Rationality Quotes September 2012

Jayson_Virissimo

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Do not quote yourself
Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB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Do not quote yourself
Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB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

I wasn't abused or neglected. Did she check experimentally that abuse or neglect is more prevalent among rationalists than in the general population?

Of course that's not something a human would ordinarily do to check a plausible-sounding hypothesis, so I guess she probably didn't, unless something went horribly wrong in her childhood.

Second thought: Maybe I should have not mentioned her theory about why people adopt inhuman standards, and just focused on the idea that inhuman standards are likely to backfire, Viliam_Bur did.

Also-- if I reread I'll check this-- I think Horney focused on inhuman standards of already having a quality, which is not quite the same thing as having inhuman standards about what one ought to achieve, though I think they're related.

2NancyLebovitz14y

I was thinking about prase in particular, who sounds as though he might have some problems with applying high standards in a way that's bad for him. Horney died in 1952, so she might not have had access to rationalists in your sense of the word. When I said it might be worth taking a look at Horney's work, I really did mean I thought it might be worth exploring, not that I'm very sure it applies. It seems to be of some use for me.