Rationality Quotes January 2013

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

Happy New Year! Here's the latest and greatest installment of rationality quotes. Remember:

  • 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  • Do not quote yourself
  • Do not quote comments/posts on LessWrong or Overcoming Bias
  • No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please

Comments (604)

Sort By: Controversial
Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 02 January 2013 11:16:50AM 1 point [-]

...since the 1930s, self-driving cars have been just 20 years away.

-Bryant Walker Smith

Comment author: MugaSofer 02 January 2013 04:56:36PM *  0 points [-]

Considering there are working prototypes of such cars driving around right now ...

EDIT: Damn, ninja'd by Luke.

Comment author: Luke_A_Somers 02 January 2013 04:39:56PM 13 points [-]

But we've had self-driving cars for multiple years now...

Comment author: AspiringRationalist 01 January 2013 10:54:04PM -2 points [-]

If god (however you perceive him/her/it) told you to kill your child -- would you do it?

If your answer is no, i my booklet you're an atheist. There is doubt in your mind. Love and morality are more important than your faith.

If your answer is yes, please reconsider.

-- Penn Jilette.

Comment author: MugaSofer 14 January 2013 03:23:50PM 0 points [-]

If your answer is yes, please reconsider.

Why?

If I encounter a being approximately equivalent to God - (almost) all-knowing, benevolent etc. - and it tells me to do something, why the hell should I refuse? If Omega told you something was the best choice according to your preferences - presumably as part of a larger game - why wouldn't you try and achieve that?

My best guess is that Mr. Jilette is confused regarding morality.

Comment author: MixedNuts 14 January 2013 03:35:26PM 0 points [-]

Because most people who are convinced by their pet moral principle to kill kids are utterly wrong.

Comment author: MugaSofer 14 January 2013 05:40:44PM 0 points [-]

You're saying that if a Friendly superintellligence told you something was the right thing to do - however you define right - then you would trust your own judgement over theirs?

Comment author: [deleted] 14 January 2013 05:54:49PM *  0 points [-]

Acting the other way around would be trusting my judgement that the AI is friendly.

In any case, I would expect a superintelligence, friendly or not, to be able to convince me to kill my child, or do whatever.

Comment author: MugaSofer 14 January 2013 07:34:05PM -1 points [-]

Acting the other way around would be trusting my judgement that the AI is friendly.

Yes. Yes it would. Do you consider it so inconceivable that it might be the best course of action to kill one child that it outweighs any possible evidence of Friendliness?

In any case, I would expect a superintelligence, friendly or not, to be able to convince me to kill my child, or do whatever.

And so, logically, could God. Apparently FAIs don't arbitrarily reprogram people. Who knew?

Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 08 January 2013 03:18:23AM *  4 points [-]

If Alice told you to kill your child -- would you do it?

If your answer is no, in my booklet you're a person that doesn't believe in the existence of Alice.

?!

Comment author: MugaSofer 08 January 2013 11:31:35AM 1 point [-]

If you believe in an immensely powerful being that isn't moral, then you don't believe in "God". You believe in Cthulhu.

Comment author: MixedNuts 01 January 2013 11:01:23PM 12 points [-]

It's hardly fair to describe this tiny modicum of doubt as atheism, even in the umbrella sense that covers agnosticism.

Comment author: [deleted] 13 January 2013 11:39:37PM 0 points [-]

Intellectuals may like to think of themselves as people who "speak truth to power" but too often they are people who speak lies to gain power.

--Thomas Sowell

Comment author: hairyfigment 29 January 2013 06:52:26PM 1 point [-]
Comment author: [deleted] 29 January 2013 08:03:12PM 2 points [-]

Thank you!

Comment author: simplicio 14 January 2013 08:45:04PM 1 point [-]

lacanthropy, n. The transformation, under the influence of the full moon, of a dubious psychological theory into a dubious social theory via a dubious linguistic theory.

(Source: Dennettations)

Comment author: MixedNuts 14 January 2013 08:53:25PM 1 point [-]

Is there a reason you're quoting this, or are you just being humeorous?

Comment author: simplicio 14 January 2013 09:38:04PM 0 points [-]

I thought it was quite Witty.

Comment author: arborealhominid 16 January 2013 12:03:35AM 0 points [-]

Whenever I'm about to do something, I think, "Would an idiot do that?" And if they would, then I do not do that thing.

-Dwight K. Schrute

Comment author: Peterdjones 08 January 2013 11:38:53AM 2 points [-]

"Study everything, join nothing"

Comment author: Oscar_Cunningham 30 January 2013 11:34:45PM 2 points [-]

Atribution?

Comment author: [deleted] 16 January 2013 03:57:24PM 3 points [-]

Well, we have a pretty good test for who was stronger. Who won? In the real story, overdogs win.

--Mencius Moldbug, here

I can't overemphasise how much I agree with this quote as a heuristic.

Comment author: shminux 16 January 2013 05:53:32PM *  4 points [-]

As I noted in my other comment, he redefined the terms underdog/overdog to be based on poteriors, not priors, effectively rendering them redundant (and useless as a heuristic).

Comment author: Kindly 16 January 2013 11:11:26PM 2 points [-]

Most of the time, priors and posteriors match. If you expect the posterior to differ from your prior in a specific direction, then change your prior.

And thus, you should expect 99% of underdogs to lose and 99% of overdogs to win. If all you know is that a dog won, you should be 99% confident the dog was an overdog. If the standard narrative reports the underdog winning, that doesn't make the narrative impossible, but puts a burden of implausibility on it.

Comment author: GLaDOS 16 January 2013 06:36:09PM *  2 points [-]

I consider this an uncharitable reading, I've read the article twice and I still understood him much as Konkvistador and Athrelon have.

Comment author: Oligopsony 16 January 2013 05:40:46PM *  4 points [-]

I suppose this is a hilariously obvious thing to say, but I wonder how much leftism Marcion Mugwump has actually read. We're completely honest about the whole power-seizing thing. It's not some secret truth.

(Okay, some non-Marxist traditions like anarchism have that whole "people vs. power" thing. But they're confused.)

Comment author: [deleted] 16 January 2013 07:11:47PM 1 point [-]

but I wonder how much leftism Marcion Mugwump has actually read.

Ehm... what?

I suppose this is a hilariously obvious thing to say

Yes but as a friend reminded me recently, saying obvious things can be necessary.

Comment author: [deleted] 16 January 2013 05:35:38PM 4 points [-]

The heuristic is great, but that article is horrible, even for Moldbug.

Comment author: shminux 16 January 2013 05:56:05PM 0 points [-]

How is it great? How would you use this "heuristic"?

Comment author: Endovior 11 January 2013 09:39:26PM -2 points [-]

Machines aren't capable of evil. Humans make them that way.

-Lucca, Chrono Trigger

Comment author: elspood 06 January 2013 09:29:08AM *  1 point [-]

BART: It's weird, Lis: I miss him as a friend, but I miss him even more as an enemy.
LISA: I think you need Skinner, Bart. Everybody needs a nemesis. Sherlock Holmes had his Dr. Moriarty, Mountain Dew has its Mellow Yellow, even Maggie has that baby with the one eyebrow.

Everyone may need a nemesis, but while Holmes had a distinct character all his own and thus used Dr. Moriarty simply to test formidable skills, Bart actually seems to create or define himself precisely in opposition to authority, as the other to authority, and not as some identifiable character in his own right.

- Mark T. Conrad, "Thus Spake Bart: On Nietzche and the Virtues of Being Bad", The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D'Oh of Homer

Comment author: gwern 26 January 2013 04:56:14AM 1 point [-]

That's not a bad essay (BTW, essays should be in quote marks, and the book itself, The Simpsons and Philosophy, in italics), but I don't think the quote is very interesting in isolation without any of the examples or comparisons.

Comment author: elspood 29 January 2013 01:02:45AM *  2 points [-]

Edited, thanks for the style correction.

I suspect you're probably right that more examples makes this more interesting, given the lack of upvotes. In fact, I probably found the quote relevant mostly because it more or less summed up the experience of my OWN life at the time I read it years ago.

I spent much of my youth being contrarian for contradiction's sake, and thinking myself to be revolutionary or somehow different from those who just joined the cliques and conformed, or blindly followed their parents, or any other authority.

When I realized that defining myself against social norms, or my parents, or society was really fundamentally no different from blind conformity, only then was I free to figure out who I really was and wanted to be. Probably related: this quote.

Comment author: Jay_Schweikert 16 January 2013 06:25:32PM *  0 points [-]

[After analyzing the hypothetical of an extra, random person dying every second.] All in all, the losses would be dramatic, but not devastating to our species as a whole. And really, in the end, the global death rate is 100%—everyone dies.

. . . or do they? Strictly speaking, the observed death rate for the human condition is something like 93%—that is, around 93% of all humans have died. This means the death rate among humans who were not members of The Beatles is significantly higher than the 50% death rate among humans who were.

--Randall Munroe, "Death Rates"

Comment author: cousin_it 14 January 2013 09:12:06AM *  -2 points [-]

Treating life as a hackable problem seems to be a recipe for despair.

-- Tloewald on HN, commenting on Aaron Swartz's suicide.

