Incorrect comments on Rationality Quotes August 2012 - Less Wrong

6 Post author: Alejandro1 03 August 2012 03:33PM

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Comment author: Incorrect 02 August 2012 11:13:29PM 27 points [-]

It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

-- Oscar Wilde

Comment author: MixedNuts 10 August 2012 08:27:23AM 10 points [-]

That's excellent advice for writing fiction. Audiences root for charming characters much more than for good ones. Especially useful when your world only contains villains. This is harder in real life, since your opponents can ignore your witty one-liners and emphasize your mass murders.

(This comment brought to you by House Lannister.)

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 10 August 2012 11:07:44PM 8 points [-]

This is harder in real life, since your opponents can ignore your witty one-liners and emphasize your mass murders.

The scary thing is how often it does work in real life. (Except that in real life charm is more than just witty one-liners.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 03 August 2012 06:00:43AM 30 points [-]

Thank you, Professor Quirrell.

Comment author: Kyre 04 August 2012 10:10:09AM 4 points [-]

On the face of it I would absolutely disagree with Wilde on that: to live a moral life one absolutely needs to distinguish between good and bad. Charm (in bad people) and tedium (in good people) get in the way of this.

On the other hand, was Wilde really just blowing a big raspberry at the moralisers of his day ? Sort of saying "I care more about charm and tedium than what you call morality". I don't know enough about his context ...

Comment author: tgb 04 August 2012 02:21:12PM 14 points [-]

Since I can't be bothered to do real research, I'll just point out that this Yahoo answer says that the quote is spoken by Lord Darlington. Oscar Wilde was a humorist and an entertainer. He makes amusing characters. His characters say amusing things.

Do not read too much into this quote and, without further evidence, I would not attribute this philosophy to Oscar Wilde himself.

(I haven't read Lady Windermere's Fan, where this if from, but this sounds very much like something Lord Henry from The Picture of Dorian Gray would say. And Lord Henry is one of the main causes of the Dorian's fall from grace in this book; he's not exactly a very positive character but certainly an entertainingly cynical one!)

Comment author: Incorrect 04 August 2012 02:11:18PM 0 points [-]

On the face of it I would absolutely disagree with Wilde on that: to live a moral life one absolutely needs to distinguish between good and bad.

But is it necessary to divide people into good and bad? What if you were only to apply goodness and badness to consequences and to your own actions?

Comment author: dspeyer 05 August 2012 11:01:55PM 2 points [-]

If your own action is to empower another person, understanding that person's goodness or badness is necessary to understanding the action's goodness or badness.

Comment author: Incorrect 06 August 2012 02:33:16AM -2 points [-]

But that can be entirely reduced to the goodness or badness of consequences.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 02 August 2012 11:44:18PM 6 points [-]
Comment author: VKS 06 August 2012 02:57:48AM *  3 points [-]

I don't know that you can really classify people as X or ¬X. I mean, have you not seen individuals be X in certain situations and ¬X in other situations?

&c.

Comment author: Nisan 03 August 2012 04:46:32PM 4 points [-]

It is absurd to divide people into charming or tedious. People either have familiar worldviews or unfamiliar worldviews.

Comment author: DaFranker 03 August 2012 04:51:00PM 6 points [-]

It is absurd to divide people into familiar worldviews or unfamiliar worldviews. People either have closer environmental causality or farther environmental causality.

(anyone care to formalize the recursive tower?)

Comment author: faul_sname 03 August 2012 05:48:34PM *  5 points [-]

It's absurd to divide people into two categories and expect those two categories to be meaningful in more than a few contexts.

Comment author: Stabilizer 03 August 2012 09:05:32PM 20 points [-]

It is absurd to divide people. They tend to die if you do that.

Comment author: Kindly 04 August 2012 12:19:55AM 8 points [-]

It's absurd to divide. You tend to die if you do that.

Comment author: Tyrrell_McAllister 04 August 2012 04:45:07PM 12 points [-]

It's absurd: You tend to die.

Comment author: faul_sname 04 August 2012 07:55:29PM 7 points [-]

It's absurd to die.

Comment author: albeola 04 August 2012 08:43:51PM 5 points [-]

It's bs to die.

Comment author: Epiphany 18 August 2012 05:11:50AM *  4 points [-]

Be.

Comment author: Decius 04 August 2012 09:50:42PM 1 point [-]

Nobody alive has died yet.

Comment author: [deleted] 04 August 2012 12:43:19AM 8 points [-]

“Males” and “females”. (OK, there are edge cases and stuff, but this doesn't mean the categories aren't meaningful, does it?)

Comment author: Clippy 03 August 2012 08:38:37PM 1 point [-]

What about good vs bad humans?

Comment author: faul_sname 04 August 2012 07:52:48PM 1 point [-]

Or humans who create paperclips versus those who don't?

Comment author: Clippy 05 August 2012 12:28:55AM 10 points [-]

I thought I just said that.

Comment author: MatthewBaker 11 August 2012 12:31:44AM 0 points [-]

Can't their be good humans who don't create paperclips and just destroy antipaperclips and staples and such?

Comment author: Clippy 14 August 2012 12:20:47AM 1 point [-]

Destroying antipaperclips is creating paperclips.

I didn't know humans had the concept though.

Comment author: [deleted] 20 August 2012 09:26:02AM 1 point [-]

What is an antipaperclip?

Comment author: [deleted] 02 August 2012 11:37:37PM 2 points [-]

I like it, but what's it got to do with rationality?

Comment author: [deleted] 03 August 2012 07:05:44AM 9 points [-]

To me at least, it captures the notion of how the perceived Truth/Falsity of a belief rest solely in our categorization of it as 'tribal' or 'non-tribal': weird or normal. Normal beliefs are true, weird beliefs are false.

We believe our friends more readily than experts.