Rationality Quotes August 2013

7 Post author: Vaniver 02 August 2013 08:59PM

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  • Do not quote yourself.
  • Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson. If you'd like to revive an old quote from one of those sources, please do so here.
  • No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.

Comments (733)

Sort By: Controversial
Comment author: Eugine_Nier 03 August 2013 07:23:56AM 0 points [-]

Everybody hates the bust, but the real harm is done in the boom, with capital being diverted to things that don’t make sense, because the boom’s distortions make them seem to make sense.

Glenn Reynolds

Comment author: fubarobfusco 06 August 2013 04:24:42PM 0 points [-]

Hindsight bias. It's only after the bust that you find out which boom things made sense after all and which didn't.

Comment author: mwengler 05 August 2013 04:41:44PM 2 points [-]

The boom produces a lot of stuff which is theoretically not the optimum stuff to produce using the resources used in the boom. However, to the extent the boom brings resources out of the woodwork that may not have been used to produce anything at all in the absence of the boom, it may not actually be a net loss compared to a realistic counterfactual.

The bust accompanied by significant unemployment is of a virtual certainly producing less than any of the counterfactuals in which more people are employed. Of course it IS possible to employ some people digging holes and others to fill them in, but I think this is a strawman, generally artificially increased employment produces something of value.

The Austrians may have it wrong because the obviousness of the bust being the unproductive distortion is lost to them in the intellectual excitement of realizing you can't have a bust without a boom, and so they mistakenly think it is the boom which is less productive.

Sometimes the obvious answer IS right. I think the fact that particularly intelligent people acting in groups miss this more often than is optimum should be one of the cognitive biases on our list of biases we study and stay aware of.

Unemployed people produce less than employed people. The odd construction of a corner case does not make this generally true statement generally false.

Comment author: b1shop 04 August 2013 01:16:42AM 18 points [-]

I'm downvoting this quote. Read at a basic level, it supports a particular economic theory rather than a larger point of rationality.

For the record, the Austrian Business Cycle Theory is not generally accepted by mainstream economists. This isn't the place to discuss why, and it isn't the place to give ABCT the illusion of a "rational" stamp of approval.

Comment author: Grant 05 August 2013 03:41:42AM 3 points [-]

All true, but there are many booms which seem to produce crazy investments; the dot-com boom is the most obvious recent example. You don't need to accept ABCT to accept this, and I'd guess most people who do notice this don't accept ABCT.

Comment author: CronoDAS 05 August 2013 06:33:38AM *  0 points [-]

Fuck every cause that ends in murder and children crying.

-- Iain M. Banks

Comment author: RobertLumley 07 August 2013 02:46:48PM 1 point [-]

This seems like a poor strategy by simply considering temper tantrums, let alone all of the other holes in this. (The first half of the comment though, I can at least appreciate.)

Comment author: Document 07 August 2013 02:57:44AM *  -1 points [-]

I, too, support the cause of opposing every such cause.

Comment author: Lumifer 06 August 2013 06:19:43PM 4 points [-]

I wonder if people here realize how anti-utilitarianism this quote is :-)

Comment author: wedrifid 07 August 2013 06:44:39AM *  -1 points [-]

I wonder if people here realize how anti-utilitarianism this quote is :-)

You seem to be implying that people here should care about things being anti-utilitarianism. They shouldn't. Utilitarianism refers to a group of largely abhorrent and arbitrary value systems.

It is also contrary to virtually all consequentialist value systems of the kind actually held by people here or extrapolatable from humans. All consequentialist systems that match the quote's criteria for not being 'Fucked' are abhorrent.

Comment author: Lumifer 07 August 2013 04:13:25PM 2 points [-]

It is also anti-consequentialism.

It is not. "Murder and children crying" here are not means to an end, they are consequences as well. Maybe not intended consequences, maybe side effects ("collateral damage"), but still consequences.

I see no self-contradiction in a consequentialist approach which just declares certain consequences (e.g. "murder and children crying") be be unacceptable.

Comment author: AndHisHorse 07 August 2013 04:47:22PM 1 point [-]

There is nothing about consequentialism which distinguishes means from ends. Anything that happens is an "end" of the series of actions which produced it, even if it is not a terminal step, even if it is not intended.

When wedrifid says that the quote is "anti-consequentialism", they are saying that it refuses to weigh all of the consequences - including the good ones. The negativity of children made to cry does not obliterate the positivity of children prevented from crying, but rather must be weighed against it, to produce a sum which can be negative or positive.

To declare a consequence "unacceptable" is to say that you refuse to be consequentialist where that particular outcome is involved; you are saying that such a consequence crashes your computation of value, as if it were infinitely negative and demanded some other method of valuation, which did not use such finicky things as numbers.

But even if there is a value which is negative, and 3^^^3 times greater in magnitude than any other value, positive or negative, its negation will always be of equal and opposite value, allowing things to be weighed against each other once again. In this example, a murder might be worth -3^^^3 utilons - but preventing two murders by committing one results in a net sum of +3^^^3 utilons.

The only possible world in which one could reject every possible cause which ends in murder or children crying is one in which it is conveniently impossible for such a cause to lead to positive consequences which outweigh the negative ones. And frankly, the world we live in is not so convenient as to divide itself perfectly into positive and negative acts in such a way.

Comment author: Lumifer 07 August 2013 05:16:35PM *  2 points [-]

There is nothing about consequentialism which distinguishes means from ends.

Wikipedia: Consequentialism is the class of normative ethical theories holding that the consequences of one's conduct are the ultimate basis for any judgment about the rightness of that conduct. ... Consequentialism is usually distinguished from deontological ethics (or deontology), in that deontology derives the rightness or wrongness of one's conduct from the character of the behaviour itself rather than the outcomes of the conduct.

The "character of the behaviour" is means.

To declare a consequence "unacceptable" is to say that you refuse to be consequentialist where that particular outcome is involved; you are saying that such a consequence crashes your computation of value

Consequentialism does not demand "computation of value". It only says that what matters it outcomes, it does not require that the outcomes be comparable or summable. I don't see that saying that certain outcomes are unacceptable, full stop (= have negative infinity value) contradicts consequentialism.

Comment author: AndHisHorse 07 August 2013 05:41:07PM 0 points [-]

You have a point, there are means and ends. I was using the term "means" as synonymous with "methods used to achieve instrumental ends", which I realize was vague and misleading. I suppose it would be better to say that consequentialism does not concern itself with means at all, and rather considers every outcome, including those which are the result of means, to be an end.

As for your other point, I'm afraid that I find it rather odd. Consequentialism does not need to be implemented as having implicitly summable values, much as rational assessment does not require the computation of exact probabilities, but any moral system must be able to implement comparisons of some kind. Even the simplest deontologies must be able to distinguish "good" from "bad" moral actions, even if all "good" actions are equal, and all "bad" actions likewise.

Without the ability to compare outcomes, there is no way to compare the goodness of choices and select a good plan of action, regardless of how one defines "good". And if a given outcome has infinitely negative value, than its negation must have infinitely positive value - which means that the negation is just as desirable as the original outcome is undesirable.

Comment author: Lukas_Gloor 08 August 2013 07:18:46PM *  0 points [-]

Your point is perfectly valid, I think. Every action-guiding set of principles is ultimately all about consequences. Deontologies can be "consequentialized", i.e. expressed only through a maximization (or minimization) rule of some goal-function, by a mere semantic transformation. The reason why this is rarely done is, I suspect, because people get confused by words, and perhaps also because consequentializing some deontologies makes it more obvious that the goals are arbitrary or silly.

The traditional distinction between consequentialism and non-consequentialism does not come down to the former only counting consequences -- both do! The difference is rather about what sort of consequences count. Deontology also counts how consequences are brought about, that becomes part of the "consequences" that matter, part of whatever you're trying to minimize. "Me murdering someone" gets a different weight than "someone else murdering someone", which in turn gets a different weight from "letting someone else die through 'natural causes' when it could be easily prevented".

And sometimes it gets even weirder, the doctrine of double effect for instance draws a morally significant line between a harmful consequence being necessary for the execution of your (well-intended) aim, or a "mere" foreseen -- but still necessary(!) -- side-effect of it. So sometimes certain intentions, when acted upon, are flagged with negative value as well.

And as you note below, deontologies sometimes attribute infinite negative value to certain consequences.

Comment author: wedrifid 07 August 2013 04:54:06PM *  0 points [-]

I see no self-contradiction in a consequentialist approach which just declares certain consequences (e.g. "murder and children crying") be be unacceptable.

Pardon me. I left off the technical qualifier for the sake of terseness. I have previously observed that all deontologial value systems can be emulated by (suitably contrived) consequentialist value systems and vice-versa so I certainly don't intend to imply that it is impossible to construct a consequentialist morality implementing this particular injunction. Edited to fix.

It is also contrary to virtually all consequentialist value systems of the kind actually held by people here or extrapolatable from humans. All consequentialist systems that match this criteria are abhorrent.

Comment author: Document 06 August 2013 06:21:24PM 0 points [-]

"Murder and children crying" aren't allowed to have negative weight in a utility function?

Comment author: Lumifer 06 August 2013 06:26:51PM 1 point [-]

It's not about weight, it's about an absolute, discontinuous, hard limit -- regardless of how many utilons you can pile up on the other end of the scale.

Comment author: Bayeslisk 06 August 2013 08:22:28PM 2 points [-]

Well, no. It's against the promise of how many utilons you can pile up on the other arm of the scale, which may well not pay off at all. I'm reminded of a post here at some point whose gist was "if your model tells you that your chances of being wrong are 3^^^3:1 against, it is more likely that your model is wrong than that you are right."

