Will_Newsome comments on Rationality Quotes July 2012 - Less Wrong

3 Post author: RobertLumley 04 July 2012 12:29AM

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Comment author: Will_Newsome 03 July 2012 06:35:04AM 3 points [-]

Anything can be an instrument, Chigurh said. Small things. Things you wouldnt even notice. They pass from hand to hand. People dont pay attention. And then one day there's an accounting. And after that nothing is the same. Well, you say. It's just a coin. For instance. Nothing special there. What could that be an instrument of? You see the problem. To separate the act from the thing. As if the parts of some moment in history might be interchangeable with the parts of some other moment. How could that be? Well, it's just a coin. Yes. That's true. Is it?

— Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men

Comment author: shokwave 03 July 2012 06:43:58AM *  4 points [-]

What's the most you ever lost on a coin toss?

--- the character Chigurh, from the same novel and author.

It's almost like a koan for me - thinking about what in my history I have lost on a coin toss is a great jumping point into more introspection.

Comment author: gwern 05 July 2012 02:22:37AM 3 points [-]

Nothing would happen now. All that had happened was that some pieces of metal had innocently lifted other metal; nothing more. And that pouch would lie there in the dark for an unknowable span of days, and nothing would happen then, either. It is a mysterious trait of this world that the slightest cipher or symbol of which one is utterly ignorant can determine the days of one’s life.

--The Ones Who Walk Toward Acre

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