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Puredoxyk comments on Rationality Quotes March 2013 - Less Wrong
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"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." -L. Wittgenstein
(Apologies if this quote has been in a previous month -- I'm a new user to LW -- but I had to include it since a) pretty brevity and b) so perfect for the Internets!)
Already included in http://lesswrong.com/lw/dei/rationality_quotes_july_2012/6ydf - it's also so famous a line that I would hesitate to include it even if it weren't embedded in an existing quote.
How do you determine which things you can't speak of?
In context, by "whereof one cannot speak" Witty means "whereof one is ignorant."
People aren't reliably good at knowing what they're ignorant about, so having some heuristics for identifying ignorance would be a good idea.
Did Wittgenstein mean ordinary ignorance or comprehensive Taoist ignorance?
The former, I think. Not sure I know the concepts behind the latter.
I think the advice is basically saying "Don't make grand proclamations about things you have no way of knowing about." A nice (if cliched) example might be life after death.