnrjulius 09 June 2012 12:55:19AM 1 point [-]

False information is definitely more damaging than non-information, because in the best case scenario you ignore the false information. In less-than-best-case scenarios, you fail to ignore the false information and are actively misled.

Suppose there are 10 boxes, one of which contains cash.

If you could open the boxes and see which one had cash, you'd be in great shape. But if you can't, you obviously should prefer leaving all the boxes closed (blindness), rather than somehow seeing cash in box #7 even when it isn't there.

I think the only reason people would be tempted to choose hallucination is that hallucinations in real life are usually relatively mild and often correctible, whereas blindness can be total and intractable with present technology. So given the choice between schizophrenia and blindness, I probably would choose schizophrenia, because schizophrenia is treatable.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 09 June 2012 01:21:48AM 1 point [-]

One reason I would be tempted to choose hallucination over blindness is that hallucinations feel like knowledge, and blindness feels like lack of knowledge, and I'm more comfortable with the feeling of knowledge than I am with the feeling of the lack of knowledge.

Comment author: cmessinger 05 June 2012 05:22:24PM 4 points [-]

Margaret Fuller, intoxicated by Transcendentalism, said, "I accept the universe," and Thomas Carlyle, told of the remark, supposedly said, "Gad, she’d better."

Comment author: [deleted] 03 June 2012 12:42:35AM *  9 points [-]

[...] if you make yourself really small you can externalize virtually everything. The imaginative pressure to think of yourself as very small is easy enough to find. When I raise my arm, well what is it? There must be some part of my brain that is sort of sending out the signal and then my arm is obeying me, and then when I think about the reasons why, it’s very natural to suppose that my reason store is over there somewhere, and I asked my reason store to send me some good reasons. So the imagery keeps shrinking back to a singularity; a point, a sort of Cartesian point at the intersection of two lines and that’s where I am. That’s the deadly error, to retreat into the punctate self. You’ve got to make yourself big; really big."

  • Daniel Dennett
Comment author: witzvo 12 June 2012 06:06:46PM *  5 points [-]

There was a time in my life when I couldn't get anything done. ...

Perfectionism, which was always a friend, turned into my worst enemy. ...

I've heard that "perfect is the enemy of good enough" many times, but the repressed artist in me refused to accept this as truth. ...

Eventually I lucked out. By accident (or was it an accident?) I stumbled on the fascinating Book of Tea which led me to the concept of Wabi-sabi - the Japanese art of imperfect beauty. ...

Looking at Wabi-sabi objects was a breath of fresh air. Inability to achieve any lasting perfection is not fought, but embraced via lack of symmetry, respect for blemishes, and unsanitized simplicity. Imperfection, impermanence, and incompleteness is incorporated directly into the design - a simple idea that cuts the disease of perfectionism at its core. ...

Real artists ship.

Slava Akhmechet see also Enso and the rest

Comment author: Spectral_Dragon 03 June 2012 12:35:55AM *  5 points [-]

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.

-- Albert Einstein

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 03 June 2012 05:02:56AM 3 points [-]

Any fool can also make a simple theory to describe anything, provided he is willing to hide dis-confirming evidence under the rug.

Comment author: David_Gerard 25 June 2012 10:29:56AM 7 points [-]

It is better to build a seismograph than to worship the volcano.

-- Terry Pratchett (on Nation)

Comment author: shminux 05 June 2012 06:05:55PM *  14 points [-]

If you pay nothing for expert advise you will value it at epsilon more than nothing, if you pay five figures for it you will clear your schedule and implement recommendations within the day. In addition to this being one of consulting’s worst-kept secrets, it suggests persuasive reasons why you should probably extract a commitment out of software customers prior to giving them access for the software. Doing this will automatically make people value your software more

Patrick McKenzie, the guy who gets instrumental rationality on the gut level.