Comment author: taelor 05 January 2013 06:52:53AM *  0 points [-]

It is easy to see how the faultfinding man of words, by persistent ridicule and denunciation, shakes prevailing beliefs and loyalties, and familiarizes the masses with the idea of change. What is not so obvious is the process by which the discrediting of existing beliefs and institutions makes possible the rise of a fanatical new faith. For it is a remarkable fact that the millitant man of words who "sounds the established order to its source to mark its want of authority and justice" often prepares the way not for a society of freethinking individuals but for a coprorate society that cherishes utmost unity and blind faith. A wide diffusion of doubt and irreverence thus leads to unexpected results. The irreverence of the Renaissance was a prelude to the new fanaticism of Reformation and Counter Reformation. The Frenchmen of the enlightenment who debunked the church and crown and preached reason and tolerance released a burst of revolutionary and nationalist fanticism which has not yet abated. Marx and his followers discredited religion, nationalism and the passionate pursuit of business, and brought into being the new fanaticism of socialism, communism, Stalinist nationalism and the passion for world dominion.

When we debunk a fanatical faith or prejudicem we do not strike at the root of fanaticism. We merely prevent its leaking out at a certain point, with the likely result that it will leak out at some other point. Thus, by denigrating prevailing beliefs and loyalties, the militant man of words unwittingly creates in the disillusioned masses a hunger for faith. [...] These fanatical and faith-hungry masses are likely to invest such speculations with the certitude of holy writ, and make them the fountainhead of a new faith. Jesus was not a Christian, nor was Marx a Marxist.

--Eric Hoffer, The True Believer

Comment author: TsviBT 02 January 2013 04:57:38PM 6 points [-]

There are four types among those who study with the Sages: the sponge, the funnel, the strainer, the sifter. The sponge absorbs everything; the funnel - in one end and out the other; the strainer passes the wine and retains the dregs; the sifter removes the chaff and retains the edible wheat.

-Pirkei Avot (5:15)

Comment author: MugaSofer 02 January 2013 05:30:24PM *  16 points [-]

Deep wisdom indeed. Some people believe the wrong things, and some believe the right things, some people believe both, some people believe neither.

Comment author: FiftyTwo 29 January 2013 01:18:52PM 4 points [-]

But I've never seen the Icarus story as a lesson about the limitations of humans. I see it as a lesson about the limitations of wax as an adhesive.

Randall Munroe

Comment author: Oscar_Cunningham 30 January 2013 11:53:04PM 3 points [-]
Comment author: Jay_Schweikert 29 January 2013 06:30:59PM 2 points [-]

And to think, I was just getting on to post this quote myself!

Comment author: TimS 07 January 2013 01:51:05AM *  6 points [-]

Let’s see if I get this right. Fear makes you angry and anger makes you evil, right?

Now I’ll concede at once that fear has been a major motivator of intolerance in human history. I can picture knightly adepts being taught to control fear and anger, as we saw credibly in “The Empire Strikes Back.” Calmness makes you a better warrior and prevents mistakes. Persistent wrath can cloud judgment. That part is completely believable.

But then, in “Return of the Jedi,” Lucas takes this basic wisdom and perverts it, saying — “If you get angry — even at injustice and murder — it will automatically and immediately transform you into an unalloyedly evil person! All of your opinions and political beliefs will suddenly and magically reverse. Every loyalty will be forsaken and your friends won’t be able to draw you back. You will instantly join your sworn enemy as his close pal or apprentice. All because you let yourself get angry at his crimes.”

Uh, say what? Could you repeat that again, slowly?

In other words, getting angry at Adolf Hitler will cause you to rush right out and join the Nazi Party? Excuse me, George. Could you come up with a single example of that happening? Ever?

David Brin

Comment author: ChristianKl 07 January 2013 04:32:51PM -1 points [-]

People in Star Wars don't really have political beliefs in any meaningful sense. The Star Wars universe is actual about a struggle between Good and Evil instead of being a struggle between two political factions.

Citizens of the US got angry after 2001. The US became a lot more evil in response to torturing people and commits war crimes such as attacking people who try to rescue injured people with drones.

Comment author: shminux 29 January 2013 04:51:56PM 3 points [-]

When they realized they were in a desert, they built a religion to worship thirstiness.

SMBC comics: a metaphor for deathism.

Comment author: IlyaShpitser 29 January 2013 06:46:53PM *  6 points [-]

While I am a fan of SMBC, in this case he's not doing existentialism justice (or not understanding existentialism). Existentialism is not the same thing as deathism. Existentialism is about finding meaning and responsibility in an absurd existence. While mortality is certainly absurd, biological immortality will not make existential issues go away. In fact, I suspect it will make them stronger..


edit: on the other hand, "existentialist hokey-pokey" is both funny and right on the mark!

Comment author: shminux 29 January 2013 07:37:22PM *  0 points [-]

I don't see how this strip can be considered to be about existentialism.

EDIT: Actually, I'm no longer sure what the strip is about. It obviously starts with Camus' absurdism, but then switches from his anti-nihilist argument against suicide in an absurd world to a potential critique of... what? nihilism? absurdism? as a means of resolving the cognitive dissonance of having a finite lifespan while wanting to live forever... Or does it? Zack Weiner can be convoluted at times.

Comment author: DaFranker 29 January 2013 08:12:10PM *  0 points [-]

[Meta]

I don't see why the parent was downvoted.

Is it seriously being downvoted just because it called to attention an inference that was not obvious, but seemed obvious to some who had studied a certain topic X?

Comment author: TimS 29 January 2013 08:29:11PM *  4 points [-]

Not my downvote. But if you don't know enough about existentialism to recognize Camus is a central early figure, then you don't know enough about existentialism to comment about whether a particular philosophical point invokes existentialism accurately.

If we replaced "Camus" with "J.S. Mill" and "existentialism" with "consequentialism," the error might be clearer.

In short, it isn't an error to miss the reference, but it is an error to challenge someone who explains the reference. (And currently, the karma for the two posts by shminux correctly reflect this difference - with the challenge voted much lower)

Comment author: DaFranker 29 January 2013 09:11:20PM *  1 point [-]

But if you don't know enough about existentialism to recognize Camus is a central early figure, then you don't know enough about existentialism to comment about whether a particular philosophical point invokes existentialism accurately.

Errh... does not follow.

I care about the central early figures of any topic about as much as I care about the size of the computer monitor used by the person who contributed the most to the reddit codebase.

(edit: To throw in an example, I spent several months in the dark a while back doing bayesian inference while completely missing references to / quotes from Thomas Bayes. Yes, literally, that bad. So forgive me if I wouldn't have caught your reference to consequentialism if you hadn't explicitly stated that as what "J.S. Mill" was linked to.)

In short, it isn't an error to miss the reference, but it is an error to challenge someone who explains the reference.

The later explanation (in response to said "challenge") was necessary for me to understand why someone was talking about existentialism at all in the first place, so the first comment definitely did not make the reference any more obvious or explained (to me, two-place) than it was beforehand.

The "challenge" is actually not obvious to me either. When I re-read the comment, I see someone mentioning that they're missing the information that says "This strip is about existentialism".

If any statement of the form "X is not obvious to me" is considered a challenge to those for whom it is obvious, then I would argue that the agents doing this considering have missed the point of the inferential distance articles. To go meta, this previous sentence is what I would consider a challenge.

Comment author: IlyaShpitser 29 January 2013 09:17:57PM *  7 points [-]

I care about the central early figures of any topic about as much as I care about the size of the computer monitor used by the person who contributed the most to the reddit codebase.

I think this is a mistake, and a missed chance to practice the virtue of scholarship. Lesswrong could use much more scholarship, not less, in my opinion. The history of the field often gives more to think about than the modern state of the field.

Progress does not obey the Markov property.

Comment author: DaFranker 29 January 2013 09:39:53PM *  2 points [-]

[Obligatory disclaimer: This is not a challenge.]

I think this is a mistake, and a missed chance to practice the virtue of scholarship.

I honestly don't see how or why.

I already have a rather huge list of things I want to do scholarship with, and I don't see any use I could have for knowledge about the persons behind these things I want to study. Knowing a name for the purposes of searching for more articles written under this name is useful, knowing a name to know the rate of accuracy of predictions made by this name is useful, and often the "central early figures" in a field will coincide with at least one of these or some other criteria for scholarly interest.

I hear Galileo is also a central early figure for something related to stars or stellar motion or heliocentrism or something. Something about stellar bodies, probably. This seems entirely screened off (so as to make knowledge about Galileo useless to me) by other knowledge I have from other sources about other things, like newtonian physics and relativity and other cool things.

Studying history is interesting, studying the history of some things is also interesting, but the central early figures of some field are only nodes in a history, and relevant to me proportionally to their relevance to the parts of said history that carry information useful for me to remember after having already propagated the effects of this through my belief network.

Once I've done updates on my model based on what happened historically, I usually prefer forgetting the specifics of the history, as I tend to remember that I already learned about this history anyway (which means I won't learn it again, count it again, and break my mind even more later on).

So... I don't see where knowledge about the people comes in, or why it's a good opportunity to learn more. Am I cheating by already having a list of things to study and a large collection of papers to read?

To rephrase, if the information gained by knowing the history of something can be screened off by a more compact or abstract model, I prefer the latter.

Comment author: IlyaShpitser 29 January 2013 10:32:09PM *  2 points [-]

To rephrase, if the information gained by knowing the history of something can be screened off by a more compact or abstract model, I prefer the latter.

That's fine if you are trying to do economics with your time. But it sounded to me from the comment that you didn't care as well. Actually the economics is nontrivial here, because different bits of the brain engage with the formal material vs the historic context.

I think an argument for learning a field (even a formal/mathematical field) as a living process evolving through time, rather than the current snapshot really deserves a separate top level post, not a thread reply.

