(Since there didn't seem to be one for this month, and I just ran across a nice quote.)
A monthly thread for posting any interesting rationality-related quotes you've seen recently on the Internet, or had stored in your quotesfile for ages.
Please post all quotes separately (so that they can be voted up (or down) separately) unless they are strongly related/ordered.
Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB - if we do this, there should be a separate thread for it.
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.
Depends what "it" is.
If the alternatives are killing 10 people efficiently at a cost of $100 a head vs. killing ten people inefficiently at a cost of $1000 a head, then killing them inefficiently is worse: I've not only killed 10 people, I've wasted $9000 worth of resources that could have been used to do something actually useful.
But if I've been given a $10,000 killing budget, then it's clearly better for the world if I spend this inefficiently and only manage to kill 10 people rather than 100.
5olimay
I guess it implies the extra cost of optimizing the useless task. Mostly agreed, though.
(Since there didn't seem to be one for this month, and I just ran across a nice quote.)
A monthly thread for posting any interesting rationality-related quotes you've seen recently on the Internet, or had stored in your quotesfile for ages.