More from the same source:

I always thought I really hated getting email. It turns out that I was not a good reporter of my own actual behavior, which is something you’ll hear quite a bit if you follow psychological research. (For example, something like 75% of Americans will report they voted for President Obama, which disagrees quite a bit with the ballot box. They do this partially because they misremember their own behavior and partially because they like to been seen as the type of person who voted for the winner. 99% of geeks will report never having bought anything as a result of an email. They do this because they misremember their own behavior and partially because they believe that buying stuff from “spam” is something that people with AOL email addresses do, and hence admitting that they, too, can be marketed to will cause them to lose status. The AppSumo sumo would be a good deal skinnier if that were actually the case, but geeks were all people before they were geeks, and people are statistically speaking terrible at introspection.)

Comment author: David_Gerard 23 June 2012 01:21:11PM 8 points [-]

The biggest threat to an artist is neither piracy nor obscurity. It's dicking around on the internet.

-- James L. Sutter

Comment author: pkkm 02 June 2012 07:04:03AM *  16 points [-]

People who do great things look at the same world everyone else does, but notice some odd detail that's compellingly mysterious.

Paul Graham, What You'll Wish You'd Known

Comment author: [deleted] 02 June 2012 08:40:08PM *  32 points [-]

Bit of a tangent, but something from that essay always bothered me.

I recently saw an ad for waiters saying they wanted people with a "passion for service." The real thing is not something one could have for waiting on tables.

Paul Graham

So I began to linger in my duties around Vincent's tables to observe his technique. I quickly learned that his style was to have no single style. He had a repertoire of approaches, each ready to be used under the appropriate circumstances. When the customers were a family, he was effervescent—even slightly clownish— directing his remarks as often to the children as the adults. With a young couple on a date, he became formal and a bit imperious in an attempt to intimidate the young man (to whom he spoke exclusively) into ordering and tipping lavishly. With an older, married couple, he retained the formality but dropped the superior air in favor of a respectful orientation to both members of the couple. Should the patron be dining alone, Vincent selected a friendly demeanor—cordial, conversational, and warm. Vincent reserved the trick of seeming to argue against his own interests for large parties of 8 to 12 people. His technique was veined with genius. When it was time for the first person, normally a woman, to order, he went into his act. No matter what she elected, Vincent reacted identically: His brow furrowed, his hand hovered above his order pad, and after looking quickly over his shoulder for the manager, he leaned conspiratorially toward the table to report for all to hear "I'm afraid that is not as good tonight as it normally is. Might I recommend instead the [blank] or the [blank]?" (At this point, Vincent suggested a pair of menu items that were slightly less expensive than the dish the patron had selected initially.) "They are both excellent tonight." With this single maneuver, Vincent engaged several important principles of influence. First, even those who did not take his suggestions felt that Vincent had done them a favor by offering valuable information to help them order. Everyone felt grateful, and consequently, the rule for reciprocity would work in his favor when it came time for them to decide on his gratuity. Besides hiking the percentage of his tip, Vincent's maneuver also placed him in a favorable position to increase the size of the party's order. It established him as an authority on the current stores of the house: he clearly knew what was and wasn't good that night. Moreover—and here is where seeming to argue against his own interests comes in—it proved him to be a trustworthy informant because he recommended dishes that were slightly less expensive than the one originally ordered. Rather than trying to line his own pockets, he seemed to have the customers' best interests at heart. To all appearances, he was at once knowledgeable and honest, a combination that gave him great credibility. Vincent was quick to exploit the advantage of this credible image. When the party had finished giving their food orders, he would say, "Very well, and would you like me to suggest or select wine to go with your meals?" As I watched the scene repeated almost nightly, there was a notable consistency to the customer's reaction—smiles, nods, and, for the most part, general assent.

Robert Cialdini, Influence

Comment author: James_Miller 01 June 2012 04:34:51PM *  17 points [-]

“My other piece of advice, Copperfield,” said Mr. Micawber, “you know. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."

Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (HT Cafe Hayek.)

Comment author: RolfAndreassen 02 June 2012 07:26:59PM 10 points [-]

A reasonable start, but quite insufficient for the long run. Sixpence savings on twenty pounds income is not going to insulate you from disaster, not even with nineteenth-century money.