My personal experience trying to learn math the historic way and the snapshot way is that I vastly prefer the former. Perhaps I don't have a young, mathematically inclined brain. History provides context for notational and conceptual choices, good examples, standard motivating problems that propelled the field forward, lessons about dead ends and stubborn old men, and suggests a theory of concepts as organically evolving and dying, rather than static. Knowledge rooted in historic context is much less brittle.

For example, I wrote a paper with someone about what a "confounder" is. * People have been using that word probably for 70 years without a clear idea of what it means, and the concept behind it for maybe 250 more (http://jech.bmj.com/content/65/4/297.full.pdf+html). In the course of writing the paper we went through maybe half a dozen historic definitions people actually put forth (in textbooks and such), all but one of them "wrong." Probably our paper is not the last word on this. Actually "confounder" as a concept is mostly dying, to be replaced by "confounding" (much clearer, oddly). Even if we agree that our paper happens to be the latest on the subject, how much would you gain by reading it, and ignoring the rest? What if you read one of the earlier "wrong" definitions and nothing else?

You can't screen off, because history does not obey the Markov property.

  • This is "analytic philosophy," I suppose, and in danger of running afoul of Luke's wrath!
Comment author: shminux 29 January 2013 09:44:23PM *  4 points [-]

The history of the field often gives more to think about than the modern state of the field.

Maybe more to think, but less value to the mastery the field, at least in the natural sciences (philosophy isn't one). You can safely delay learning about the history of discovery of electromagnetism, or linear algebra, or the periodic table until after you master the concepts. Apparently in philosophy it's somehow the other way around, you have to learn the whole history first. What a drag.

Comment author: IlyaShpitser 29 January 2013 07:41:32PM *  3 points [-]

It quotes Camus, the father of existentialism. It quotes from "The Myth of Sisyphus," one of the founding texts of existentialism. The invitation to live and create in the desert (e.g. invitation to find your own meaning, responsibility, and personal integrity without a God or without objective meaning in the world) is the existential answer to the desert of nihilism. Frankly, I am not sure how you can think the strip is about anything else. What do you think existentialism is?


A more accurate pithy summary of existentialism is this: "When they realized they were in a desert, they built water condensators out of sand."


"Beyond the reach of God" is existential.

Comment author: BerryPick6 29 January 2013 07:51:24PM 1 point [-]

SMBC has also featured a bunch of other strips about existentialism, leading me to suspect he has studied it in some capacity. Notably, here, here, here, here and here.

Comment author: IlyaShpitser 29 January 2013 07:54:20PM 2 points [-]

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1595#comic

That's relativism, not existentialism. I mean he's trying to entertain, not be a reliable source about anything. Like wikipedia :).

Comment author: BerryPick6 29 January 2013 08:15:19PM 1 point [-]

Yeah, the third one I linked too isn't really existentialism either now that I think about it...

Comment author: RobertLumley 16 January 2013 12:53:23AM *  1 point [-]

“Our vision is inevitably contracted, and the whole horizon may contain much which will compose a very different picture.”

Cheney Bros v. Doris Silk Corporation, New York Circuit Court of Appeals, Second Circuit

Comment author: [deleted] 13 January 2013 11:40:58PM 2 points [-]

If I could offer one piece of advice to young people thinking about their future, it would be this: Don't preconceive. Find out what the opportunities are.

--Thomas Sowell

Comment author: [deleted] 07 January 2013 07:50:46PM 3 points [-]

Our tragedy is that in these hyper-partisan times, the mere fact that one side says, ‘Look, there's [a problem],’ means that the other side's going to say, ‘Huh? What? No, I'm not even going to look up.’

-- Jonathan Haidt

Comment author: Alejandro1 01 January 2013 03:46:33PM 8 points [-]

The universe is not indifferent. How do I know this? I know because I am part of the universe, and I am far from indifferent.

--Scott Derrickson

Comment author: MixedNuts 01 January 2013 04:47:35PM 7 points [-]

I touched her hand. Her hand touched her boob. By the transitive property, I got some boob. Algebra's awesome!

-- Steve Smith, American Dad!, season 1, episode 7 "Deacon Stan, Jesus Man", on the applicability of this axiom.

Comment author: Kindly 02 January 2013 02:59:53PM 13 points [-]

Scott Derrickson is indifferent. How do I know this? I know because Scott Derrickson's skin cells are part of Scott Derrickson, and Scott Derrickson's skin cells are indifferent.

Comment author: [deleted] 01 January 2013 08:20:35PM 11 points [-]

If you'd have told a 14th-century peasant that there'd be a huge merchant class in the future who would sit in huge metal cylinders eating meals and drinking wine while the cylinders hurtled through the air faster than a speeding arrow across oceans and continents to bring them to far-flung business opportunities, the peasant would have classified you as insane. And he'd have been wrong to the tune of a few gazillion frequent-flyer miles.

-- someone on Usenet replying to someone deriding Kurzweil

Comment author: David_Gerard 02 January 2013 12:52:06AM 18 points [-]

In general, though, that argument is the Galileo gambit and not a very good argument.

Comment author: Alicorn 16 January 2013 06:13:25PM *  5 points [-]

"My baby is dead. Six months old and she's dead."
"Take solace in the knowledge that this is all part of the Corn God's plan."
"Your god's plan involves dead babies?"
"If you're gonna make an omelette, you're gonna have to break a few children."
"I'm not entirely sure I want to eat that omelette."

-- Scenes From A Multiverse

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 17 January 2013 12:55:41AM 2 points [-]

This works equally well as an argument against utilitarianism, which I'm guessing may be your intent.

Comment author: MugaSofer 20 January 2013 03:36:56PM *  -1 points [-]

Nah, it's just a cheap shot at the theists.

EDIT: not sure about the source, but the way it's edited ...

Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 18 January 2013 05:04:03AM 2 points [-]

I have no idea what people mean when they say they are against utilitarianism. My current interpretation is that they don't think people should be VNM-rational, and I haven't seen a cogent argument supporting this. Why isn't this quote just establishing that the utility of babies is high?

Comment author: [deleted] 19 January 2013 04:11:57PM 2 points [-]

I have no idea what people mean when they say they are against utilitarianism.

I find these criticisms by Vladimir_M to be really superb.

Comment author: CarlShulman 18 January 2013 05:56:34AM 1 point [-]

A bounded utility function that places a lot of value on signaling/being "a good person" and desirable associate, getting some "warm glow" and "mostly doing the (deontologically) right thing" seems like a pretty good approximation.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 18 January 2013 05:30:57AM *  1 point [-]

Well, Alicorn is a deontologist.

In any case, as an ultafinitist you should know the problems with the VNM theorem.

Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 18 January 2013 05:58:20AM *  4 points [-]

I also have no idea what people mean when they say they are deontologists. I've read Alicorn's Deontology for Consequentialists and I still really have no idea. My current interpretation is that a deontologist will make a decision that makes everything worse if it upholds some moral principle, which just seems like obviously a bad idea to me. I think it's reasonable to argue that deontology and virtue ethics describe heuristics for carrying out moral decisions in practice, but heuristics are heuristics because they break down, and I don't see a reasonable way to judge which heuristics to use that isn't consequentialist / utilitarian.

Then again, it's quite likely that my understanding of these terms doesn't agree with their colloquial use, in which case I need to find a better word for what I mean by consequentialist / utilitarian. Maybe I should stick to "VNM-rational."

I also didn't claim to be an ultrafinitist, although I have ultrafinitist sympathies. I haven't worked through the proof of the VNM theorem yet in enough detail to understand how infinitary it is (although I intend to).

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 18 January 2013 07:26:51AM 1 point [-]

My current interpretation is that a deontologist will make a decision that makes everything worse if it upholds some moral principle, which just seems like obviously a bad idea to me.

Taboo "make everything worse".

At the very least I find it interesting how rarely an analogous objection against VNM-utiliterians with different utility functions is raised. It's almost as if many of the "VNM-utiliterians" around here don't care what it means to "make everything worse" as long as one avoids doing it, and avoids doing it following the mathematically correct decision theory.

I also didn't claim to be an ultrafinitist, although I have ultrafinitist sympathies. I haven't worked through the proof of the VNM theorem yet in enough detail to understand how infinitary it is (although I intend to).

Well the continuity axiom in the statement certainly seems dubious from an ultafinitist point of view.

Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 18 January 2013 08:08:05AM 1 point [-]

Taboo "make everything worse".

Have worse consequences for everybody, where "everybody" means present and future agents to which we assign moral value. For example, a sufficiently crazy deontologist might want to kill all such agents in the name of some sacred moral principle.

At the very least I find it interesting how rarely an analogous objection against VNM-utiliterians with different utility functions is raised. It's almost as if many of the "VNM-utiliterians" around here don't care what it means to "make everything worse" as long as one avoids doing it, and avoids doing it following the mathematically correct decision theory.

Rarely? Isn't this exactly what we're talking about when we talk about paperclip maximizers?

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 19 January 2013 09:16:46AM 1 point [-]

Have worse consequences for everybody, where "everybody" means present and future agents to which we assign moral value.

When I asked you to taboo "makes everything worse", I meant taboo "worse" not taboo "everything".

Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 19 January 2013 09:54:28AM *  1 point [-]

You want me to say something like "worse with respect to some utility function" and you want to respond with something like "a VNM-rational agent with a different utility function has the same property." I didn't claim that I reject deontologists but accept VNM-rational agents even if they have different utility functions from me. I'm just trying to explain that my current understanding of deontology makes it seem like a bad idea to me, which is why I don't think it's accurate. Are you trying to correct my understanding of deontology or are you agreeing with it but disagreeing that it's a bad idea?

