Qiaochu_Yuan comments on Rationality Quotes April 2013 - Less Wrong

6 Post author: Vaniver 08 April 2013 02:00AM

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Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 03 April 2013 08:23:03PM 33 points [-]

Dude, suckin' at something is the first step to being sorta good at something.

-- Jake the Dog (Adventure Time)

Comment author: arundelo 14 April 2014 11:06:01PM 2 points [-]

For reference purposes: video clip; episode transcript.

Comment author: [deleted] 04 April 2013 10:20:14AM -2 points [-]

WTH... My latest Facebook status is “You got to lose to know how to win” (from “Dream On” by Aerosmith). o.O

Comment author: Will_Newsome 08 April 2013 06:49:41AM 7 points [-]

Checkmate, atheists!

Comment author: bbleeker 08 April 2013 09:15:51AM 0 points [-]

I don't get it...

Comment author: D_Malik 09 April 2013 12:32:36AM *  9 points [-]

Will is (non-seriously) pointing out that the synchronicity between army1987's Facebook status and Qiaochu's comment is too great to be explained by coincidence alone, and is thus strong evidence for the existence of God.

Comment author: Estarlio 08 April 2013 03:21:36PM 3 points [-]

You've got to crash the car to know how to drive, got to drown to learn how to swim, you've got to believe to disbelieve. Got to !x to x.

Comment author: bbleeker 09 April 2013 02:01:11PM 0 points [-]

But that would make it "checkmate, believers". All the other sentences say " you've got to <bad thing> to <good thing>".

Comment author: Estarlio 09 April 2013 11:38:32PM 0 points [-]

X & !X can be anything, good or bad. You've just got to pick a value for X that fits in with your desires to get a particular outcome if you want to break it down in terms of good and bad. Got to live to die. The point is that the underlying structure of the argument remains the same whatever you pick.

If you're actually interested in propositional logic, then the suitably named Logic by Paul Tomassi is a very approachable intro to this sort of thing. Though I'm afraid I couldn't say what it goes for these days.