Comment author: Tyrrell_McAllister 05 June 2012 11:17:29PM 2 points [-]

Sixpence savings on twenty pounds income is not going to insulate you from disaster, not even with nineteenth-century money.

A disaster is an abrupt fall in income or abrupt increase in expenditures, so it falls under the general claim.

Comment author: pnrjulius 09 June 2012 01:22:55AM -1 points [-]

In fact, it may not even outpace inflation, much less the opportunity cost of the interest-free rate.

Comment author: gwern 09 June 2012 01:32:44AM *  0 points [-]

Inflation in England in this period was, as far as I know, remarkably low and <1%, even experiencing periods of apparent deflation. (Whether it beat Roman Egypt Sixpence compounding might go a decent way. See also Gregory Clark, Farewell to Alms:

However, in preindustrial England, and indeed in many preindustrial economies, inflation rates were low by modern standards. Figure 8.7 shows the English inflation rate from 1200 to 2000 over successive forty-year intervals. Before 1914 inflation rates rarely exceeded 2 percent per year, even in the period known as the Price Revolution, when the influx of silver from the New World helped drive up prices. In a country such as England, which had a highly regarded currency in the preindustrial era, the crown did not avail itself of the inflation tax, despite the close restrictions Parliament placed on its other tax revenues. Only in the twentieth century did significant inflation appear in England. By the late twentieth century annual inflation averaged 4–8 percent per year. Thus there has been a decline, not an improvement, in the quality of monetary management in England since the Industrial Revolution.

...Thus in Roman Egypt wheat prices roughly doubled between the beginning of the first century AD and the middle of the third.^12^ But that reflects an inflation rate of less than 0.3 percent per year.

Comment author: RolfAndreassen 09 June 2012 02:21:07AM 2 points [-]

I would have thought that, having decided to invest X amount of money per unit time, what matters for beating inflation is the interest you can get on it, not the size of X. Sixpence will fail as savings because it's 0.021% of your annual income, not because of inflation; even if you assumed the value of money was perfectly stable, it would take you a long time to build up any sort of reserve at that speed.

Comment author: Alicorn 11 June 2012 07:09:59PM 27 points [-]

Do you ever get the feeling that God has a plan?

And you're the only one who can stop it?

Comment author: cmessinger 05 June 2012 05:21:47PM 9 points [-]

Seek not to follow in the footsteps of men of old; seek what they sought. -Matsuo Basho, poet (1644-1694)

Seems like a good way to think of the "seek to succeed, not to be rational" idea.

Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 03 June 2012 10:01:09AM 29 points [-]

The greatest weariness comes from work not done.

-Eric Hoffer

Comment author: Mark_Eichenlaub 02 June 2012 11:52:31PM 29 points [-]

And clearly my children will never get any taller, because there is no statistically-significant difference in their height from one day to the next.

Andrew Vickers, What Is A P-Value, Anyway?

Comment author: gwern 09 June 2012 04:31:48PM 10 points [-]

I favor any skepsis to which I may reply: 'Let us try it!' But I no longer wish to hear anything of all those things and questions that do not permit any experiment.

--Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science #51

Comment author: Emile 04 June 2012 09:50:15PM 22 points [-]

In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time someting like that happened in politics or religion.

-- Carl Sagan, 1987 CSICOP Keynote Address

Comment author: ChristianKl 05 June 2012 01:45:04PM 15 points [-]

I don't think that the idea that politicians don't change their position has much basis in reality. There are a lot of people who complain about politicians flip-flopping.

When a politician speaks publically, he usually doesn't speak about his personal decision but about a position that's a consensus of the group for which the politician speaks. He might personally disagree with the position and try to change the consensus internally. It's still his role to be responsible for the position of the group to which he belongs. In the end the voter cares about what the group of politicians do. What laws do they enact? Those laws are compromises and the politicians stand for the compromise even when they personally disagree with parts of it.

A scientist isn't supposed to be responsible for the way his experiments turn out.