Comment author: Kindly 18 January 2013 02:07:31PM 0 points [-]

For example, a sufficiently crazy deontologist might want to kill all such agents in the name of some sacred moral principle.

A sufficiently crazy consequentialist might want to kill all such agents because he's scared of what the voices in his head might otherwise do. Your argument is not an argument at all.

And if the sacred moral principle leads to the deontologist killing everyone, that is a pretty terrible moral principle. Usually they're not like that. Usually the "don't kill people if you can help it" moral principle tends to be ranked pretty high up there to prevent things like this from happening.

Comment author: pragmatist 31 January 2013 10:05:56AM *  0 points [-]

Perhaps the day will come when philosophy can be discussed in terms of investigation rather than controversies, and philosophers, like scientists, be known by the topics they study rather than by the views they hold.

Nelson Goodman

Comment author: [deleted] 18 January 2013 04:56:34AM 0 points [-]

Always do the right thing.

-The mayor, in "do the right thing"

Comment author: DanArmak 19 January 2013 11:32:18AM 1 point [-]

I think the bigger problem is that people mostly disagree on what the right thing to do is.

Comment author: [deleted] 19 January 2013 06:13:06PM 2 points [-]

I still find it useful to play it back in my head to remind myself to actually think whether what I'm doing is right "nyan, always do the right thing".

I think that we agree on enough that if people "did the right thing" it would be better than the current situation, if not perfect.

Comment author: MugaSofer 25 January 2013 11:09:43AM 0 points [-]

In fairness, people aren't great at deciding what the right thing is, but I still agree with you; most people are not wrong about most things. For example, boycotts would work. So well.

OTOH, every abortion clinic would be bombed before the week was out; terrorist attacks would probably go up generally, as would revenge killings. You could argue those would have positive net impacts (since terrorists would presumably stop once their demands are met? I think?) but it's certainly not one-sided.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 25 January 2013 01:49:12AM 2 points [-]

I think that we agree on enough that if people "did the right thing" it would be better than the current situation, if not perfect.

That's not at all clear.

Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 24 January 2013 11:23:53PM 1 point [-]

I think that we agree on enough that if people "did the right thing" it would be better than the current situation, if not perfect.

Unclear. Some people have very bad ideas about what constitutes the right thing and their impact might not be canceled out.

Comment author: HalMorris 18 January 2013 03:56:21PM *  1 point [-]

Funny, I was thinking for the last few days or weeks of "Do the right thing!" as a sort of summary of deontology. It's all very well if you know what the right thing is. Another classic expression is "Let justice be done though the heavens may fall" (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_justitia_ruat_caelum), apparently most famously said by the English Jurist Lord Mansfield when reversing the conviction of John Wilkes for libel while, it seems, riots and demonstrations were going on in the streets (my very brief research indicates he did not say it in the case that outlawed slavery in the British homeland long before even the British abolished elsewhere -- though a book on that case is titled "Though the Heavens may fall" -- the fact that he made that remark and that decision just made it too tempting to conflate them).

Some examples in the Bible pointedly illustrate "do the right thing" (in the sense of whatever God says is right -- though in this case, "right" clearly isn't in any conflict with "the Heavens"). I.e. Abraham: Sacrifice your son to me (ha ha just kidding/testing you), or Joshua "Run around the walls of Jericho blowing horns and the walls will fall down". These are extreme cases of "Right is right, never mind how you'd imagine it would turn out -- with hour tiny human mind).

Personally, since I am not an Objectivist, or a fundamentalist, or one who talks with God, I don't fully trust any set of rules I may currently have as to what "is right", though I trust them enough to get through most days. Nor am I a perfect consequentialist since I don't perfectly trust my ability to predict outcomes.

An awful lot of examples given to justify consequentialism are extremely contrived, like "ticking bomb" scenarios to justify torture. Unfortunately many of us have seen these scenarios all too often in fiction (e.g. "24"), where they are quite common because they furnish such exciting plot points. Then they are on a battlefield in the real world which does not follow scriptwriter logic, and they imagine they are living such a heroic moment, which gets them to do something wrong and stupid.

In my opinion the best course is some of both. If I find myself, say, as a policeman, thinking that by shooting this guy though it really isn't self-defence but I can sell it as such, I will rid the world of a bad actor who'd probably kill two people, then I suspect the best course is to fall back on the manual which says I'm not justified in shooting him in this situation. Similarly if I think by this or that unethical action I'll increase the chance of the right person being elected to some important office On the other hand, if on some occasion I believe that by lying I will prevent some calamity then I might lie. There is no guarantee that we'll get it right, and we'll have to face the consequences if we're wrong.

The worst thing, I think, is to think we've figured it all out and know exactly how to be get it right all the time.

Comment author: pleeppleep 02 January 2013 02:28:38AM 14 points [-]

I intend to live forever or die trying

-- Groucho Marx

Comment author: DanielLC 02 January 2013 08:51:38PM 7 points [-]

I'm not sure that's great advice. It will result in you trying to try to live forever. The only way to live forever or die trying is to intend to live forever.

Comment author: Mark_Eichenlaub 05 January 2013 04:48:13AM *  5 points [-]

Cartman: I can try to catch it, but I'm going to need all the resources you've got. If this thing isn't contained, your Easter Egg hunt is going to be a bloodbath.

Mr. Billings: What do you think, Peters? What are the chances that this 'Jewpacabra' is real?

Peters: I'm estimating somewhere around .000000001%.

Mr. Billings: We can't afford to take that chance. Get this kid whatever he needs.

South Park, Se 16 ep 4, "Jewpacabra"

note: edited for concision. script

Comment author: arundelo 08 February 2013 12:45:12AM 1 point [-]

This is a duplicate. You probably checked and didn't find it because for some reason Google doesn't know about it.

Comment author: JQuinton 03 January 2013 10:13:37PM *  5 points [-]

the decision to base your life on beliefs which not only can you not prove, but which, on the balance of the evidence, seem unlikely to be true, seems incredibly irresponsible. If religious believing had implications only for the individual believer, then it could be easily dismissed as a harmless idiosyncrasy, but since almost all religious beliefs have incredibly serious implications for many people, religious belief cannot be regarded as harmless. Indeed, a glance at the behavior of religious believers worldwide day by day makes it very clear that religion is something to be feared and justly criticized. “Houses built of emotion” is one thing, but beliefs that can lead to mass beheading for mixed-sex dancing, or the marginalization and victimization of gay and lesbian people, and the second-listing of women, is quite another, and it is for the latter that religious belief is justly held to require more justification

Even though this quote is focusing on religion, I think it applies to any beliefs people have that they think are "harmless" but greatly influence how they treat others. In short, since no person is an island, we have a duty to critically examine the beliefs we have that influence how we treat others.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 02 January 2013 03:26:49AM 10 points [-]

The Harvard Law states: Under controlled conditions of light, temperature, humidity, and nutrition, the organism will do as it damn well pleases.

-- Larry Wall

Comment author: Jay_Schweikert 09 January 2013 04:39:07PM 8 points [-]

Suppose you've been surreptitiously doing me good deeds for months. If I "thank my lucky stars" when it is really you I should be thanking, it would misrepresent the situation to say that I believe in you and am grateful to you. Maybe I am a fool to say in my heart that it is only my lucky stars that I should thank—saying, in other words, that there is nobody to thank—but that is what I believe; there is no intentional object in this case to be identified as you.

Suppose instead that I was convinced that I did have a secret helper but that it wasn't you—it was Cameron Diaz. As I penned my thank-you notes to her, and thought lovingly about her, and marveled at her generosity to me, it would surely be misleading to say that you were the object of my gratitude, even though you were in fact the one who did the deeds that I am so grateful for. And then suppose I gradually began to suspect that I had been ignorant and mistaken, and eventually came to the correct realization that you were indeed the proper recipient of my gratitude. Wouldn't it be strange for me to put it this way: "Now I understand: you are Cameron Diaz!"

--Daniel Dennett, Breaking the Spell (discussing the differences between the "intentional object" of a belief and the thing-in-the-world inspiring that belief)

Comment author: MugaSofer 10 January 2013 08:47:51AM 0 points [-]

He's talking about God here, right?

Comment author: Jay_Schweikert 10 January 2013 03:04:06PM 0 points [-]

In large part, yes. This passage is in Dennett's chapter on "Belief in Belief," and he has an aside on the next page describing how to "turn an atheist into a theist by just fooling around with words" -- namely, that "if 'God' were just the name of whatever it is that produced all creatures great and small, then God might turn out to be the process of evolution by natural selection."

But I think there's also a more general rationality point about keeping track of the map-territory distinction when it comes to abstract concepts, and about ensuring that we're not confusing ourselves or others by how we use words.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 01 February 2013 12:59:43AM 3 points [-]

Where there's smoke, there's fire... unless someone has a smoke machine.

-- thedaveoflife

Comment author: hairyfigment 02 February 2013 02:41:05AM -1 points [-]

Where there's smoke, there's a chemical reaction of some kind. Unless it's really someone blowing off steam.

