Qiaochu_Yuan comments on Rationality Quotes January 2013 - Less Wrong

6 Post author: katydee 02 January 2013 05:23PM

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

Article Navigation

Comments (604)

Comments (604)

Sort By: Best

Show:

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

Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 07 January 2013 10:07:02AM 0 points [-]

I don't care whether it's actually true or not; either way it still holds an interesting rationality lesson and that's why I posted it.

Comment author: abody97 07 January 2013 10:39:20AM * 2 points [-]

With all respect that I'm generically required to give, I don't care whether you care or not. The argument I made was handling what you posted/quoted, neither you as a person nor your motives to posting.

Comment author: [deleted] comment score below threshold [+] (4 children)

Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 07 January 2013 10:40:51PM 6 points [-]

That is a hugely unfair assessment of my motives (unlike abody97's comment which claims not to be about my motives, which I also doubt). People say untrue things all the time, e.g. when storytelling. The goal of storytelling is not to directly relate the truth of some particular experience, and I didn't think the goal of posting rationality quotes was either, considering how many quotes these posts get from various works of fiction. I posted this quote for no reason other than to suggest an interesting rationality lesson, and calling that "bullshit" sneaks in unnecessary connotations.

Comment author: [deleted] 07 January 2013 11:41:51PM * 0 points [-]

Yes, but that quote is written in such a way that most readers¹ would assume it's true (or at least that the writer believes it's true); so it's not like storytelling. And most readers¹ would find it interesting because they'd think it's true; if I pulled some claim about $natural_language having $weird_feature directly out of my ass and concluded with “... Just kidding.”, I doubt many people¹ would find it that interesting.

OK, I admit I'm mostly Generalizing From One Example.

Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 07 January 2013 11:48:36PM 4 points [-]

Would you be satisfied if I edited the original post to read something like "note: I have no particular reason to believe that this is literally true, but I think it holds an interesting rationality lesson either way. Feel free to substitute 'Zorblaxians' for 'Japanese'"?

Comment author: [deleted] 07 January 2013 11:50:19PM * 1 point [-]

Yes.

Qiaochu_Yuan comments on Rationality Quotes January 2013 - Less Wrong

Article Navigation

Comments (604)

Nearest Meetups

Virtual Study Room

Recent Comments

Recent Posts

Recent Rationality Quotes

Recent Wiki Edits

Top Contributors, 30 Days

Recent Karma Awards

Comments (604)

Top Contributors, 30 Days

You'll need to login or register to do that

(Don't worry, it only takes a few seconds)

Create

Login