Comment author: AndHisHorse 06 August 2013 08:34:21PM 1 point [-]

Yes, but the quote in no way concerns itself with the probability that such a plan will go wrong; rather, it explicitly includes even those with a wide margin of error, including "every" plan which ends in murder and children crying.

Comment author: Bayeslisk 06 August 2013 08:36:22PM 1 point [-]

It's not a matter of "the plan might go wrong", it's a matter of "the plan might be wrong", and the universal part comes from "no, really, yours too, because you aren't remotely special."

Comment author: katydee 05 August 2013 12:58:12PM 4 points [-]

This seems better-suited for MoreEmotional than LessWrong.

Comment deleted 05 August 2013 09:57:20AM [-]
Comment author: Bayeslisk 06 August 2013 04:58:01PM 5 points [-]

As much as I love Banks, this sounds like a massive set of applause lights, complete with sparkling Catherine wheels. Sometimes, you have to do shitty things to improve the world, and sometimes the shitty things are really shitty, because we're not smart enough to find a better option fast enough to avoid the awful things resulting from not improving at all. "The perfect must not be the enemy of the good" and so on.

Comment author: wedrifid 05 August 2013 12:21:51PM 8 points [-]

Fuck every cause that ends in murder and children crying.

I suppose I somewhat appreciate the sentiment. I note that labelling the killing 'murder' has already amounted to significant discretion. Killings that are approved of get to be labelled something nicer sounding.

Comment author: simplicio 09 August 2013 06:16:58PM *  0 points [-]

David Chapman thinks that using LW-style Bayesianism as a theory of epistemology (as opposed to just probability) lumps together too many types of uncertainty; to wit:

Here is an off-the-top-of-my-head list of types:

  • inherent effective randomness, due to dynamical chaos

  • physical inaccessibility of phenomena

  • time-varying phenomena (so samples are drawn from different distributions)

  • sensing/measurement error

  • model/abstraction error

  • one’s own cognitive/computational limitations

I think he is correct, and LWers are overselling Bayesianism as a solution to too many problems (at the very least, without having shown it to be).

Comment author: gwern 09 August 2013 08:19:58PM *  9 points [-]

I do not see why any of Chapman's examples cannot be given appropriate distributions and modeled in a Bayesian analysis just like anything else:

Dynamical chaos? Very statistically modelable, in fact, you can't really deal with it at all without statistics, in areas like weather forecasting.

Inaccessibility? Very modelable; just a case of missing data & imputation. (I'm told that handling issues like censoring, truncation, rounding, or intervaling are considered one of the strengths of fully Bayesian methods and a good reason for using stuff like JAGS; in contrast, whenever I've tried to deal with one of those issues using regular maximum-likelihood approaches it has been... painful.)

Time-varying? Well, there's only a huge section of statistics devoted to the topic of time-series and forecasts...

Sensing/measurement error? Trivial, in fact, one of the best cases for statistical adjustment (see psychometrics) and arguably dealing with measurement error is the origin of modern statistics (the first instances of least-squared coming from Gauss and other astronomers dealing with errors in astronomical measurement, and of course Laplace applied Bayesian methods to astronomy as well).

Model/abstraction error? See everything under the heading of 'model checking' and things like model-averaging; local favorite Bayesian statistician Andrew Gelman is very active in this area, no doubt he would be quite surprised to learn that he is misapplying Bayesian methods in that area.

One’s own cognitive/computational limitations? Not just beautifully handled by Bayesian methods + decision theory, but the former is actually offering insight into the former, for example "Burn-in, bias, and the rationality of anchoring".

Comment author: simplicio 09 August 2013 09:40:49PM -1 points [-]

Note that I was speaking of "Bayesianism" as practiced on LW, not of Bayesian statistics the academic field. I do not believe these are the same.

I believe Chapman is writing a more detailed critique of what he sees here; I will be sure to link you to it when it comes.

Comment author: gwern 09 August 2013 09:56:37PM -1 points [-]

Note that I was speaking of "Bayesianism" as practiced on LW, not of Bayesian statistics the academic field. I do not believe these are the same.

I think that's absurd if that's what he really means. Just because we are not daily posting new research papers employing model-averaging or non-parametric Bayesian statistics does not mean that we do not think those techniques are useful and incorporated in our epistemology or that we would consider the standard answers correct, and this argument can be applied to any area of knowledge that LWers might draw upon or consider correct. If we criticize p-values as a form of building knowledge, is that not a part of 'Bayesian epistemology' because we are drawing arguments from Jaynes or Ioannidis and did not invent them ab initio?

'Your physics can't deal with modeling subatomic interactions, and so sadly your entire epistemology is erroneous.' '??? There's a huge and extremely successful area of physics devoted to that, and I have no freaking idea what you are talking about. Are you really as ignorant and superficial as you sound like, in listing as a weakness something which is actually a major strength of the physics viewpoint?' 'Oh, but I meant physics as practiced on LessWrong! Clearly that other physics is simply not relevant. Come back when LW has built its own LHC and replicated all the standard results in the field, and then I'll admit that particle physics as practiced on LW is the same thing as particle physics the academic field, because otherwise I refuse to believe they can be the same.'

Comment author: simplicio 09 August 2013 10:02:23PM 0 points [-]

I think you may be extrapolating much too far from the quote I posted. Also, my statistics level is well below both yours and Chapman's so I am not a good interlocutor for you.

Comment author: gwern 09 August 2013 10:10:00PM 0 points [-]

I think you may be extrapolating much too far from the quote I posted.

I don't think I am. It's a very simple quote: "here is a list of n items Bayesian statistics and hence epistemology cannot handle; therefore, it cannot be right." And it's dead wrong because all n items are handled just fine.

Comment author: [deleted] 09 August 2013 11:50:19PM 4 points [-]

I think you are being uncharitable. The list was of different types of uncertainty that Bayesians treat as the same, with a side of skepticism that they should be handled the same, not things you can't model with bayesian epistemology.

The question is not whether Bayes can handle those different types of uncertainty, it's whether they should be handled by a unified probability theory.

I think the position that we shouldn't (or don't yet) have a unified uncertainty model is wrong, but I don't think it's so stupid as to be worth getting heated about and being uncivil.

Comment author: [deleted] 10 August 2013 02:50:21PM *  0 points [-]

I think the position that we shouldn't (or don't yet) have a unified uncertainty model is wrong

Did somebody solve the problem of logical uncertainty while I wasn't looking?

but I don't think it's so stupid as to be worth getting heated about and being uncivil.

I disagree that Gwern is being uncivil. I don't think Chapman has any ground to criticize LW-style epistemology when he's made it abundantly clear he has no idea what it is supposed to be. (Indeed, that's his principal criticism: the people he's talked to about it tell him different things.)

It'd be like if Berkeley asked a bunch of Weierstrass' first students about their "supposed" fix for infinitesimals. Because the students hadn't completely grasped it yet, they gave Berkeley a rope, a rubber hose, and a burlap sack instead of giving him the elephant. Then Berkeley goes and writes a sequel to the Analyst disparaging this "new Calculus" for being incoherent.

In that world, I think Berkeley's the one being uncivil.

Comment author: [deleted] 09 August 2013 11:58:13PM 6 points [-]

I think you're not being charitable again. Consider the difference between physics as practiced by quantum woo mystics, and physics as practiced by physicists or even engineers. I think that simplicio is referring to a similar (though less striking) tendency for the representative LWer to quasi-religiously misapply and oversell probability theory (which may or may not be the case, but should be argued with something other than uncharitable ridicule).

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 10 August 2013 05:34:26AM *  -1 points [-]

One’s own cognitive/computational limitations? Not just beautifully handled by Bayesian methods + decision theory,

Unless there's been an enormous breakthrough in the past 2 years, I believe this is still a major unsolved problem. Also decision theory is about cooperating with other agents, not overcoming cognitive limitations.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 02 August 2013 06:27:31AM *  4 points [-]

Historically, most hackers have been not only men, but men of a sort of Mannie O’Kelly-Davis “git ‘er done” variety, and that’s beginning to change now, so new norms of behavior must be adopted in order to create a welcoming and inclusive community.

  • Jeff Read

I have a better idea. Let’s drive away people unwilling to adopt that “git’r'done” attitude with withering scorn, rather than waste our time pacifying tender-minded ninnies and grievance collectors. That way we might continue to actually, you know, get stuff done.

Eric Raymond

Comment author: [deleted] 02 August 2013 09:47:53PM *  8 points [-]

Here's my thought process upon reading this. (Initially, I assumed “git 'er done” meant something like ‘women are unimportant except as sex objects, and I misread “unwilling” as “willing”.)

  • ‘How comes that guy, who when talking about sex on his blog gets mind-killed to the point of forgetting how to do high-school maths, makes so much sense everywhere else? Maybe he was saner when younger, then got worse with age, or something.’ I follow the link, expecting it to go to somewhere other than Armed and Dangerous, e.g. somewhere on catb.org.
  • I notice the link does go to his blog, and to a recent post at that. ‘So he is still capable of talking sense about such topics after all?’ I notice I am confused.
  • I realize he said “unwilling” not “willing”. ‘Er... Nope. He's crazy as usual.’
  • Appalled at the idea that anyone, even ESR, would say anything like that in public with an almost straight face, I decide to look “git 'er done” up. ‘Oh, that makes perfect sense, and I agree with him. But that's not about sex (except insofar as the cut-through-the-bullshit communication style is less rare among men than among women), so that doesn't actually show he's not mind-killed beyond all repair.’