And if you take something like the Second Vatican Council there's even change of positions in religion.

Comment author: ChristianKl 02 June 2012 05:25:23PM 22 points [-]

[About the challenge of skeptics to spread their ideas in society] In times of war we need warriors, but this isn't war. You might try to say it is, but it's not a war. We aren't trying to kill an enemy. We are trying to persuade other humans. And in times like that we don't need warriors. What we need are diplomats.

Phil Plait, Don't Be A Dick (around 23:30)

Comment author: wedrifid 05 July 2012 10:15:05PM 3 points [-]

We aren't trying to kill an enemy. We are trying to persuade other humans.

The former is the most powerful method I know of for the latter. As elspood mentioned, it obviously isn't the victims in particular that will be persuaded.

Comment author: [deleted] 02 June 2012 05:40:17AM *  39 points [-]

You cannot make yourself feel something you do not feel, but you can make yourself do right in spite of your feelings.

Pearl S. Buck

Related.

Comment author: hankx7787 10 June 2012 12:31:20PM -1 points [-]

What in the actual fuck? This is the exact opposite of what is rational: "Relinquish the emotion which rests upon a mistaken belief, and seek to feel fully that emotion which fits the facts. If the iron approaches your face, and you believe it is hot, and it is cool, the Way opposes your fear. If the iron approaches your face, and you believe it is cool, and it is hot, the Way opposes your calm. Evaluate your beliefs first and then arrive at your emotions. Let yourself say: “If the iron is hot, I desire to believe it is hot, and if it is cool, I desire to believe it is cool.” Beware lest you become attached to beliefs you may not want."

Comment author: [deleted] 10 June 2012 12:49:25PM 1 point [-]

Emotions are generally considered instinctive, not deliberated. You could argue that anything instinctive should be thrown out until you have a chance to verify that it serves a purpose, but brains are not usually that cooperative. Knowing you have an emotion which you do not want (I get angry when people prove that I am wrong about something which I have invested a lot of time thinking about), and being able to destroy it are two different things. If you are able to act in accordance to your best plan instead of following instincts at all times, and run error correction routines to control the damage of an unwanted emotion on your beliefs you are doing something rational.

Comment author: hankx7787 10 June 2012 02:18:29PM 0 points [-]

The latter half of the quote is fine, but the first half is completely wrong and is the opposite message of what rationality says.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 10 June 2012 09:09:18PM 2 points [-]

You seem to be suffering from is-ought confusion. Yes, it would be nice to eliminate the irrational emotion, but this isn't always possible or requires too much effort to be worthwhile.

Comment author: [deleted] 10 June 2012 08:25:00PM *  0 points [-]

How's this instead?

It's easier to irrigate a field from a nearby river than it is to make the water from scratch.

Comment author: wedrifid 10 June 2012 08:47:35PM 2 points [-]

How's this instead?

It's easier to irrigate a field from a nearby river than it is to make water from scratch.

Technically false. Consider adding an extra word in there to indicate scope. Even "the" between "make water" would do. (Making an unspecified amount of water is far easier than irrigating a field from a nearby river.)

Comment author: wedrifid 02 June 2012 11:55:29PM *  5 points [-]

You cannot make yourself feel something you do not feel

Yes I can. Speak for yourself (Buck).

Comment author: Endovior 03 June 2012 04:57:56PM 0 points [-]

Really? Are you sure you're not just making yourself believe you feel something you do not?

Comment author: MarkusRamikin 03 June 2012 05:13:18PM 5 points [-]

I'm sure. Certain feelings are easier to excite than others, but still. All it takes is imagination.

A fun exercise is try out paranoia. Go walk down a street and imagine everyone you meet is a spy/out to get you/something of that sort. It works.

(Disclaimer: I do not know if the above is safe to actually try for everyone out there.)

Comment author: [deleted] 03 June 2012 07:24:24PM *  1 point [-]

I'm not sure it would work for me, knowing that (e.g.) setting my watch five minutes early doesn't work to make me hurry up more even though it does work for many people I know.

