Another month has passed and here is a new rationality quotes thread. The usual rules are:
- 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- Do not quote yourself.
- Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, Overcoming Bias, or HPMoR.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.
That's an interesting opening comment on regretting choosing to speak more than choosing not to speak. In particular, it brings to mind studies of the elderly's regrets in life and how most of those are not-having-done's versus having-done's. These two aren't incompatible: if we remain silent 20 times for every time we speak, then we still regret remaining silent more than we regret speaking even if we regret each having-spoken 10 times as much as a not-having-spoken. Still, though, there seems to be some disagreement.
Obviously the fact that it's translated complicates things, and I don't know anything about Danish. But I think the first sentence is meant to be a piece of folk wisdom akin to "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt." That is, he's not really concerned with the relative proportions of regret, but with the idea that it's better (safer, shrewder) to keep your counsel than to stake out a position that might be contradicted. In light of the rest of the text, this is the reading of the line that ma... (read more)