(Anyway, if an adult woman complains because you called her a girl, the course of action that leaves you the most time to get stuff done is apologizing, not doing that again, and getting back to work, not endlessly whining about how ridiculous the PC crowd are.)

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 03 August 2013 05:11:35AM 0 points [-]

(Anyway, if an adult woman complains because you called her a girl, the course of action that leaves you the most time to get stuff done is apologizing, not doing that again, and getting back to work, not endlessly whining about how ridiculous the PC crowd are.)

Not necessarily, it might just encourage further frivolous complaints.

Comment author: [deleted] 04 August 2013 03:15:38PM 3 points [-]

As opposed to feeding trolls, which is widely known to be extremely effective in making them shut up?

Comment author: wedrifid 04 August 2013 06:00:12PM *  6 points [-]

As opposed to feeding trolls, which is widely known to be extremely effective in making them shut up?

In the context the group you position here as 'trolls' are described as frivolous complainers. You advocate apologising and complying. Eugine is correct in pointing out that this can represent a perverse incentive (both in theory and in often observed practice).

Comment author: [deleted] 21 September 2013 06:54:05PM *  -1 points [-]

I dunno... if someone's goal is to fuel a flamewar to discredit you, it would seem to me that ranting about that is more likely to make their day than just reacting as though they had pointed out you misspelled their name and then going back to your business.

Comment author: MixedNuts 02 August 2013 09:36:12AM 12 points [-]

Empirically, heaping scorn on everyone and seeing who sticks around leads to lots of time wasted on flame wars.

Comment author: Lumifer 02 August 2013 05:07:53PM 1 point [-]

A relevant example:

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/07/linus-torvalds-defends-his-right-to-shame-linux-kernel-developers/

Linux kernel seems to me a quite well-managed operation (of herding cats, too!) that doesn't waste lots of time on flame wars.

Comment author: novalis 04 August 2013 01:47:11AM 6 points [-]

Linux kernel seems to me a quite well-managed operation (of herding cats, too!) that doesn't waste lots of time on flame wars.

I don't follow kernel development much. Recently, a colleague pointed me to the rdrand instruction. I was curious about Linux kernel support for it, and I found this thread: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/1173350

Notice that Linus spends a bunch of time (a) flaming people and (b) being wrong about how crypto works (even though the issue was not relevant to the patch).

Is this typical of the linux-kernel mailing list? I decided to look at the latest hundred messages. I saw some minor rudeness, but nothing at that level. Of course, none of these messages were from Linus. But I didn't have to go back more than a few days to find Linus saying things like, "some ass-wipe inside the android team." Imagine if you were that Android developer, and you were reading that email? Would that make you want to work on Linux? Or would that make you want to go find a project where the leader doesn't shit on people?

Here's a revealing quote from one recent message from Linus: "Otherwise I'll have to start shouting at people again." Notice that Linus perceives shouting as a punishment. He's right to do so, as that's how people take it. Sure, "don't get offended", "git 'er done", etc -- but realistically, developers are human and don't necessarily have time to do a bunch of CBT so that they can brush off insults.

Some people, I guess, can continue to be productive after their project leader insults them. The rest either have periodic drops in productivity, or choose to work on projects which are run by people willing to act professionally.

tl;dr: Would you put up with a boss who frequently called you an idiot in public?

Comment author: Lumifer 06 August 2013 04:35:23PM *  4 points [-]

Would you put up with a boss who frequently called you an idiot in public?

Actually, that depends.

Mostly that depends on what the intent (and context) of calling me an idiot in public is. If the intent is, basically, power play -- the goal is to belittle me and elevate himself, reassert his alpha-ness, shift blame, provide an outlet for his desire to inflict pain on somebody -- then no, I'm not going to put up with it.

On the other hand, if this is all a part of a culturally normal back-and-forth, if all the boss wants is for me to sit up and take notice, if I can without repercussions reply to him in public pointing out that it's his fat head that gets into his way of understanding basic things like X, Y, and Z and that he's wrong -- I'm fine with that.

The microcultures of joking-around-with-insults exist for good reasons. Nobody forces you to like them, but you want to shut them down and that seems rather excessive to me.

Comment author: novalis 06 August 2013 05:07:03PM 0 points [-]

I think it's pretty clear that Linus is more on the power-play end of the spectrum. Notice his comment above about the Android developer; that's not someone who is part of his microculture (the person in question was a developer on the Android email client, not a kernel hacker). And again, the shouting-as-punishment thing shows that Linus understands the effect that he has, but doesn't care.

Also, Linus, as the person in the position of power, isn't in a position to judge whether his culture is fun. Of course it's fun for him, because he's at the top. "I was just joking around" is always what bullies say when they get called out. The real question is whether it's fun for others. The recent discussion (that presumably sparked the quotes in this thread) was started by someone who didn't find it fun. So even if there are some "good reasons" (none of which you have named), they don't necessarily outweigh the reasons not to have such a culture.

Comment author: Lumifer 06 August 2013 05:43:40PM 2 points [-]

I think it's pretty clear that Linus is more on the power-play end of the spectrum.

That's not clear to me at all.

Note that management of any kind involves creating incentives for your employees/subordinates/those-who-listen-to-you. The incentives include both carrots and sticks and sticks are punishments and are meant to be so. If you want to talk about carrots-only management styles, well, that's a different discussion.

The real question is whether it's fun for others.

I disagree. You treat fun and enjoyment of working at some place as the ultimate, terminal value. It is not. The goal of working is to produce, to create, to make. Whether it's "fun" is subordinate to that. Sure, there are feedback loops, but organizations which exist for the benefit of their employees (to make their life comfortable and "fun") are not a good thing.

Comment author: Estarlio 07 August 2013 12:43:29PM *  1 point [-]

Note that management of any kind involves creating incentives for your employees/subordinates/those-who-listen-to-you. The incentives include both carrots and sticks and sticks are punishments and are meant to be so.

Punishments seem to have rapidly decreasing returns, especially given the availability of alternatives that are less abusive. Otherwise we'd threaten to people when we wanted to make them more productive, rather than rewarding them - which most of the time we don't above a low level of performance.

Comment author: novalis 06 August 2013 07:34:48PM 2 points [-]

The incentives include both carrots and sticks and sticks are punishments and are meant to be so. If you want to talk about carrots-only management styles, well, that's a different discussion.

For what it's worth, I've never worked at a place that successfully used aversive stimulus. And, since the job market for programmers is so hot, I can't imagine that anyone would willingly do so (outside the games industry, which is a weird case). This is especially true of kernel hackers, who are all highly qualified developers who could find work easily.

I disagree. You treat fun and enjoyment of working at some place as the ultimate, terminal value. It is not. The goal of working is to produce, to create, to make. Whether it's "fun" is subordinate to that. Sure, there are feedback loops, but organizations which exist for the benefit of their employees (to make their life comfortable and "fun") are not a good thing.

I would point out that Linus Torvalds's autobiography is called "Just for Fun". Also, Linus doesn't have employees. Yes, he does manage Linux, but he doesn't employ anyone. I also pointed out a number of ways in which Linus's style was harmful to productivity.

Comment author: Lumifer 06 August 2013 07:50:03PM 2 points [-]

For what it's worth, I've never worked at a place that successfully used aversive stimulus.

Ahem. I think you mean to say that you never touched the electric fence. Doesn't mean the fence is not there.

Imagine that someone at your workplace decided not to come to work for a week or so, 'cause he didn't feel like it. What would be the consequences? Are there any, err... "aversive stimuli" in play here?

I can't imagine that anyone would willingly do so ... This is especially true of kernel hackers

No need for imagination. The empirical reality is that a lot of kernel hackers successfully work with Linus and have been doing this for years and years.

Also, Linus doesn't have employees.

Which means that anyone who doesn't like his style is free to leave at any time without any consequences in the sense of salary, health insurance, etc. The fact that kernel development goes on and goes on pretty successfully is evidence that your concerns are overblown.

Comment author: novalis 06 August 2013 11:17:29PM -1 points [-]

Ahem. I think you mean to say that you never touched the electric fence. Doesn't mean the fence is not there.

No, I mean that touching the electric fence did not make me a more productive worker.

The fact that kernel development goes on and goes on pretty successfully is evidence that your concerns are overblown.

I'm not saying that Linus's style will inevitably lead to instant doom. That would be silly. I'm saying that it's not optimal. Linux hasn't exactly taken over the world yet, so there's definitely room for improvement.

Comment author: Grant 06 August 2013 08:27:41PM *  2 points [-]

Which means that anyone who doesn't like his style is free to leave at any time without any consequences in the sense of salary, health insurance, etc. The fact that kernel development goes on and goes on pretty successfully is evidence that your concerns are overblown.

As of 2012-04-16, 75% of kernel development is paid. I would assume those developers would find their jobs in jeopardy if Linus removed them from development.

Comment author: Vaniver 06 August 2013 05:32:37PM 1 point [-]

The real question is whether it's fun for others.

The claim, as I understand it, is that the culture trades off fun for productivity. A common example given is Apple, where Steve Jobs was a hawk that excoriated his underlings, and thus induced them to create beautiful, world-conquering products.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 07 August 2013 01:09:41AM 0 points [-]

Also that the culture selects for the people who find being productive fun.

Comment author: Risto_Saarelma 02 August 2013 11:26:22AM 0 points [-]

While the more socially enlightened attitudes lead to very effective and high signal-to-noise conflict handling, as can be observed on Tumblr and MetaFilter?