Comment author: GLaDOS 24 January 2013 09:34:00PM 3 points [-]

The dissident temperament has been present in all times and places, though only ever among a small minority of citizens. Its characteristic, speaking broadly, is a cast of mind that, presented with a proposition about the world, has little interest in where that proposition originated, or how popular it is, or how many powerful and credentialed persons have assented to it, or what might be lost in the way of property, status, or even life, in denying it. To the dissident, the only thing worth pondering about the proposition is, is it true? If it is, then no king’s command can falsify it; and if it is not, then not even the assent of a hundred million will make it true.

--John Derbyshire

Comment author: ygert 24 January 2013 09:50:16PM 8 points [-]

Wile this is all very inspiring, is it true? Yes, truth in and of itself is something that many people value, but what this quote is claiming is that there are a class of people (that he calls "dissidents") that specifically value this above and beyond anything else. It seems a lot more likely to me that truth is something that all or most people value to one extent or another, and as such, sometimes if the conditions are right people will sacrifice stuff to achieve it, just like for any other thing they value.

Comment author: [deleted] 12 January 2013 08:52:37PM *  9 points [-]

Unfortunately, this is how the brain works:

-- Sir! We are receiving information that conflicts with the core belief system!

-- Get rid of it.

Beatrice the Biologist

Comment author: [deleted] 10 January 2013 08:57:13PM 6 points [-]

The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance. Robert R. Coveyou, Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Comment author: arborealhominid 08 January 2013 12:38:19AM *  9 points [-]

Tobias adjusted his wings and appeared to tighten his talons on the branch. "Maybe you’re right. I don’t know. Look, Ax, it’s a whole new world. We’re having to make all this up as we go along. There aren’t any rules falling out of the sky telling us what and what not to do." "What exactly do you mean?" "Too hard to explain right now," Tobias said. "I just mean that we don’t really have any time-tested rules for dealing with these issues... So we have to see what works and what doesn’t. We can’t afford to get so locked into one idea that we defend it to the death, without really knowing if that idea works- in the real world."

  • Animorphs, book 52: The Sacrifice
Comment author: woodside 03 January 2013 11:01:46AM *  6 points [-]

It's not easy to find rap lyrics that are appropriate to be posted here. Here's an attempt.

Son, remember when you fight to be free

To see things how they are and not how you like em to be

Cause even when the world is falling on top of me

Pessimism is an emotion, not a philosophy

Knowing what's wrong doesn't imply that you right

And its another, when you suffer to apply it in life

But I'm no rookie

And I'm never gonna make the same mistake twice pussy

  • Immortal Technique "Mistakes"
Comment author: BerryPick6 01 January 2013 04:15:35PM 14 points [-]

Many of our most serious conflicts are conflicts within ourselves. Those who suppose their judgements are always consistent are unreflective or dogmatic.

-- John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement.

Comment author: blashimov 13 January 2013 07:53:31AM *  11 points [-]

I have always had an animal fear of death, a fate I rank second only to having to sit through a rock concert. My wife tries to be consoling about mortality and assures me that death is a natural part of life, and that we all die sooner or later. Oddly this news, whispered into my ear at 3 a.m., causes me to leap screaming from the bed, snap on every light in the house and play my recording of “The Stars and Stripes Forever” at top volume till the sun comes up.

-Woody Allen EDIT: Fixed formatting.

Comment author: MugaSofer 13 January 2013 01:51:55PM *  0 points [-]

Formatting is broken. Great quote, though.

Comment author: James_Miller 01 January 2013 05:46:59PM 23 points [-]

What You Are Inside Only Matters Because of What It Makes You Do

David Wong, 6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You a Better Person. Published in Cracked.com

Comment author: [deleted] 01 January 2013 08:29:35PM 4 points [-]

I wish my 17-year-old self had read that article.

Comment author: DanArmak 01 January 2013 06:54:25PM 4 points [-]

For Instance It Makes You Write With Odd Capitalization.

Comment author: ChristianKl 01 January 2013 08:53:54PM 7 points [-]

It a misleading claim. Studying of how parents influence their kids generally conclude that "being" of the parent is more important than what they specifically do with the kids.

From the article:

"But I'm a great listener!" Are you? Because you're willing to sit quietly in exchange for the chance to be in the proximity of a pretty girl?

The author of the article doesn't seem to understand that there such a thing as good listening. If a girl tell you about some problem in her life it can be more effective to empathize with the girl than to go and solve the problem.

If something says "It's what's on the inside that matters!" a much better response would be ask: What makes you think that your inside is so much better than the inside of other people?

Comment author: Multiheaded 02 January 2013 04:21:17AM *  21 points [-]

This article greatly annoyed me because of how it tells people to do the correct practical things (Develop skills! Be persistent and grind! Help people!) yet gives atrocious and shallow reasons for it - and then Wong says how if people criticize him they haven't heard the message. No, David, you can give people correct directions and still be a huge jerk promoting an awful worldview!

He basically shows NO understanding of what makes one attractive to people (especially romantically) and what gives you a feeling of self-worth and self-respect. What you "are" does in fact matter - both to yourself and to others! - outside of your actions; they just reveal and signal your qualities. If you don't do anything good, it's a sign of something being broken about you, but just mechanically bartering some product of your labour for friendship, affection and status cannot work - if your life is in a rut, it's because of some deeper issues and you've got to resolve those first and foremost.

This masochistic imperative to "Work harder and quit whining" might sound all serious and mature, but does not in fact has the power to make you a "better person"; rather, you'll know you've changed for the better when you can achieve more stuff and don't feel miserable.

I wanted to write a short comment illustrating how this article might be the mirror opposite of some unfortunate ideas in the "Seduction community" - it's "forget all else and GIVE to people, to obtain affection and self-worth" versus "forget all else and TAKE from people, to obtain affection and self-worth" - and how, for a self-actualized person, needs, one's own and others', should dictate the taking and giving, not some primitive framework of barter or conquest - but I predictably got too lazy to extend it :)

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 02 January 2013 06:40:18AM *  9 points [-]

I've taken a crack at what's wrong with that article.

The problem is, there's so much wrong with it from so many different angles that it's rather a large topic.

Comment author: Multiheaded 02 January 2013 08:15:54AM 0 points [-]

Yep :). I was doing a more charitable reading than the article really deserves, to be honest. It carried over from the method of political debate I am attempting these days - accept the opponent's premises (e.g. far-right ideas that they proudly call "thoughtcrime"), then show how either a modus-tollens inference from them is instrumentally/ethically preferrable, or how they just have nothing to do with the opponent being an insufferable jerk.

The basic theme of the article is that you're only well-treated for what you bring to other people's lives. You're worthless otherwise.

This is a half-truth. What you bring to other people's lives matters. However, the reason I'm posting about this is that I believe framing the message that way is actively dangerous for depressed people. The thing is, if you don't believe you're worth something no matter what, you won't do the work of making your life better.

100% true. I often shudder when I think how miserable I could've got if I hadn't watched this at a low point in my life.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 04 January 2013 03:01:11PM 0 points [-]

Actually the article says enough different and somewhat contradictory things that it supports multiple readings, or to put it less charitably, it's contradictory in a way that leads people to pick the bits which are most emotionally salient to them and then get angry at each other for misreading the article.

The title is "6 Harsh Truths That Will Improve Your Life"-- by implication, anyone's life. Then Wong says, "this will improve your life unless it's awesome in all respects". Then he pulls back to "this is directed at people with a particular false view of the universe".

Comment author: brazil84 02 January 2013 01:23:05PM 8 points [-]

My complaint about the article is that it has the same problem as most self-help advice. When you read it, it sounds intelligent, you nod your head, it makes sense. You might even think to yourself "Yeah, I'm going to really change now!"

But as everyone whose tried to improve himself knows, it's difficult to change your behavior (and thoughts) on a basis consistent enough to really make a long-lasting difference.

Comment author: shminux 27 January 2013 10:02:32PM 4 points [-]

even though you can’t see or hear them at all, a person’s a person, no matter how small.

Dr. Seuss

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 02 January 2013 03:24:52AM 8 points [-]

[Physics] has come to see that thinking is merely a form of human activity…with no assurance whatever that an intellectual process has validity outside the range in which its validity has already been checked by experience.

-- P. W. Bridgman, ‘‘The Struggle for Intellectual Integrity’’

Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 01 January 2013 10:45:50PM 14 points [-]

If you ever decide that your life is not too high a price to pay for saving the universe, let me know. We'll be ready.

-- Kyubey (Puella Magi Madoka Magica)

Comment author: ygert 01 January 2013 05:29:18PM *  19 points [-]

I was rereading HP Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu lately, and the quote from the Necronomicon jumped out at me as a very good explanation of exactly why cryonics is such a good idea.

(Full disclosure: I myself have not signed up for cryonics. But I intend to sign up as soon as I can arrange to move to a place where it is available.)

The quote is simply this:

That is not dead which can eternal lie,

And with strange aeons even death may die.

Comment author: [deleted] 01 January 2013 06:18:01PM *  8 points [-]

So strange that this quote hasn't already been memed to death in support of cryonics.

Comment author: Raemon 02 January 2013 05:54:12AM 0 points [-]

It featured prominently in last year's Solstice.

Comment author: [deleted] 02 January 2013 05:59:55AM 1 point [-]

In retrospect, I don't think I have a good reason for not coming to that.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 02 January 2013 01:23:32PM 10 points [-]

Er... logical fallacy of fictional evidence, maybe? I wince every time somebody cites Terminator in a discussion of AI. It doesn't matter if the conclusion is right or wrong, I still wince because it's not a valid argument.