On the other hand, I can trigger the impostor syndrome or similar paranoid thoughts in myself by muling over certain memories and letting the availability heuristic make them have much more weight than they should.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 03 June 2012 07:17:03PM 4 points [-]

The distinction may be between setting up the preconditions for a feeling (which has some chance of working) and trying to make a feeling happen directly (which I think doesn't work).

Comment author: [deleted] 03 June 2012 07:22:48PM 2 points [-]

Well, what works for someone may not work for someone else. (Heck, what works for me at certain times doesn't work for me at other times.)

Comment author: ChristianKl 07 June 2012 03:59:42PM 7 points [-]

Making a feelings happen directly isn't easy. It's a skill. Given the demographic on this website there a good chance that a lot of the readers can't control their feelings. Most of the people here are skilled at rationality but not that skilled at emotional matters.

It's a bad idea to generalise your own inability to control your feelings to other people.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 07 June 2012 04:22:54PM 1 point [-]

Can you describe the process of making feelings happen directly?

Comment author: ChristianKl 08 June 2012 12:46:21AM *  8 points [-]

Directly is a tricky word. In some sense you aren't doing things directly when you follow a step by step process.

If you however want a step by step process I can give it to you (but please don't complain that it's not direct enough):

1) You decide which emotion you want to feel.

2) You search in your mind for an experience when you felt the emotion in the past.

3) You visualize the experience.

4) In case that you see yourself inside your mental image, see the image as if you are seeing it through your own eyes.

5) If the image is black and white, make it colored.

6) Make the image bigger.

7) Locate the emotion inside your body.

8) Increase the size of the emotion.

9) Get it moving.

10) Give it a color.

11) Increase movement and size as long as you want.

That's the way of doing it I learned at day two of an NLP seminar.

Comment author: DavidAgain 07 June 2012 05:01:00PM 4 points [-]

I'm not actually sure of what you mean by 'directly' here. Which of the following does 'setting up the preconditions' include:

a) changing breathing patterns etc b) focusing thought on particular events etc. c) rationalising consciously about your emotional state d) thinking something like 'calm down, DavidAgain calm down calm down'

I doubt many people can simply turn a powerful emotion on or off, although I wouldn't rule it out. I read (can't find link now...) about a game where the interface was based on stuff like level of 'arousal' (in the general sense of excitement), which you had to fine tune to get a ball to levitate to a certain level or whatever. I'd be surprised if someone played that a lot with high motivation and didn't start to be able to jump directly to the desired emotional state without intermediary positions. And being able to do so obviously has major advantages in some more common situations (e.g. being genuinely remorseful or angry when those responses will get the best response from someone else and they're good at reading faked emotion, or controlling panic when the panic-response will get you killed)

Comment author: [deleted] 07 June 2012 05:47:05PM 1 point [-]

This game sounds awesome, I am going to try and search for it so I can test this.

Comment author: CuSithBell 07 June 2012 05:54:24PM 2 points [-]

Looks like there are a few pc input devices on the market that read brain activity in some way. The example game above sounds like this Star Wars toy.

Comment author: [deleted] 07 June 2012 07:09:43PM 4 points [-]

A while (i.e. about a decade) ago, I read about a variant of Tetris with a heart rate monitor in which the faster your heart rate was the faster the pieces would fall.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 02 June 2012 10:07:31PM 18 points [-]

Upvoted for the "related".

Comment author: Oscar_Cunningham 01 June 2012 02:31:58PM *  37 points [-]

Two very different attitudes toward the technical workings of mathematics are found in the literature. Already in 1761, Leonhard Euler complained about isolated results which "are not based on a systematic method" and therefore whose "inner grounds seem to be hidden." Yet in the 20'th Century, writers as diverse in viewpoint as Feller and de Finetti are agreed in considering computation of a result by direct application of the systematic rules of probability theory as dull and unimaginative, and revel in the finding of some isolated clever trick by which one can see the answer to a problem without any calculation.

[...]