Comment author: RichardKennaway 02 August 2013 12:57:15PM 9 points [-]

Empirically, heaping scorn on everyone and seeing who sticks around

Eric Raymond isn't suggesting that. Why are you?

Comment author: wedrifid 02 August 2013 01:33:46PM *  15 points [-]

Empirically, heaping scorn on everyone and seeing who sticks around leads to lots of time wasted on flame wars.

Straw man. The grandparent explicitly made the scorn conditional, not 'on everyone'.

Comment author: Tyrrell_McAllister 07 August 2013 03:13:29AM *  -2 points [-]

Straw man. The grandparent explicitly made the scorn conditional, not 'on everyone'.

Failure to steel man. Replacing "everyone" with "people" leaves the basic point unchanged.

ETA: ... or, I should say, leaves a point that (1) deserves reply and (2) was probably what the original hyperbolic version was getting at anyway.

Comment author: AndHisHorse 07 August 2013 03:19:24AM 2 points [-]

I don't believe that it does, and here's why.

Heaping scorn on everyone and seeing who sticks around is a selection process; the condition for surviving is being able to accept scorn, whether or not such scorn is warranted by the value system of the society. This is somewhat similar to hazing.

Heaping scorn on a specific group of people for their unwillingness to adopt the values of the society (or, rather, some powerful subset of the society which has enough clout to control how things are run) is a selection process based on something of value to the society, and is more like punishment or selective admissions: people with the valued trait are encouraged, those without are allowed to leave.

It would appear that there are very different implications, as the former selects those who can take unjustified scorn (a quality of dubious value), and the latter selects for any demonstrable quantity desired by the society (in this case, a specific attitude towards problem-solving).

Comment author: Tyrrell_McAllister 07 August 2013 05:21:13AM 1 point [-]

This is a good argument for the claim that MixedNuts's hyperbolic version, read literally, misses something important. (Your argument convinces me, anyway.)

It is not clear to me that your argument addresses the "steel man" version in which "everyone" is replaced by "people who are unwilling to adopt that 'git’r'done' attitude".

Comment author: wedrifid 07 August 2013 03:55:46AM *  4 points [-]

Failure to steel man.

Abuse of the 'steel man' concept and attempt to introduce a toxic social norm. I am strongly opposed to this influence.

MixedNuts attempts to refute a quote using a non-sequitur. Supporting a false refutation is not being generous, it is being biased. It is being unfair to the initial speaker.

Replacing "everyone" with "people" leaves the basic point unchanged.

So much so that it leaves the basic point a straw man.

Comment author: Tyrrell_McAllister 07 August 2013 04:14:19AM -2 points [-]

Supporting a false refutation is not being generous, it is being biased. It is being unfair to the initial speaker.

Steel-manning a refutation does not equal supporting that refutation. In fact, steel-manning entails criticizing the original refutation, at least implicitly.

However, when a claim is plausibly intended to be a hyperbolic version of a reasonable claim, pointing out that the hyperbolic version is a straw man, without addressing the reasonable version, is mostly just poisoning the discourse.

(This charge doesn't apply to you if you sincerely believed that MixedNuts was non-hyperbolically claiming that literally everyone has scorn heaped on them in the community under discussion, or that MixedNuts would be read that way by many readers.)

Comment author: BT_Uytya 03 August 2013 01:16:46PM *  1 point [-]

Sages and scientists heard those words, and fear seized them. However, they disbelieved the horrible prophecy, deeming the possibility of perdition too improbable. They lifted the starship from its bed, shattered it into pieces with platinum hammers, plunged the pieces into hard radiation, and thus the ship was turned into myriads of volatile atoms, which are always silent, for atoms have no history; they are identical, whatever origin they have, whether it be bright suns, dead planets or intelligent creatures, — virtuous or vile — for raw matter is same in the Cosmos, and it is other things you should be afraid of.

Still, even atoms were gathered, frozen into one clod and sent into distant sky. Only then were Enterites able to say "We are saved. Nothing threatens us now".

-- Stanislaw Lem, White Death

(as far as I know, this sweet short story never have been translated into English; I translated this passage myself from my Russian copy, so I will be glad if someone corrects my mistakes)

Comment author: [deleted] 13 August 2013 02:58:15PM *  -2 points [-]

You should never bet against anything in science at odds of more than about 10-12 to 1 against.

Ernest Rutherford

Comment author: Martin-2 02 August 2013 08:58:57PM *  0 points [-]

Elayne blinked in shock. “You would have actually done it? Just… left us alone? To fight?”

"Some argued for it," Haman said.

“I myself took that position,” the woman said. “I made the argument, though I did not truly believe it was right.”

“What?” Loial asked [...] “But why did you-“

“An argument must have opposition if it is to prove itself, my son,” she said. “One who argues truly learns the depth of his commitment through adversity. Did you not learn that trees grow roots most strongly when wind blows through them?”

Covril, The Wheel of Time

Comment author: bouilhet 04 August 2013 05:32:24PM 2 points [-]

Occam's razor is, of course, not an arbitrary rule nor one justified by its practical success. It simply says that unnecessary elements in a symbolism mean nothing.

Signs which serve one purpose are logically equivalent, signs which serve no purpose are logically meaningless.

  • Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 5.47321
Comment author: [deleted] 03 August 2013 10:17:11AM 1 point [-]

"[W]hen you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." -- Sherlock Holmes

Comment author: Benito 03 August 2013 12:11:16PM 6 points [-]

"When you have updated on the evidence, whatever is the most probable, however socially unnacceptable, must be believed."

Comment author: ChristianKl 11 August 2013 12:12:35PM *  2 points [-]

Science becomes an extra-neural extension of the human nervous system. We might expect the structure of the nervous system to throw some light on the structure of science; and, vice versa, the structure of science might elucidate the working of the human nervous system.

--Alfred Korzybski Science and Sanity Page 376 (1933)

Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 11 August 2013 05:54:18PM 1 point [-]

Interesting, if indeed it is true. I'm not sure how this is supposed to be a rationality quote though.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 10 August 2013 07:17:38AM 6 points [-]

It is fashionable in the US to talk about people who are on welfare and don’t work. That is not precisely true. Yes, there are people on welfare who neither have a regular job nor look for one. But what might not be understood is that these people are working: they are navigating the labyrinthine bureaucracy and making sure they meet all the guidelines to keep the money flowing. That is work. It is just not productive work. It is a work that is the result of perverse incentives.

Sarah Hoyt

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 02 August 2013 06:34:28AM 8 points [-]

Wicked people exist. Nothing avails except to set them apart from innocent people. And many people, neither wicked nor innocent, but watchful, dissembling, and calculating of their chances, ponder our reaction to wickedness as a clue to what they might profitably do.

James Wilson

Comment author: SaidAchmiz 02 August 2013 05:32:04PM 4 points [-]
Comment author: [deleted] 22 August 2013 08:21:33PM 3 points [-]

Comment author: cody-bryce 02 August 2013 10:29:32PM 7 points [-]

Why spend a dollar on a bookmark? ... Why not use the dollar as a bookmark?

-Steven Spielberg

Comment author: Bugmaster 05 August 2013 03:52:40AM 2 points [-]

The answer may very well be, "because I find this bookmark that I bought at a dollar store a lot more aesthetically pleasing than the raw dollar bill".

You may as well ask, "Why spend $20 on a book ? Why not just save the $20 ?"

Comment author: Decius 07 August 2013 05:58:26PM 0 points [-]

I get all kinds of entertainment out of reading a $20 bill.

Comment author: Document 06 August 2013 03:18:27AM -2 points [-]

You may as well ask, "Why spend $20 on a book ? Why not just save the $20 ?"

Arr.

Comment author: wedrifid 03 August 2013 02:55:37AM *  3 points [-]

Why spend a dollar on a bookmark? ... Why not use the dollar as a bookmark?

It will fall out. Apart from that, money isn't particularly clean and (especially if considering US currency) not particularly pretty either. I expect people to find a bookmark far more aesthetically pleasing than a note.

How is this a rationality quote? It is rationality-neutral at best.

Comment author: cody-bryce 04 August 2013 03:13:51AM 8 points [-]

"Because the dollar is dirty" is one of those pained, stretched explanations people come up with to explain why they do what they do, not the actual reason (even in some small part) the bookmark was invented and became popular.

Comment author: wedrifid 04 August 2013 04:30:43AM 0 points [-]

"Because the dollar is dirty" is one of those pained, stretched explanations people come up with to explain why they do what they do, not the actual reason (even in some small part) the bookmark was invented and became popular.

The question wasn't "Why was the bookmark invented?". If it was, I might have, for example, tried to determine the first time someone used a bookmark (or when it became popular). Then I could have told you precisely how many dollars in present value that dollar would have been worth. That is, moving the goalposts in this way has made your quote worse, not better.

not the actual reason (even in some small part)

Not even is some small part? That's absurd. Can you not empathise in even a small part with the aesthetic aversion many people have to contaminating things with used currency?

Comment author: snafoo 09 August 2013 05:11:04AM -1 points [-]

Can you not empathise in even a small part with the aesthetic aversion many people have to contaminating things with used currency?

Are you sure you didn't just go ahead and basically make up these people who don't want money to touch their book because it's dirty?

Comment author: wedrifid 09 August 2013 06:42:21AM 0 points [-]

Are you sure you didn't just go ahead and basically make up these people who don't want money to touch their book because it's dirty?

No. I've seen such people. When I look at the mirror, for example. Notice that the standard was explicitly set to:

not the actual reason (even in some small part)

The observation that this kind of absurd claim is positively received and even supported by similarly ridiculous petty sniping is disheartening.