Comment author: airandfingers 11 January 2013 09:04:10PM *  5 points [-]

Most things that we and the people around us do constantly... have come to seem so natural and inevitable that merely to pose the question, 'Why are we doing this?' can strike us as perplexing - and also, perhaps, a little unsettling. On general principle, it is a good idea to challenge ourselves in this way about anything we have come to take for granted; the more habitual, the more valuable this line of inquiry.

-Alfie Kohn, "Punished By Rewards"

Comment author: taelor 04 January 2013 05:06:18AM *  5 points [-]

Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents. It pulls and whirls the individual away from his own self, makes him oblivious to his weal and future, frees him of jelousies and self-seeking. He becomes an anonymous partical quivering with a craving to fuse and coalesce with his like into one flaming mass. [...] Mass movements can rise and spread without a belief in God, but never without belief in a devil. Usually the strength of a mass movement is proportionate to the vividness and tangibility of its devil. When Hitler was asked whether he thought that the Jew must be destroyed, he answered: "No... we should then have to invent him. It is essential to have a tangible enemy, not merely an abstract one." F. A. Voigt tells of a Japanese mission that arrived in Berlin in 1932 to study the National Socialist movement. Voigt asked a member what he thought of the movement. He replied: "It is magnificent. I wish we could have something like it in Japan, only we can't, because we haven't got any Jews."

-- Eric Hoffer, The True Believer

Comment author: Endovior 03 January 2013 06:07:47PM *  15 points [-]

If your ends don’t justify the means, you’re working on the wrong project.

-Jobe Wilkins (Whateley Academy)

Comment author: taelor 02 January 2013 03:41:07PM 10 points [-]

It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible. What we know as blind faith is sutained by innnumerable unbeliefs: the fanatical Japanese in Brazil refused to believe for years the evidence of Japan's defeat; the fanatical Communist refuses to believe any unfavorable reports or evidence about Russia, nor will he be disillusioned by seeing with his own eyes the cruel misery inside the Soviet promised land.

It is the true believer's ability to "shut his eyes and stop his ears" to facts that do not deserve to be either seen or heard which is the source of his unequaled fortitude and constancy. He can not be frightened by danger, nor disheartened by obstacles nor baffled by contradictions because he denies their existence. Strength of faith, as Bergson pointed out, manifests itself not in moving mountains, but in not seeing mountains to move.

-- Eric Hoffer, The True Believer

Comment author: [deleted] 01 January 2013 06:21:03PM 16 points [-]

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.* *Not a controlled experiment

lanyard

Comment author: ArisKatsaris 02 January 2013 12:01:52AM 7 points [-]

Wasn't that poem sarcastic anyway? Until the last stanza, the poem says how the roads were really identical in all particulars -- and in the last stanza the narrator admits that he will be describing this choice falsely in the future.

Comment author: gjm 02 January 2013 12:46:01AM 1 point [-]

That's not how I read it. There's no particular difference between the two roads, so far as Frost can tell at the point of divergence, but they're still different roads and lead by different routes to different places, and he expects that years from now he'll look back and see (or guess?) that it did indeed make a big difference which one he took.

Comment author: [deleted] 01 January 2013 06:19:58PM 27 points [-]

The first rule of human club is you don't explicitly discuss the rules of human club.

Silas Dogood

Comment author: David_Gerard 02 January 2013 12:54:26AM 9 points [-]

I'd have thought from observation that quite a lot of human club is just about discussing the rules of human club, excess meta and all. Philosophy in daily practice being best considered a cultural activity, something humans do to impress other humans.

Comment author: Kindly 07 January 2013 03:42:13AM 17 points [-]

Then for the first time it dawned on him that classing all drowthers together made no more sense than having a word for all animals that can't stand upright on two legs for more than a minute, or all animals with dry noses. What possible use could there be for such classifications? The word "drowther" didn't say anything about people except that they were not born in a Westil Family. "Drowther" meant "not us," and anything you said about drowthers beyond that was likely to be completely meaningless. They were not a "class" at all. They were just... people.

Orson Scott Card, The Lost Gate

Comment author: AspiringRationalist 01 January 2013 09:16:14PM 17 points [-]

The ideas of the Hasids are scientifically and morally wrong; the fashion, food and lifestyle are way stupid; but the community and family make me envious.

-- Penn Jilette

Comment author: MixedNuts 01 January 2013 10:29:54PM 8 points [-]

Disagree about the fashion.

Comment author: RolfAndreassen 02 January 2013 08:12:31PM 6 points [-]

It is more incumbent on me to declare my opinion on this question, because they have, on further reflection, undergone a considerable change; and although I am not aware that I have ever published any thing respecting machinery which it is necessary for me to retract, yet I have in other ways given my support to doctrines which I now think erroneous; it, therefore, becomes a duty in me to submit my present views to examination, with my reasons for entertaining them.

-- Ricardo, publicly saying "oops" in his restrained Victorian fashion, in his essay "On Machinery".

Comment author: Alicorn 11 January 2013 03:08:53AM 21 points [-]

He tells her that the earth is flat -
He knows the facts, and that is that.
In altercations fierce and long
She tries her best to prove him wrong.
But he has learned to argue well.
He calls her arguments unsound
And often asks her not to yell.
She cannot win. He stands his ground. The planet goes on being round.

--Wendy Cope, He Tells Her from the series ‘Differences of Opinion’

Comment author: Will_Newsome 03 January 2013 07:07:41AM 14 points [-]

[O]ne may also focus on a single problem, which can appear in different guises in various disciplines, and vary the methods. An advantage of viewing the same problem through the lens of different models is that we can often begin to identify which features of the problem are enduring and which are artifacts of our particular methods or background assumptions. Because abstraction is a license for us to ignore information, looking at several approaches to modeling a problem can give you insight into what is important to keep and what is noise to ignore. Moreover, discovering robust features of a problem, when it happens, can reshape your intuitions.

— Gregory Wheeler, "Formal Epistemology"

Comment author: shminux 02 January 2013 10:00:02PM *  7 points [-]
Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 02 January 2013 10:24:31AM 7 points [-]

He that believes without having any Reason for believing, may be in love with his own Fancies; but neither seeks Truth as he ought, nor pays the Obedience due to his Maker, who would have him use those discerning Faculties he has given him, to keep him out of Mistake and Errour.

John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 03 January 2013 08:49:14AM *  34 points [-]

In Japan, it is widely believed that you don't have direct knowledge of what other people are really thinking (and it's very presumptuous to assume otherwise), and so it is uncommon to describe other people's thoughts directly, such as "He likes ice cream" or "She's angry". Instead, it's far more common to see things like "I heard that he likes ice cream" or "It seems like/It appears to be the case that she is angry" or "She is showing signs of wanting to go to the park."

-- TVTropes

Edit (1/7): I have no particular reason to believe that this is literally true, but either way I think it holds an interesting rationality lesson. Feel free to substitute 'Zorblaxia' for 'Japan' above.

Comment author: abody97 07 January 2013 09:24:52AM *  1 point [-]

I have to say that's fairly stupid (I'm talking about the claim which the quote is making and generalizing over a whole population; I am not doing argumentum ad hominem here).

I've seen many sorts of (fascinated) mythical claims on how the Japanese think/communicate/have sex/you name it differently and they're all ... well, purely mythical. Even if I, for the purposes of this argument, assume that beoShaffer is right about his/her Japanese teacher (and not just imagining or bending traits into supporting his/her pre-defined belief), it's meaningless and does not validate the above claim. Just for the sake of illustration, the simplest explanation for such usages is some linguistic convention (which actually makes sense, since the page from which the quote is sourced is substantially talking about the Japanese Language).

Unless someone has some solid proof that it's actually related to thinking rather than some other social/linguistic convention, this is meaningless (and stupid).

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] 07 January 2013 05:27:03PM 1 point [-]

Agreed. Pop-whorfianism is usually silly.

Comment author: MugaSofer 08 January 2013 11:17:54AM -2 points [-]

Feel free to substitute 'Zorblaxia' for 'Japan' above.

Have you considered replacing it with "[country]" or similar, then noting at the bottom what page it came from?

Comment author: taelor 01 January 2013 03:02:53PM *  9 points [-]

As for the hopeful, it does not seem to make any difference who it is that is seized by a wild hope -- whether it be an enthusiastic intellectual, a land-hungry farmer, a get-rich-quick speculator, a sober merchant or industrialist, a plain workingman or a noble lord -- they all proceed recklessly with the present, wreck it if they must, and create a new world. [...] When hopes and dreams are loose on the streets, it is well for the timid to lock doors, shutter windows and lie low until the wrath has passed. For there is often a monsterous incongruity between the hopes, however noble and tender, and the action which follows them. It is as if ivied maidens and garlanded youths were to herald the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

-- Eric Hoffer, The True Believer

Comment author: James_Miller 01 January 2013 05:58:51PM 31 points [-]

The women of this country learned long ago, those without swords can still die upon them.

Éowyn explaining to Aragorn why she was skilled with a blade. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, the 2002 movie.

Comment author: [deleted] 21 January 2013 05:20:59PM 11 points [-]

Person 1: "I don't understand how my brain works. But my brain is what I rely on to understand how things work." Person 2: "Is that a problem?" Person 1: "I'm not sure how to tell."

-Today's xkcd

Comment author: Particleman 03 January 2013 05:35:04AM *  11 points [-]

"How is it possible! How is it possible to produce such a thing!" he repeated, increasing the pressure on my skull, until it grew painful, but I didn't dare object. "These knobs, holes...cauliflowers -" with an iron finger he poked my nose and ears - "and this is supposed to be an intelligent creature? For shame! For shame, I say!! What use is a Nature that after four billion years comes up with THIS?!"