Feller's perception was so keen that in virtually every problem he was able to see a clever trick; and then gave only the clever trick. So his readers get the impression that:

  • Probability theory has no systematic methods; it is a collection of isolated, unrelated clever tricks, each of which works on one problem but not on the next one.
  • Feller was possessed of superhuman cleverness.
  • Only a person with such cleverness can hope to find new useful results in probability theory.

Indeed, clever tricks do have an aesthetic quality that we all appreciate at once. But we doubt whether Feller, or anyone else, was able to see those tricks on first looking at the problem. We solve a problem for the first time by that (perhaps dull to some) direct calculation applying our systematic rules. After seeing the solution, we may contemplate it and see a clever trick that would have led us to the answer much more quickly. Then, of course, we have the opportunity for gamesmanship by showing others only the clever trick, scorning to mention the base means by which we first found.

E. T. Jaynes "Probability Theory, The Logic of Science"

Comment author: pnrjulius 09 June 2012 01:17:46AM 4 points [-]

This is also why I don't trust poets who claim that their works spring to them automatically from the Muse. Yes, it would be very impressive if that were so; but how do I know you didn't actually slave over revisions of that poem for weeks?

Comment author: wallowinmaya 01 June 2012 09:45:47PM *  39 points [-]

The categories and classes we construct are simply the semantic sugar which makes the reality go down easier. They should never get confused for the reality that is, the reality which we perceive but darkly and with biased lenses. The hyper-relativists and subjectivists who are moderately fashionable in some humane studies today are correct to point out that science is a human construction and endeavor. Where they go wrong is that they are often ignorant of the fact that the orderliness of many facets of nature is such that even human ignorance and stupidity can be overcome with adherence to particular methods and institutional checks and balances. The predictive power of modern science, giving rise to modern engineering, is the proof of its validity. No talk or argumentation is needed. Boot up your computer. Drive your car.

Razib Khan

Comment author: GLaDOS 23 June 2012 01:34:50PM *  8 points [-]

In the past I have made an analogy between science and the Roman Catholic Church, despite the discomfort of some readers. I go back to that now. The Catholic Church of the years during which Erasmus flourished was quite corrupt. It is upon this fertile ground that the printing press added some combustible fuel. But despite his influence upon them Erasmus could never be convinced by the Reformers to leave the Church. Why? Erasmus was a critic of the Church, but he also perceived in it a superior product to what Protestantism had on offer. At any given moment science is rather like the Catholic Church, riddled with falsehood. But it is the best we have, and we should attempt to work within its institutional framework, rather tearing it apart limb from limb. That was Erasmus’ position. He may have been a critic, but ultimately he thought the institution could be genuinely reformed. The struggle never ends, but we can’t see any returns if we give up immediately.

--Razib Khan, The Erasmus Path in Science

Comment author: arundelo 22 June 2012 03:38:27PM 4 points [-]

If we find out tomorrow that the universe is made of jello, all we will have learned about morality is that it, like everything else, is ultimately jello-dependent.

-- Will Wilkinson

Comment author: Multiheaded 17 June 2012 06:34:31AM *  -1 points [-]

Buy pizza, pay with snakes.

  • Advice Dog
Comment author: Desrtopa 23 June 2012 02:36:52PM 2 points [-]

I'm curious as to the algorithm that flagged this as a rationality quote.

Comment author: Multiheaded 23 June 2012 02:47:04PM *  2 points [-]

Well, mostly it was just me having... uhm... an episode, but the idea of getting something you want by giving away something you'd like to get rid of - and being on the lookout for an opportunity to do so - is indeed quite rational. It's just that there are few such excellent opportunities in daily life, and the "getting rid" part often has delayed costs that come back to you later. Like the delivery guy calling the police.

Comment author: GESBoulder 14 June 2012 06:33:21PM 4 points [-]

Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act. - George Orwell

Comment author: CaveJohnson 13 June 2012 03:00:40PM 17 points [-]

In general, nothing is more difficult than not pretending to understand.

--Nicolás Gómez Dávila, source

Comment author: [deleted] 13 June 2012 04:01:34PM -1 points [-]

Too true.