Comment author: [deleted] 09 August 2013 12:56:19PM -1 points [-]

I've known at least a couple people who found it yucky to handle cash right before a meal for that same reason.

Comment author: SaidAchmiz 09 August 2013 03:15:19PM 0 points [-]

<raises hand>

I definitely wash my hands after handling money and before eating.

Comment author: [deleted] 04 August 2013 03:50:35PM 1 point [-]

I do neither. I use any piece of sufficiently stiff paper I happen to have around (bookmarks purchased by someone else, playing cards, used train tickets, whatever).

Comment author: gothgirl420666 04 August 2013 10:32:06PM 0 points [-]

Or just fold the corner of the page over.

Comment author: Bayeslisk 06 August 2013 04:50:22PM *  2 points [-]

I made one when I was bored, long ago when my grandmother still ran her store and my uncle still ran his immigration law firm on the third floor, and when I was obsessed with knot theory, out of computer paper, tape, and a lot of hard pencil. I still use it, and it cost me next to nothing.

EDIT: If requested (however unlikely) I will happily deliver a picture, and either a push or a bouillon cube (your choice). EDIT THE SECOND: it was requested! http://imgur.com/a/kxanI

Comment author: [deleted] 05 August 2013 12:30:52PM 0 points [-]

That leaves a permanent crease, which I dislike. (Likewise, I prefer to use pencils -- preferably soft pencils -- rather than pens to take notes.)

Comment author: AndHisHorse 04 August 2013 11:23:13PM 9 points [-]

While I respect your right to do so, I find such a concept aesthetically horrifying.

Comment author: MugaSofer 04 August 2013 03:48:14PM -1 points [-]

Why use a bookmark that's worth a whole dollar? I use scrap paper, or a sticky note if falling out is a risk (it almost always isn't.)

Comment author: cody-bryce 03 August 2013 04:47:47PM 4 points [-]

It would seem that most of the responders are hopelessly literal....

Comment author: wedrifid 04 August 2013 08:57:29AM 2 points [-]

It would seem that most of the responders are hopelessly literal....

Your quote is both literally and connotatively poor. If Spielberg had asked "Why spend two dollars on a bookmark? ... Why not use a dollar as a bookmark?" then there would at least have been some moral along the lines of efficient practicality. Even then it would be borderline.

Comment author: Desrtopa 05 August 2013 03:35:57AM 6 points [-]

Your quote is both literally and connotatively poor. If Spielberg had asked "Why spend two dollars on a bookmark? ... Why not use a dollar as a bookmark?" then there would at least have been some moral along the lines of efficient practicality.

A dollar is much more fungible than a bookmark. After you're done reading your book, you can not only use the dollar to hold your place in other books, you can spend it on other things.

Comment author: Jiro 03 August 2013 05:01:18PM *  6 points [-]

I find it hard to come up with a deeper meaning for the original statement, so yeah.

Besides, it's not hard to come up with a deeper meaning behind what the responders are saying; in pointing out that an object specifically designed as a bookmark makes a better bookmark than a dollar bill, they're making a statement about more than just dollar bills and bookmarks, but about specialization in general.

Comment author: Document 03 August 2013 05:47:47PM *  4 points [-]

I find it hard to come up with a deeper meaning for the original statement

"We don't automatically reflect on most things we do, even when spending money. Even lifelong practices can be shown as absurd with a moment's consideration from the right angle. In fact, we're so irrational that we'll pay a dollar for a bookmark!"

Comment author: MugaSofer 04 August 2013 02:47:34PM 0 points [-]

That's clearly the intent - except maybe for that last bit - but it's kinda a poor example, I have to admit.

Comment author: gothgirl420666 04 August 2013 10:43:34PM 3 points [-]

I don't see why everyone is disagreeing with you. I definitely notice that people have a tendency to buy things labeled for some sort of purpose, where if they thought for a few minutes they could find a way to fulfill that same purpose without spending money. Unfortunately, I can't think of any examples off the top of my head.

Comment author: James_K 03 August 2013 06:50:59AM 8 points [-]

My bookmark is made of two prices of fridge-magnet material. It can be closed around a few pages and the magnetism holds it in place, preventing it from falling out.

Plus dollars in my country are exclusively coins, the smallest note is $5.

Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 03 August 2013 02:11:31AM *  16 points [-]

Dollars are floppy. It's nice to have a relatively rigid bookmark. I've used tissues and such as bookmarks in the past but they're unsatisfactory. Of course, that was back when I still read books in dead tree format.

Comment author: CronoDAS 03 August 2013 02:28:08AM 11 points [-]

My bookmark is prettier than the dollar.

Comment author: RichardKennaway 20 August 2013 07:13:19PM -1 points [-]

Man likes complexity. He does not want to take only one step; it is more interesting to look forward to millions of steps. The one who is seeking the truth gets into a maze, and that maze interests him. He wants to go through it a thousand times more. It is just like children. Their whole interest is in running about; they do not want to see the door and go in until they are very tired. So it is with grown-up people. They all say that they are seeking truth, but they like the maze. That is why the mystics made the greatest truths a mystery, to be given only to the few who were ready for them, letting the others play because it was the time for them to play.

Hazrat Inayat Khan

Man loves complexity so much! He makes a thing big and says, 'This is valuable'. If it is simple he says, 'It has no value'. That is why the ancient people, knowing human nature, told a person when he said he wanted spiritual attainment, 'Very well; for ten years go around the temple, walk around it a hundred times in the morning and in the evening. Go to the Ganges, take pitchers full of water during twenty or fifty years, then you will get inspiration'. That is what must be done with people who will not be satisfied with a simple explanation of the truth, who want complexity.

ibid.

Comment author: metastable 20 August 2013 08:34:07PM 6 points [-]

But Naaman was wroth, and went away...And his servants came near, and spake unto him, and said, My father, if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it? how much rather then, when he saith to thee, Wash, and be clean?

2 Kings 5: 11-13

Comment author: RichardKennaway 20 August 2013 10:27:50PM 1 point [-]

Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?

He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?

Micah 6: 7-8

Comment author: AlexanderD 08 August 2013 05:24:50AM *  4 points [-]

What the Great Learning teaches is: to illustrate illustrious virtue; to renovate the people; and to rest in the highest excellence.
The point where to rest being known, the object of pursuit is then determined; and, that being determined, a calm unperturbedness may be attained to.
To that calmness there will succeed a tranquil repose. In that repose there may be careful deliberation, and that deliberation will be followed by the attainment of the desired end.
The ancients who wished to illustrate illustrious virtue throughout the world, first ordered well their own States.
Wishing to order well their States, they first regulated their families.
Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their persons.
Wishing to cultivate their persons, they first rectified their hearts.
Wishing to rectify their hearts, they first sought to be sincere in their thoughts.
Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first extended to the utmost of their knowledge.
Such extension of knowledge lay in the investigation of things.
Things being investigated, knowledge became complete.
Their knowledge being complete, their thoughts were sincere.
Their thoughts being sincere, their hearts were then rectified.
Their hearts being rectified, their persons were cultivated.
Their persons being cultivated, their families were regulated.
Their families being regulated, their States were rightly governed.
Their States being rightly governed, the entire world was at peace.
From the Son of Heaven down to the mass of the people, all must consider the cultivation of the person the root of everything besides.
It cannot be, when the root is neglected, that what should spring from it will be well ordered.
It never has been the case that what was of great importance has been slightly cared for, and, at the same time, that what was of slight importance has been greatly cared for.

-The Great Learning, one of the Four Books and Five Classics of Confucian thought.

Comment author: gothgirl420666 04 August 2013 10:29:14PM *  8 points [-]

I like it when I hear philosophy in rap songs (or any kind of music, really) that I can actually fully agree with:

I never had belief in Christ, cus in the pictures he was white

Same color as the judge that gave my hood repeated life

Sentences for little shit, church I wasn't feeling it

Why the preacher tell us everything gon be alright?

Knew what it was for, still I felt that it was wrong

Till I heard Chef call himself God in the song

And it all made sense, cus you can't do shit

But look inside the mirror once it all goes wrong

You fix your own problems, tame your own conscience

All that holy water shit is nothing short of nonsense

Not denying Christ, I'm just denying niggas options

Cus prayer never moved my Grandmama out of Compton

I prayed for my cousin, but them niggas still shot him

Invest in a gun, cause them niggas still got them

And won't shit stop em from popping you in broad day

Hope that choir pew bulletproof or you gon' pay

-- Vince Staples, "Versace Rap"

Comment author: David_Gerard 05 August 2013 08:59:07PM 4 points [-]
Comment author: gothgirl420666 05 August 2013 10:19:07PM 5 points [-]

I always thought it was interesting that Tupac got all the conspiracy theories while Biggie got none, despite the fact that Biggie released an album called Ready to Die, died, then two weeks later released an album called Life After Death. It's probably because Tupac's music appeals more to hippie types who are into this kind of stuff.

Comment author: [deleted] 10 August 2013 01:32:24AM 5 points [-]

The world is a lot simpler than the human mind can comprehend. The mind endlessly manufactures meanings and reflects with other minds, ignoring reality. Or maybe it enhances it. Not very clear on that part, I'm human as well.

Comment author: anonym 21 August 2013 02:25:19AM 4 points [-]

When a concept is inherently approximate, it is a waste of time to try to give it a precise definition.

-- John McCarthy

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 21 August 2013 07:17:45PM 4 points [-]

Thus, whenever you look in a computer science textbook for an algorithm which only gives approximate results, you will find that the algorithm itself is very vaguely specified, since the result is just an approximation anyway.

