Gabriel comments on Open Thread, October 16-31, 2012 - Less Wrong

5 Post author: OpenThreadGuy 16 October 2012 10:43PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (271)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Gabriel 29 October 2012 03:07:20PM 0 points [-]

I agree to an extent with the fictional Abe Lincoln quote. Quoting famous people serves mostly as a means of signaling so that whatever you're saying sounds more convincing. The actual epistemic value of quotes is so low (if it's even positive at all) that it's justifiable to burden yourself with the task of checking the exact origin of every single quote you encounter before you start repeating it. (But it won't be "all the time", as you have to check only once per quote.)