Here he gave my head a shove, so that it wobbled and I saw stars.

"Give me one, just one billion years, and you'll see what I create!"

  • Stanislaw Lem, "The Sanatorium of Dr. Vliperdius" (trans. Michael Kandel)
Comment author: Stabilizer 01 January 2013 06:29:14PM 23 points [-]

“To succeed in a domain that violates your intuitions, you need to be able to turn them off the way a pilot does when flying through clouds. Without visual cues (e.g. the horizon) you can't distinguish between gravity and acceleration. Which means if you're flying through clouds you can't tell what the attitude of the aircraft is. You could feel like you're flying straight and level while in fact you're descending in a spiral. The solution is to ignore what your body is telling you and listen only to your instruments. But it turns out to be very hard to ignore what your body is telling you. Every pilot knows about this problem and yet it is still a leading cause of accidents. You need to do what you know intellectually to be right, even though it feels wrong.”

-Paul Graham

Comment author: nabeelqu 01 January 2013 03:33:09PM *  38 points [-]

Not long ago a couple across the aisle from me in a Quiet Car talked all the way from New York City to Boston, after two people had asked them to stop. After each reproach they would lower their voices for a while, but like a grade-school cafeteria after the lunch monitor has yelled for silence, the volume crept inexorably up again. It was soft but incessant, and against the background silence, as maddening as a dripping faucet at 3 a.m. All the way to Boston I debated whether it was bothering me enough to say something. As we approached our destination a professorial-looking man who’d spoken to them twice got up, walked back and stood over them. He turned out to be quite tall. He told them that they’d been extremely inconsiderate, and he’d had a much harder time getting his work done because of them.

“Sir,” the girl said, “I really don’t think we were bothering anyone else.”

“No,” I said, “you were really annoying.”

“Yes,” said the woman behind them.

“See,” the man explained gently, “this is how it works. I’m the one person who says something. But for everyone like me, there’s a whole car full of people who feel the same way.”

-- Tim Kreider, The Quiet Ones

Comment author: tut 02 January 2013 09:13:05PM 4 points [-]

Since this has got 22 upvotes I must ask: What makes this a rationality quote?

Comment author: Jotto999 06 January 2013 11:12:49PM *  7 points [-]

I don't know the circumstances, but I would have tried to make eye contact and just blatantly stare at them for minutes straight, maybe even hamming it up with a look of slight unhinged interest. They would have become more uncomfortable and might have started being anxious that a stranger is eavesdropping on them, causing them to want to be more discrete, depending on their disposition. I've actually tried this before, and it seems to sometimes work if they can see you staring at them. Give a subtle, slight grin, like you might be sexually turned on. If you won't see them again then it's worth a try.

Comment author: roystgnr 02 January 2013 09:16:53PM 16 points [-]

"This is how it sometimes works", I would have said. Anything more starts to sound uncomfortably close to "the lurkers support me in email."

Comment author: John_Maxwell_IV 14 January 2013 05:10:40AM 13 points [-]

I guess my point here is that part of the reason I stayed in Mormonism so long was that the people arguing against Mormonism were using such ridiculously bad arguments. I tried to find the most rigorous reasoning and the strongest research that opposed LDS theology, but the best they could come up with was stuff like horses in the Book of Mormon. It's so easy for a Latter-Day Saint to simply write the horse references off as either a slight mistranslation or a gap in current scientific knowledge that that kind of "evidence" wasn't worth the time of day to me. And for every horse problem there was something like Hugh Nibley's "Two Shots in the Dark" or Eugene England's work on Lehi's alleged travels across Saudi Arabia, apologetic works that made Mormon historical and theological claims look vaguely plausible. There were bright, thoughtful people on both sides of the Mormon apologetics divide, but the average IQ was definitely a couple of dozen points higher in the Mormon camp.

http://www.exmormon.org/whylft18.htm

Comment author: katydee 01 January 2013 01:37:48PM 26 points [-]

The dream is damned and dreamer too if dreaming's all that dreamers do.

--Rory Miller

Comment author: RolfAndreassen 01 January 2013 09:25:47PM 40 points [-]

"Ten thousand years' worth of sophistry doesn't vanish overnight," Margit observed dryly. "Every human culture had expended vast amounts of intellectual effort on the problem of coming to terms with death. Most religions had constructed elaborate lies about it, making it out to be something other than it was—though a few were dishonest about life, instead. But even most secular philosophies were warped by the need to pretend that death was for the best."

"It was the naturalistic fallacy at its most extreme—and its most transparent, but that didn't stop anyone. Since any child could tell you that death was meaningless, contingent, unjust, and abhorrent beyond words, it was a hallmark of sophistication to believe otherwise. Writers had consoled themselves for centuries with smug puritanical fables about immortals who'd long for death—who'd beg for death. It would have been too much to expect all those who were suddenly faced with the reality of its banishment to confess that they'd been whistling in the dark. And would-be moral philosophers—mostly those who'd experienced no greater inconvenience in their lives than a late train or a surly waiter—began wailing about the destruction of the human spirit by this hideous blight. We needed death and suffering, to put steel into our souls! Not horrible, horrible freedom and safety!"

-- Greg Egan, "Border Guards".

Comment author: roystgnr 02 January 2013 09:24:29PM *  29 points [-]

I think, actually, scientists should kinda look into that whole 'death' thing. Because, they seem to have focused on diseases... and I don't give a #*=& about them. The guys go, "Hey, we fixed your arthritis!" "Am I still gonna die?" "Yeah."

So that, I think, is the biggest problem. That's why I can't get behind politicians! They're always like, "Our biggest problem today is unemployment!" and I'm like "What about getting old and sick and dying?"

  • Norm MacDonald, Me Doing Stand Up

(a few verbal tics were removed by me; the censorship was already present in the version I heard)

Comment author: simplicio 02 January 2013 09:40:20PM 8 points [-]

Sympathetic, but ultimately, we die OF diseases. And the years we do have are more or less valuable depending on their quality.

Physicians should maximize QALYs, and extending lifespan is only one way to do it.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 01 January 2013 08:00:39PM *  30 points [-]

For the Greek philosophers, Greek was the language of reason. Aristotle's list of categories is squarely based on the categories of Greek grammar. This did not explicitly entail a claim that the Greek language was primary: it was simply a case of the identification of thought with its natural vehicle. Logos was thought, and Logos was speech. About the speech of barbarians little was known; hence, little was known about what it would be like to think in the language of barbarians. Although the Greeks were willing to admit that the Egyptians, for example, possessed a rich and venerable store of wisdom, they only knew this because someone had explained it to them in Greek.

— Umberto Eco, The Search for the Perfect Language

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 29 January 2013 09:29:29AM 16 points [-]

"A stupid person can make only certain, limited types of errors. The mistakes open to a clever fellow are far broader. But to the one who knows how smart he is compared to everyone else, the possibilities for true idiocy are boundless."

-- Steven Brust, spoken by Vlad, in Iorich

Comment author: shminux 31 January 2013 12:11:36AM *  3 points [-]

to the one who knows how smart he is compared to everyone else

Seems to describe well the founder of this forum. I wonder if this quote resonates with a certain personal experience of yours.

Comment author: Mass_Driver 25 January 2013 10:00:41PM 16 points [-]

I once heard a story about the original writer of the Superman Radio Series. He wanted a pay rise, his employers didn't want to give him one. He decided to end the series with Superman trapped at the bottom of a well, tied down with kryptonite and surrounded by a hundred thousand tanks (or something along these lines). It was a cliffhanger. He then made his salary demands. His employers refused and went round every writer in America, but nobody could work out how the original writer was planning to have Superman escape. Eventually the radio guys had to go back to him and meet his wage demands. The first show of the next series began "Having escaped from the well, Superman hurried to..." There's a lesson in there somewhere, but I've no idea what it is.

-http://writebadlywell.blogspot.com/2010/05/write-yourself-into-corner.html

I would argue that the lesson is that when something valuable is at stake, we should focus on the simplest available solutions to the puzzles we face, rather than on ways to demonstrate our intelligence to ourselves or others.

Comment author: Fronken 29 January 2013 03:31:45PM 4 points [-]

Story ... too awesome ... not to upvote ...

not sure why its rational, though.

Comment author: RichardKennaway 26 January 2013 07:39:06PM 1 point [-]

I think this is an updating of the cliché from serial adventure stories for boys, where an instalment would end with a cliffhanger, the hero facing certain death. The following instalment would resolve the matter by saying "With one bound, Jack was free." Whether those exact words were ever written is unclear from Google, but it's a well-known form of lazy plotting. If it isn't already on TVTropes, now's your chance.

Comment author: CCC 29 January 2013 08:30:59AM 1 point [-]

Wouldn't that fall under "Cliffhanger Copout"?

Comment author: Desrtopa 29 January 2013 03:22:34AM *  3 points [-]

Did you just create that redlink? That's not the standard procedure for introducing new tropes, and if someone did do a writeup on it, it would probably end up getting deleted. New tropes are supposed to be introduced as proposals on the YKTTW (You Know That Thing Where) in order to build consensus that they're legitimate tropes that aren't already covered, and gather enough examples for a proper launch. You could add it as a proposal there, but the title is unlikely to fly under the current naming policy.

Pages launched from cold starts occasionally stick around (my first page contribution from back when I was a newcomer and hadn't learned the ropes is still around despite my own attempts to get it cutlisted,) but bypassing the YKTTW is frowned upon if not actually forbidden.