(I would have said: "When a concept is inherently fuzzy, it is a waste of time to give it a definition with a sharp membership boundary.")

Comment author: Benito 28 August 2013 10:36:17AM 3 points [-]

This... theory of female promiscuity has been championed by the anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy. Hrdy has described herself as a feminist sociobiologist, and she may take a more than scientific interest in arguing that female primates tend to be "highly competitive... sexually assertive individuals." Then again, male Darwinian may get a certain thrill from saying males are built for lifelong sex-a-thons. Scientific theories spring from many sources. The only question in the end is whether they work.

Robert Wright, The Moral Animal

Comment author: taelor 11 August 2013 06:30:55AM *  3 points [-]

Except when physically constrained, a person is least free or dignified when under the threat of punishment. We should expect that the literatures of freedom and dignity would oppose punitive techniques, but in fact they have acted to preserve them. A person who has been punished is not thereby simply less inclined to behave in a given way; at best, he learns how to avoid punishment. Some ways of doing so are maladaptive or neurotic, as in the so­ called 'Freudian dynamisms'. Other ways include avoid­ing situations in which punished behaviour is likely to occur and doing things which are incompatible with punished behaviour. Other people may take similar steps to reduce the likelihood that a person will be punished, but the literatures of freedom and dignity object to this as leading only to automatic goodness. Under punitive contingencies a person appears to be free to behave well and to deserve credit when he does so. Non-punitive con­tingencies generate the same behaviour, but a person cannot then be said to be free, and the contingencies de­serve the credit when he behaves well. Little or nothing remains for autonomous man to do and receive credit for doing. He does not engage in moral struggle and therefore has no chance to be a moral hero or credited with inner virtues. But our task is not to encourage moral struggle or to build or demonstrate inner virtues. It is to make life less punishing and in doing so to release for more reinforcing activities the time and energy consumed in the avoidance of punishment. Up to a point the litera­tures of freedom and dignity have played a part in the slow and erratic alleviation of aversive features of the human environment, including the aversive features used in intentional control. But they have formulated the task in such a way that they cannot now accept the fact that all control is exerted by the environment and proceed to the design of better environments rather than of better men.

-- B. F. Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity

Comment author: snafoo 04 August 2013 05:50:23PM 13 points [-]

I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.

Stephen Jay Gould

Comment author: gwern 04 August 2013 10:55:10PM 7 points [-]

There was only one Ramanujan; and we are all well-aware of Gould's views on intelligence here, I presume.

Comment author: mwengler 05 August 2013 04:22:40PM 1 point [-]

You presume too much, the only thing I remember about Gould's views is that they are controversial.

Comment author: wedrifid 04 August 2013 06:54:40PM 7 points [-]

I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.

A proactive interest in the latter would seem to lead to extensive instrumental interest in the former. Finding things (such as convolutions in brains or genes) that are indicative of potentially valuable talent is the kind of thing that helps make efficient use of it.

Comment author: Estarlio 04 August 2013 07:57:52PM 1 point [-]

That's a hard problem, with no reasonable way to measure it in in a large population in sight, or even direction of the relationship taken into account. Ideally you'd take a bunch of kids and look at their brains and then see how they grew up and see whether you could find anything that altered the distribution in similar cases - but ....

Well, you see the problem? It's a sort of twiddling your thumbs style studying, rather than addressing more immediate problems that might do something at a reasonable price/timeline.

Comment author: ialdabaoth 04 August 2013 08:07:01PM 15 points [-]

There are surprisingly few MRI machines or DNA sequencers in cotton fields and sweatshops. Paraphrasing the original quote from Stephen Jay Gould: The problem is not how good we are at detecting talent; it's where we even bother to look for it.

Comment author: katydee 03 August 2013 06:34:02AM *  9 points [-]

The tired and thirsty prospector threw himself down at the edge of the watering hole and started to drink. But then he looked around and saw skulls and bones everywhere. "Uh-oh," he thought. "This watering hole is reserved for skeletons."

Jack Handey

Comment author: linkhyrule5 05 August 2013 05:55:03AM 0 points [-]

To be fair, if you see a watering hole surrounded by skeletons, it probably means the water's toxic.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 03 August 2013 05:09:14AM 9 points [-]

Nobody can believe nothing. When a man says he believes nothing, two things are true: first, that there is something in which he desperately, perhaps dearly, wishes not to believe; and second that there is some unspoken thing in which he secretly believes, perhaps even unknown to himself.

John C Wright

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 20 August 2013 02:36:23AM 5 points [-]

Is there a name for the fallacy of claiming to be an expert on the specific contents of other people's subconsciouses?

Comment author: Panic_Lobster 23 August 2013 06:41:20AM *  0 points [-]

Faced with the task of extracting useful future out of our personal pasts, we organisms try to get something for free (or at least at bargain price): to find the laws of the world -- and if there aren't any, to find approximate laws of the world -- anything at all that will give us an edge. From some perspectives it appears utterly remarkable that we organisms get any purchase on nature at all. Is there any deep reason why nature should tip its hand, or reveal its regularities to casual inspection? Any useful future-producer is apt to be something of a trick -- a makeshift system that happens to work, more often than not, a lucky hit on a regularity in the world that can be tracked. Any such lucky anticipators Mother Nature stumbles over are bound to be prized, of course, if they improve an organism's edge.

--Daniel Dennet Consciousness Explained

Comment author: metastable 21 August 2013 07:42:19PM 4 points [-]

The complexity of software is an essential property, not an accidental one. Hence, descriptions of a software entity that abstract away its complexity often abstract away its essence.

Fred P. Brooks, No Silver Bullet

Comment author: shminux 21 August 2013 08:08:44PM *  6 points [-]

I've always had misgivings about this quote. In my experience about 90% of the code on a large project is an artifact of a poor requirement analysis/architecture/design/implementation. (Sendmail comes to mind.) I have seen 10,000-line packages melting away when a feature is redesigned with more functionality and improved reliability and maintainability.

Comment author: wedrifid 22 August 2013 02:07:10AM 5 points [-]

The complexity of software is an essential property, not an accidental one. Hence, descriptions of a software entity that abstract away its complexity often abstract away its essence.

This is true, but the connotations need to be applied cautiously. Complexity is necessary, but it is still something to be minimised wherever practical. Things should be as simple as possible but not simpler.

Comment author: DanArmak 22 August 2013 10:12:39PM 1 point [-]

More concretely, sometimes software can be simplified and improved at the same time.

Comment author: CellBioGuy 20 August 2013 04:19:30AM 0 points [-]

"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is."

Comment author: Glen 02 August 2013 10:52:18PM 4 points [-]

Everything can be reduced to an abstraction, a puzzle, and then solved

-Ledaal Kes (Exalted Aspect Book: Air)

Comment author: Document 03 August 2013 02:23:57AM *  -2 points [-]

Are they a villain who "solves" people by removing them from their way?

(Alternative response: Does "everything" include the puzzle of identifying something that can't be reduced to a puzzle?)

Comment author: RolfAndreassen 02 August 2013 02:48:21AM 29 points [-]

Once there was a miser, who to save money would eat nothing but oatmeal. And what's more, he would make a great big batch of it at the start of every week, and put it in a drawer, and when he wanted a meal he would slice off a piece and eat it cold; thus he saved on firewood. Now, by the end of the week, the oatmeal would be somewhat moldy and not very appetising; and so to make himself eat it, the miser would take out a bottle of good whiskey, and pour himself a glass, and say "All right, Olai, eat your oatmeal and when you're done, you can have a dram." Then he would eat his moldy oatmeal, and when he was done he'd laugh and pour the whiskey back in the bottle, and say "Hah! And you believed that? There's one born every minute, to be sure!" And thus he had a great savings in whiskey as well.

-- Norwegian folktale.

Comment author: DanArmak 03 August 2013 09:46:18AM 8 points [-]

I don't understand this rationality quote. Is it about fighting akrasia? Self-hacking to effectively saving money? It clearly describes a method that wouldn't actually work, and it could work as humour, but what does it mean as a rationality tale?

Comment author: wedrifid 03 August 2013 04:10:23PM *  5 points [-]

I don't understand this rationality quote. Is it about fighting akrasia? Self-hacking to effectively saving money? It clearly describes a method that wouldn't actually work, and it could work as humour, but what does it mean as a rationality tale?

It could be used as an effective "How to create an Ugh Field and undermine all future self-discipline attempts" instruction manual. It isn't a rationality tale. It is confusing that 40 people evidently consider it to be one. (But only a little bit confusing. I usually expect non-rationalist quotes that would be accepted as jokes or inspirational quotes elsewhere to get around 10 upvotes in this thread regardless of merit. That means I'm surprised about the degree of positive reception.)

Comment author: AlexanderD 06 August 2013 02:13:19AM 6 points [-]

I don't think you are correct.

The miser knows each time he will not get the reward, and that he will save on food and drink. That is the real reward, and the rest is a kabuki play he puts on for less-important impulses, to temporarily allow him to restrain them in service of his larger goal. The end pleasure of savings will provide strong positive reinforcement.

This could probably be empirically tested, to see if it is true and would work as a technique. I can imagine a test where someone is promised candy, and anticipates it while acting to fulfill a task, and then is rewarded instead with a dollar. Do they learn disappointment, or does the greater pleasure of money outweigh the candy? This is predicated on the idea that they would prefer the money, of course - you would need to tinker with amounts before the experiment might give useful results.

Comment author: Benito 03 August 2013 12:04:49PM 3 points [-]

I thought the way he deceived his conscious mind, and never learned, was interesting.

