Rationality Quotes May 2013

katydee

Here's another installment of rationality quotes. The usual rules apply:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be upvoted or downvoted 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Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, Overcoming Bias, or HPMoR.
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.

Here's another installment of rationality quotes. The usual rules apply:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be upvoted or downvoted 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Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, Overcoming Bias, or HPMoR.
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.

"I don't really understand metaphysics or why it's needed." -- Matt Simpson

"Sketch version: There is no "no metaphysics" anwser, there is only "metaphysics I just unconsciously accept" and "metaphysics I've actually thought about". You can do it well or you can do it badly but you can't not do metaphysics." -- Andrew Summitt

This is a wild guess, but (on the assumption that you endorse this quote) is the thought that MWI stands in relation to experimentally testable physics as something like a metaphysical thesis, and that instrumentalism doesn't lack metaphysical theses of this kind, but simply refuses to acknowledge and examine them?

Anyway, a related quote, and so far as I know the oldest of this kind:

The man who is ready to prove that metaphysical knowledge is wholly impossible..is a brother metaphysician with a rival theory of first principles. -F. H. Bradley "Appearance and Reality" 1893

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Rationality Quotes May 2013

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Rationality Quotes May 2013

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