Comment author: RichardKennaway 29 January 2013 07:30:56AM *  2 points [-]

I didn't make any edits to TVTropes -- the page that it looks like I'm linking to doesn't actually exist. But I wasn't aware of YKTTW.

ETA: Neither is their 404 handler, that turns URLs for nonexistent pages into invitations to create them. As a troper yourself, maybe you could suggest to TVTropes that they change it?

Comment author: Desrtopa 29 January 2013 03:05:14PM 2 points [-]

If you're referring to what I think you are, that's more of a feature than a bug, since works pages don't need to go through the YKTTW. We get a lot more new works pages than new trope pages, so as long as the mechanics for creating either are the same, it helps to keep the process streamlined to avoid too much inconvenience.

Comment author: Kindly 26 January 2013 07:58:39PM 2 points [-]

I believe that Cliffhanger Copout refers to the same thing. The Harlan Ellison example in particular is worth reading.

Comment author: CronoDAS 26 January 2013 07:16:17PM 5 points [-]

Speaking of writing yourself into a corner...

According to TV Tropes, there was one show, "Sledge Hammer", which ended its first season with the main character setting off a nuclear bomb while trying to defuse it. They didn't expect to be renewed for a second season, so when they were, they had a problem. This is what they did:

Previously on Sledge Hammer:
[scene of nuclear explosion]
Tonight's episode takes place five years before that fateful explosion.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 26 January 2013 06:59:02PM 1 point [-]

There's so many different ways that story couldn't possibly be true...

(EDIT: Ooh, turns out that the Superman Radio program was the one that pulled off the "Clan of the Fiery Cross" punch against the KKK.)

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 17 January 2013 03:43:04AM 17 points [-]

I keep coming back to the essential problem that in our increasingly complex society, we are actually required to hold very firm opinions about highly complex matters that require analysis from multiple fields of expertise (economics, law, political science, engineering, others) in hugely complex systems where we must use our imperfect data to choose among possible outcomes that involve significant trade offs. This would be OK if we did not regard everyone who disagreed with us as an ignorant pinhead or vile evildoer whose sole motivation for disagreeing is their intrinsic idiocy, greed, or hatred for our essential freedoms/people not like themselves. Except that there actually are LOTS of ignorant pinheads and vile evildoers whose sole motivation etc., or whose self-interest is obvious to everyone but themselves.

osewalrus

Comment author: simplicio 22 January 2013 04:09:07PM -2 points [-]

I keep coming back to the essential problem that in our increasingly complex society, we are actually required to hold very firm opinions about highly complex matters that require analysis from multiple fields of expertise (economics, law, political science, engineering, others) in hugely complex systems where we must use our imperfect data to choose among possible outcomes that involve significant trade offs.

A possible partial solution to this problem.

Comment author: HalMorris 02 January 2013 09:58:44AM 17 points [-]

In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upwards of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

  • Mark Twain - Life on the Mississippi

(If you wonder where "two hundred and forty-two miles" shortening of the river came from, it was the straightening of its original meandering path to improve navigation)

Comment author: dspeyer 01 January 2013 04:37:36PM *  35 points [-]

You're better at talking than I am. When you talk, sometimes I get confused. My ideas of what's right and wrong get mixed up. That's why I'm bringing this. As soon as I start thinking it's all right to steal from our employees, I'm going to start hitting you with the stick.

later

If it makes you feel any better, I agree with your logic completely.

No, what would make me feel better is for you to stop hitting me!

--Freefall

Comment author: NoisyEmpire 02 January 2013 08:01:12PM 36 points [-]

What does puzzle people – at least it used to puzzle me – is the fact that Christians regard faith… as a virtue. I used to ask how on Earth it can be a virtue – what is there moral or immoral about believing or not believing a set of statements? Obviously, I used to say, a sane man accepts or rejects any statement, not because he wants or does not want to, but because the evidence seems to him good or bad. If he were mistaken about the goodness or badness of the evidence, that would not mean he was a bad man, but only that he was not very clever. And if he thought the evidence bad but tried to force himself to believe in spite of it, that would be merely stupid…

What I did not see then – and a good many people do not see still – was this. I was assuming that if the human mind once accepts a thing as true it will automatically go on regarding it as true, until some real reason for reconsidering it turns up. In fact, I was assuming that the human mind is completely ruled by reason. But that is not so. For example, my reason is perfectly convinced by good evidence that anesthetics do not smother me and that properly trained surgeons do not start operating until I am unconscious. But that does not alter the fact that when they have me down on the table and clap their horrible mask over my face, a mere childish panic begins inside me. I start thinking I am going to choke, and I am afraid they will start cutting me up before I am properly under. In other words, I lose my faith in anesthetics. It is not reason that is taking away my faith; on the contrary, my faith is based on reason. It is my imagination and emotions. The battle is between faith and reason on one side and emotion and imagination on the other…

Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding onto things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes. I know that by experience. Now that I am a Christian, I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable; but when I was an atheist, I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable... Unless you teach your moods "where they get off" you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion. Consequently one must train the habit of faith.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Caveat: this is not at all how the majority of the religious people that I know would use the word "faith". In fact, this passage turned out to be one of the earliest helps in bringing me to think critically about and ultimately discard my religious worldview.

Comment author: SaidAchmiz 02 January 2013 09:50:34PM 3 points [-]

Sounds like Lewis's confusion would have been substatially cleared up by distinguishing between belief and alief, and then he would not have had to perpetrate such abuses on commonly used words.

Comment author: simplicio 02 January 2013 11:00:14PM 9 points [-]

To be fair, the philosopher Tamar Gendler only coined the term in 2008.

Comment author: Jay_Schweikert 09 January 2013 04:10:02PM 2 points [-]

Upvoted. I actually had a remarkably similar experience reading Lewis. Throughout college I had been undergoing a gradual transformation from "real" Christian to liberal Protestant to deist, and I ended up reading Lewis because he seemed to be the only person I could find who was firmly committed to Christianity and yet seemed willing to discuss the kind of questions I was having. Reading Mere Christianity was basically the event that let me give Christianity/theism one last look over and say "well said, but that is enough for me to know it is time to move on."

Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 02 January 2013 10:06:26AM 18 points [-]

It is not an epistemological principle that one might as well hang for a sheep as for a lamb.

-Bas van Fraassen, The Scientific Image

Comment author: [deleted] 02 January 2013 07:57:26PM 24 points [-]

Just because someone isn't into finding out The Secrets Of The Universe like me doesn't necessarily mean I can't be friends with them.

-Buttercup Dew (@NationalistPony)

Comment author: arborealhominid 08 January 2013 12:15:49AM 3 points [-]

Never in my life did I expect to find myself upvoting a comment quoting My Nationalist Pony.

Comment author: Oscar_Cunningham 02 January 2013 02:21:31PM 25 points [-]

I don't blame them; nor am I saying I wouldn't similarly manipulate the truth if I thought it would save lives, but I don't lie to myself. You keep two books, not no books. [Emphasis mine]

The Last Psychiatrist (http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2010/10/how_not_to_prevent_military_su.html)

Comment author: James_Miller 01 January 2013 05:34:35PM 25 points [-]

We cannot dismiss conscious analytic thinking by saying that heuristics will get a “close enough” answer 98 percent of the time, because the 2 percent of the instances where heuristics lead us seriously astray may be critical to our lives.

Keith E. Stanovich, What Intelligence Tests Miss: The Psychology of Rational Thought

Comment author: Mycroft65536 05 March 2013 02:29:55AM 1 point [-]

If you're commited to rationality, then you're putting your belief system at risk every day. Any day you might acquire more information and be forced to change you belief system, and it could be very unpleasant and be very disturbing.

--Michael Huemer

Comment author: deathpigeon 01 February 2013 02:48:08AM 1 point [-]

A straight line may be the shortest distance between two points, but it is by no means the most interesting.

The Third Doctor

Comment author: lukeprog 30 January 2013 10:38:17PM 9 points [-]

Mendel’s concept of the laws of genetics was lost to the world for a generation because his publication did not reach the few who were capable of grasping and extending it; and this sort of catastrophe is undoubtedly being repeated all about us, as truly significant attainments become lost in the mass of the inconsequential.

Vannevar Bush

Comment author: [deleted] 30 January 2013 12:10:07PM 11 points [-]

Whenever you can, count.

--Sir Francis Galton

Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 30 January 2013 12:10:51AM *  1 point [-]

-

Comment author: Vaniver 30 January 2013 12:27:58AM 2 points [-]
Comment author: GLaDOS 29 January 2013 07:34:17PM 10 points [-]

I notice with some amusement, both in America and English literature, the rise of a new kind of bigotry. Bigotry does not consist in a man being convinced he is right; that is not bigotry, but sanity. Bigotry consists in a man being convinced that another man must be wrong in everything, because he is wrong in a particular belief; that he must be wrong, even in thinking that he honestly believes he is right.

-G. K. Chesterton

Comment author: Carwajalca 29 January 2013 11:21:28AM 26 points [-]

"I've never seen the Icarus story as a lesson about the limitations of humans. I see it as a lesson about the limitations of wax as an adhesive."

-- Randall Munroe, in http://what-if.xkcd.com/30/ (What-if xkcd, Interplanetary Cessna)

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 28 January 2013 02:50:42PM 2 points [-]

I don't think change can be planned. It can only be recognized.

jad abumrad, a video about the development of Radio Lab and the amount of fear involved in doing original work