Comment author: danlucraft 03 August 2013 01:45:28PM 9 points [-]

In the context of LW, I took it as an amusing critique of the whole idea of rewarding yourself for behaviours you want to do more .

Comment author: MixedNuts 04 August 2013 05:28:41PM 10 points [-]

Betcha it'd work. I'm going to set a piece of candy in front of me, work for half an hour, and then put it back, at least once a day for a week.

Comment author: cody-bryce 02 August 2013 10:31:02PM 7 points [-]

There are no happy endings. Endings are the saddest part, So just give me a happy middle And a very happy start.

-Shel Silverstein

Comment author: Document 03 August 2013 02:22:15AM 0 points [-]

X will never reach [arbitrary standard], so let's not try to improve X.

Comment author: MixedNuts 04 August 2013 05:31:52PM 8 points [-]

But but peak/end rule!

Comment author: hairyfigment 06 August 2013 06:11:11PM 5 points [-]

How do you know that it will bring out his genius, Graff? It's never given you what you needed before. You've only had near-misses and flameouts. Is this how Mazer Rackham was trained? Actually, why isn't Mazer Rackham in charge of this training? What qualifications do you have that make you so sure your technique is the perfect recipe to make the ultimate military genius?

-- Will Wildman, analysis of Ender's Game

Comment author: cody-bryce 02 August 2013 10:28:23PM 10 points [-]

I just think it's good to be confident. If I'm not on my team why should anybody else be?

-Robert Downey Jr.

Comment author: dspeyer 04 August 2013 09:16:21PM 2 points [-]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the quote, but this seems to wither if you have something to protect. If I'm having surgery, I don't really want the team of expert surgeons listening to my suggestions. I shouldn't be on my team because I'm not qualified. Highly qualified people should be so that my team will win (and I get to live).

Comment author: ChristianKl 06 August 2013 02:29:08PM 4 points [-]

Expert surgeons tend to think that more problems should be solved via surgery than doctors who aren't surgeons. Before getting surgery you should always talk with a doctor who knows something about the kind of illness you are having who isn't a surgeon.

After the operation is done doctors will ask you if everything is alright with you. If you try to understand what the operation involved you will give your doctor answers that are likely to be more informative than if you just try to place all responsibility onto another person.

Especially if you feel something that's not normal for the type of operation that you get, it important to be confident that you perceive something that's worth bringing to the attention of your doctor.

Having had big operations (one with 8 weeks of hospitalisation and one with 3 weeks) myself I think not taking enough for myself in those context was one of the worst decisions I made in my life. But then I was young and stupid about how the world works at the time.

Comment author: Estarlio 05 August 2013 04:06:31PM *  9 points [-]

Well, I think the thrust of the quote had more to do with being confident in your own projects. But I'll try to do an answer to your point because I think it's important to recognise the limitations of domain specialists - some of whom just aren't very good at their jobs.

If you're not on your team of expert surgeons, you're gonna be screwed if they're not actually as expert as you might think they were. There's a bit in What Do You Care What Other People Think? Where Feynman is talking about his first wife's hospitalisation - and how he had done some reading around the area and come up with the idea that it might be TB - and didn't push for the idea because he thought that the doctors knew what they were doing.

Then, sometime later, the bump began to change. It got bigger—or maybe it was smaller—and she got a fever. The fever got worse, so the family doctor decided Arlene should go to the hospital. She was told she had typhoid fever. Right away, as I still do today, I looked up the disease in medical books and read all about it. When I went to see Arlene in the hospital, she was in quarantine—we had to put on special gowns when we entered her room, and so on. The doctor was there, so I asked him how the Wydell test came out—it was an absolute test for typhoid fever that involved checking for bacteria in the feces. He said, "It was negative." "What? How can that be!" I said. "Why all these gowns, when you can't even find the bacteria in an experiment? Maybe she doesn't have typhoid fever!" The result of that was that the doctor talked to Arlene's parents, who told me not to interfere. "After all, he's the doctor. You're only her fiancé." I've found out since that such people don't know what they're doing, and get insulted when you make some suggestion or criticism. I realize that now, but I wish I had been much stronger then and told her parents that the doctor was an idiot—which he was—and didn't know what he was doing. But as it was, her parents were in charge of it.

Anyway, after a little while, Arlene got better, apparently: the swelling went down and the fever went away. But after some weeks the swelling started again, and this time she went to another doctor. This guy feels under her armpits and in her groin, and so on, and notices there's swelling in those places, too. He says the problem is in her lymphatic glands, but he doesn't yet know what the specific disease is. He will consult with other doctors. As soon as I hear about it I go down to the library at Princeton and look up lymphatic diseases, and find "Swelling of the Lymphatic Glands. (1) Tuberculosis of the lymphatic glands. This is very easy to diagnose . . ."—so I figure this isn't what Arlene has, because the doctors are having trouble trying to figure it out.

[Feynman moves onto less likely possibilities]

One of the diseases I told Arlene about was Hodgkin's disease. When she next saw her doctor, she asked him about it: "Could it be Hodgkin's disease?" He said, "Well, yes, that's a possibility." When she went to the county hospital, the doctor wrote the following diagnosis: "Hodgkin's disease—?" So I realized that the doctor didn't know any more than I did about this problem. The county hospital gave Arlene all sorts of tests and X-ray treatments for this "Hodgkin's disease—?" and there were special meetings to discuss this peculiar case. I remember waiting for her outside, in the hall. When the meeting was over, the nurse wheeled her out in a wheelchair. All of a sudden a little guy comes running out of the meeting room and catches up with us. "Tell me," he says, out of breath, "do you spit up blood? Have you ever coughed up blood?" The nurse says, "Go away! Go away! What kind of thing is that to ask of a patient!"—and brushes him away. Then she turned to us and said, "That man is a doctor from the neighborhood who comes to the meetings and is always making trouble. That's not the kind of thing to ask of a patient!" I didn't catch on. The doctor was checking a certain possibility, and if I had been smart, I would have asked him what it was. Finally, after a lot of discussion, a doctor at the hospital tells me they figure the most likely possibility is Hodgkin's disease. He says, "There will be some periods of improvement, and some periods in the hospital. It will be on and off, getting gradually worse. There's no way to reverse it entirely. It's fatal after a few years."

[Gets convinced to lie to her that it's Hodgkins - lie falls through]

For some months now Arlene's doctors had wanted to take a biopsy of the swelling on her neck, but her parents didn't want it done—they didn't want to "bother the poor sick girl." But with new resolve, I kept working on them, explaining that it's important to get as much information as possible. With Arlene's help, I finally convinced her parents. A few days later, Arlene telephones me and says, "They got a report from the biopsy." "Yeah? Is it good or bad?" "I don't know. Come over and let's talk about it." When I got to her house, she showed me the report. It said, "Biopsy shows tuberculosis of the lymphatic gland." That really got me. I mean, that was the first goddamn thing on the list! I passed it by, because the book said it was easy to diagnose, and because the doctors were having so much trouble trying to figure out what it was. I assumed they had checked the obvious case. And it was the obvious case: the man who had come running out of the meeting room asking "Do you spit up blood?" had the right idea. He knew what it probably was!

I felt like a jerk, because I had passed over the obvious possibility by using circumstantial evidence—which isn't any good—and by assuming the doctors were more intelligent than they were. Otherwise, I would have suggested it right off, and perhaps the doctor would have diagnosed Arlene's disease way back then as "tuberculosis of the lymphatic gland—?" I was a dope. I've learned, since then.

=====================

Point being, disinvolving yourself from decisions is not a no-risk choice, and specialists aren't necessarily wise just because they've sat through the classes and crammed some sort of knowledge into their heads to get a degree. Assigning trust is a difficult subject.

There's a book called The Speed of Trust - and that's pretty much what you give up in being involved in complex decisions where you're not a specialist and where the specialists are actually really good at their jobs - a bit of speed.

Comment author: Document 03 August 2013 02:25:30AM 11 points [-]

I think it's good to be well-calibrated.

Comment author: cody-bryce 02 August 2013 10:30:27PM 26 points [-]

If Tetris has taught me anything it's that errors pile up and accomplishments disappear.

-Unknown

Comment author: [deleted] 06 August 2013 10:49:48AM 0 points [-]

How is that a rationality quote?

Comment author: DanielLC 05 August 2013 04:35:08AM 6 points [-]

It's funny, but you really shouldn't be learning life lessons from Tetris.

If Tetris has taught me anything, it's the history of the Soviet Union.

Comment author: CronoDAS 03 August 2013 01:48:52AM *  30 points [-]

It's ridiculous to think that video games influence children. After all, if Pac-Man had affected children born in the eighties, we'd all be running around in dark rooms, eating strange pills, and listening to repetitive electronic music.

-- Paraphrase of joke by Marcus Brigstocke

Comment author: ChristianKl 06 August 2013 02:10:07PM 1 point [-]

To be fair there are quite a few people who nowadays listen to electronic music, take drugs that are pills and who spend a lot of time in dark rooms.

Comment author: Decius 07 August 2013 05:54:11PM 3 points [-]

I see small examples everywhere I look; they're just too specific to point the way to a general solution.

James Portnow/Daniel Floyd

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 04 August 2013 05:43:25AM 15 points [-]

And anyone that’s been involved in philanthropy eventually comes to that point. When you try to help, you try to give things, you start to have the consequences. There’s an author Bob Lupton, who really nails it when he says that when he gave something the first time, there was gratitude; and when he gave something a second time to that same community, there was anticipation; the third time, there was expectation; the fourth time, there was entitlement; and the fifth time, there was dependency. That is what we’ve all experienced when we’ve wanted to do good. Something changes the more we just give hand-out after hand-out. Something that is designed to be a help actually causes harm.