Comment author: MinibearRex 15 June 2012 05:34:54AM 6 points [-]

I liked the quote, once I figured out how all the negatives interacted with each other.

Comment author: Pavitra 13 June 2012 02:20:58AM 21 points [-]

Every creative act is open war against The Way It Is. What you are saying when you make something is that the universe is not sufficient, and what it really needs is more you. And it does, actually; it does. Go look outside. You can’t tell me that we are done making the world.

Tycho

Comment author: roland 11 June 2012 01:13:55AM *  6 points [-]

Common sense is not so common. -- Voltaire

Comment author: Pavitra 12 June 2012 02:01:25AM *  3 points [-]

Shhh. My common sense is tingling.

Deadpool

Comment author: VKS 08 June 2012 11:13:33AM *  19 points [-]

I am reminded of a commentary on logic puzzles of a certain kind; it was perhaps in a letter to Martin Gardner, reprinted in one of his books. The puzzles are those about getting about on an island where each native either always tells the truth or always lies. You reach a fork in the road, for example, and a native is standing there, and you want to learn from him, with one question, which way leads to the village. The “correct” question is “If I asked you if the left way led to the village, would you say yes?” But why should the native’s concept of lying conform to our own logical ideas? If the native is a liar, it means he wants to fool you, and your logical trickery will not work. The best you can do is say something like “Did you hear they are giving away free beer in the village today?” and see which way the native runs. You follow him, even if he says something like “Ugh, I hate beer!” since then he probably really is lying.

  • Alexandre Borovik, quoting an unidentified colleague, paraphrasing another unidentified source, possibly Martin Gardner quoting a letter he got.
Comment author: Fyrius 18 June 2012 11:23:20AM *  5 points [-]

It seems to make the same point as the Parable of the Dagger.

(I.e.: logic games are fun and all, but don't expect things to work that way in the real world. Or: it's valuable to know the difference between intelligent thinking and smart-assery.)

Comment author: Vaniver 07 June 2012 10:55:44PM 10 points [-]

One reason why research is so important is precisely that it can surprise you and tell you that your subjective convictions are wrong. If research always found what we expected, there wouldn't be much point in doing research.

--Eugene Gendlin

Comment author: Oligopsony 06 June 2012 07:06:56PM *  28 points [-]

So, let's say some bros of mine and I have some hand-signals for, you know, bro stuff. And one of the signals means, "Oh, shit. Here comes that girl! You know. That girl. She's coming." That signal has a particular context. Eventually, one of my bros gets tired of sloppy use of the signal, and sets about laying out specifically what situations make a girl that girl. If I used the signal in a close-but-not-quite context, he'd handle it and then pull me aside and say, "I know she and I had that thing that one time, but we never... well, it wasn't quite THAT. You know? So that signal, it freaked me out, because I thought it had to be someone else. Make sure you're using it properly, okay?" And I'd be like, "Bro. Got it."

Another friend of mine, he recognizes the sorts of situations we use the signal in have a common thread, so he begins using the hand signal for other situations, any situation that has the potential for both danger and excitement. So if someone invites us to this real sketchy bar, he'll give me the signal - "This could be bad. But what if it's not?" And I'd respond, "I see what you did there."

Maybe you see where this is going. We're hanging out one day, and some guy suggests we crash some party. Bro #2 signals, and bro #1 freaks out, looking around. And then he's like, "OH FUCK I HAVE TO CALL HER." And #2 says, "No, dude, there's no one coming. I just meant, this is like one of those situations, you know?" And they're pissed at each other because they're using the same signal to mean different things. I'm not mad, because I generally know what they each mean, but I have more context than they do.

The same thing probably happens with analytics and Continentals.

Philosophy Bro

Comment author: [deleted] 06 June 2012 07:56:40PM 1 point [-]

Upvoted for introducing me to one of the funniest blogs I've ever seen. The ironic writing style is brilliant:

Aw yeah, the is-ought problem. Shit's classic, bro