Peter Greer

Comment author: Ambition 02 August 2013 02:32:30AM 9 points [-]

He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.

-Thomas Jefferson

Comment author: Joshua_Blaine 02 August 2013 05:49:04PM 14 points [-]

The best solution to a problem is usually the easiest one.

-- GLaDOS from Portal 2

Comment author: shminux 02 August 2013 06:08:29PM 1 point [-]

If you define best as easiest.

Comment author: Joshua_Blaine 02 August 2013 08:27:48PM 5 points [-]

If best is defined as easiest, then the "usually" within the quote is entirely superfluous. "If" statements are logically exception-less, and the Law of Conserved Conversation (That i've just made up) means that "usually" implies exceptions. Otherwise it would be excluded from the quote. So I say, pedantically, "duh. but you're missing the point a bit, aren't you mate?"

I like to think of the principle as a kind of Occam's for action. Don't take elaborate actions to produce some solution that is otherwise trivially easy to produce.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 02 August 2013 06:22:12AM 23 points [-]

Subsidizing the markers of status doesn’t produce the character traits that result in that status; it undermines them.

Reynolds' law

Comment author: lukeprog 25 August 2013 05:15:29PM *  4 points [-]

It ain’t ignorance [that] causes so much trouble; it’s folks knowing so much that ain’t so.

Josh Billings

(h/t Robin Hanson)

Comment author: lukeprog 16 August 2013 03:15:48AM 4 points [-]

An educated mind is, as it were, composed of all the minds of preceding ages.

Le Bovier de Fontenelle

Comment author: wedrifid 16 August 2013 06:51:01AM *  7 points [-]

An educated mind is, as it were, composed of all the minds of preceding ages.

This explains all those urges I get to burn witches, my talent at farming, all my knowledge at hunting and tracking and my outstanding knack for feudal political intrigue.

(Composition is not the relationship to previous minds that education entails. Can someone think of a better one?)

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 04 August 2013 06:13:25AM 12 points [-]

So, in a business setting, you’ve got to provide value to your customers so that they pay for the goods and services that you’re providing. Philanthropy is unfortunate in that the people that your customer base is made of oftentimes are the people that are writing the checks to support you. The people that are writing the donation checks are what keep organizations in business oftentimes. The people that are receiving the services, then, are oftentimes not paying for the services, and therefore their voice is not heard. And so within the nonprofit space, we’ve created a system where he/she who tells the best story is the one that’s rewarded. There’s an incentive to push down the stories that are not of positive impact. There’s the incentive to pretend that there are no negative things that happen, there’s the incentive to make sure that our failures are never made public, and there’s the disconnected between who’s paying for the service and who’s receiving the services. When you disconnect those two aspects, you do not have accountability that acts in the best interest of the people who are receiving what we are all trying to do, which is just to help in places of great need.

Peter Greer

Comment author: iDante 10 August 2013 10:10:52PM 10 points [-]

To the layman, the philosopher, or the classical physicist, a statement of the form "this particle doesn't have a well-defined position" (or momentum, or x-component of spin angular momentum, or whatever) sounds vague, incompetent, or (worst of all) profound. It is none of these. But its precise meaning is, I think, almost impossible to convey to anyone who has not studied quantum mechanics in some depth.

Comment author: shminux 19 August 2013 04:36:20PM *  12 points [-]

If your parents made you practice the flute for 10,000 hours, and it wasn't your thing, you aren't an expert. You're a victim.

The most important skill involved in success is knowing how and when to switch to a game with better odds for you.

Scott Adams

Comment author: [deleted] 19 August 2013 04:48:12PM 2 points [-]

This is an incredibly important life skill.

Comment author: gwern 12 August 2013 12:26:53AM 6 points [-]
...Each minute bursts in the burning room,
The great globe reels in the solar fire,
Spinning the trivial and unique away.
(How all things flash! How all things flare!)
What am I now that I was then?
May memory restore again and again
The smallest color of the smallest day:
Time is the school in which we learn,
Time is the fire in which we burn.

--Delmore Schwartz, "Calmly We Walk Through This April's Day"; quoted by Mike Darwin on the GRG ML

Comment author: [deleted] 05 August 2013 03:04:37AM *  18 points [-]

From Jacques Vallee, Messengers of Deception...

'Then he posed a question that, obvious as it seems, had not really occurred to me: “What makes you think that UFOs are a scientific problem?”

I replied with something to the effect that a problem was only scientific in the way it was approached, but he would have none of that, and he began lecturing me. First, he said, science had certain rules. For example, it has to assume that the phenomena it is observing is natural in origin rather than artificial and possibly biased. Now the UFO phenomenon could be controlled by alien beings. “If it is,” added the Major, “then the study of it doesn’t belong to science. It belongs to Intelligence.” Meaning counterespionage. And that, he pointed out, was his domain. *

“Now, in the field of counterespionage, the rules are completely different.” He drew a simple diagram in my notebook. “You are a scientist. In science there is no concept of the ‘price’ of information. Suppose I gave you 95 per cent of the data concerning a phenomenon. You’re happy because you know 95 per cent of the phenomenon. Not so in intelligence. If I get 95 per cent of the data, I know that this is the ‘cheap’ part of the information. I still need the other 5 percent, but I will have to pay a much higher price to get it. You see, Hitler had 95 per cent of the information about the landing in Normandy. But he had the wrong 95 percent!”

“Are you saying that the UFO data we us to compile statistics and to find patterns with computers are useless?” I asked. “Might we be spinning our magnetic tapes endlessly discovering spurious laws?”

“It all depends on how the team on the other side thinks. If they know what they’re doing, there will be so many cutouts between you and them that you won’t have the slightest chance of tracing your way to the truth. Not by following up sightings and throwing them into a computer. They will keep feeding you the information they want you to process. What is the only source of data about the UFO phenomenon? It is the UFOs themselves!”

Some things were beginning to make a lot of sense. “If you’re right, what can I do? It seems that research on the phenomenon is hopeless, then. I might as well dump my computer into a river.”

“Not necessarily, but you should try a different approach. First you should work entirely outside of the organized UFO groups; they are infiltrated by the same official agencies they are trying to influence, and they propagate any rumour anyone wants to have circulated. In Intelligence circles, people like that are historical necessities. We call them ‘useful idiots’. When you’ve worked long enough for Uncle Sam, you know he is involved in a lot of strange things. The data these groups get is biased at the source, but they play a useful role.

“Second, you should look for the irrational, the bizarre, the elements that do not fit...Have you ever felt that you were getting close to something that didn’t seem to fit any rational pattern yet gave you a strong impression that it was significant?”'

Comment author: MixedNuts 11 August 2013 06:30:14PM 1 point [-]

If UFOs are controlled by a non-human intelligence, assuming they'll behave like human schemes is as pointless as assuming they'll behave like natural phenomena. But of course the premise is false and the Major's approach is correct.

Comment author: snafoo 04 August 2013 05:48:35PM 7 points [-]

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.

misattributed often to Plato

Comment author: Polina 05 August 2013 11:47:45AM *  15 points [-]

Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

George Bernard Shaw

Comment author: shminux 21 August 2013 07:41:23PM 8 points [-]

A luxury, once sampled, becomes a necessity. Pace yourself.

Andrew Tobias, My Vast Fortune

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 05 August 2013 08:24:08PM *  16 points [-]

Old man: Gotcha! So you do collect answers after all!

Eye: But of course! Everybody does! You need answers to base decisions on. Decisions that lead to actions. We wouldn't do much of anything, if we were always indecisive!

All I am saying is that I see no point in treasuring them! That's all!

Once you see that an answer is not serving its question properly anymore, it should be tossed away. It's just their natural life cycle. They usually kick and scream, raising one hell of a ruckus when we ask them to leave. Especially when they have been with us for a long time.

You see, too many actions have been based on those answers. Too much work and energy invested in them. They feel so important, so full of themselves. They will answer to no one. Not even to their initial question!

What's the point if a wrong answer will stop you from returning to the right question. Although sometimes people have no questions to return to... which is usually why they defend them, with such strong conviction.

That's exactly why I am extra cautious with all these big ol' answers that have been lying around, long before we came along. They bully their way into our collection without being invited by any questions of our own. We accept them just because they have satisfied the questions of so many before us... seeking the questions which fits them instead...

My favorite kind of answers are those that my questions give birth to. Questions that I managed to keep safe long enough to do so. These baby answers might seem insignificant in comparison at first, but they are of a much better quality.

Comment author: shminux 02 August 2013 03:23:24AM 26 points [-]

A man who says he is willing to meet you halfway is usually a poor judge of distance.

Unknown

Comment author: Estarlio 02 August 2013 02:09:33PM 2 points [-]

Or thinks he's got better leverage than you.

Comment author: peter_hurford 02 August 2013 01:42:16PM 8 points [-]

This could be studied empirically.

Comment author: Cthulhoo 02 August 2013 07:33:43AM 9 points [-]

Whatever alleged "truth" is proven by results to be but an empty fiction, let it be unceremoniously flung into the outer darkness, among the dead gods, dead empires, dead philosophies, and other useless lumber and wreckage!

Anton Lavey, The Satanic Bible, The Book of Satan II

Comment author: Alejandro1 02 August 2013 10:55:14AM 30 points [-]

Now, now, perfectly symmetrical violence never solved anything.

--Professor Farnsworth, Futurama.