dspeyer comments on Rationality Quotes November 2013 - Less Wrong

5 Post author: malcolmocean 02 November 2013 08:35PM

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Comment author: dspeyer 01 November 2013 03:34:43PM 8 points [-]

Robert Morris has a very unusual quality: he's never wrong. It might seem this would require you to be omniscient, but actually it's surprisingly easy. Don't say anything unless you're fairly sure of it. If you're not omniscient, you just don't end up saying much. More precisely, the trick is to pay careful attention to how you qualify what you say. ... He has an almost superhuman integrity. He's not just generally correct, but also correct about how correct he is.

--Paul Graham

Comment author: Benito 01 November 2013 04:17:45PM 8 points [-]
Comment author: Eugine_Nier 02 November 2013 05:20:15AM 4 points [-]

I can't help but wondering if he's overcompensating due to a certain incident.

Comment author: KaynanK 02 November 2013 02:05:43AM 0 points [-]

So he's one of those Fair Witnesses from Stranger in a Strange Land?

Comment author: JoshuaFox 03 November 2013 08:52:36AM *  3 points [-]

Heinlein's Fair Witnesses show a rationality failure.

It is impossible to report things "just as they are" without imposing implicit interpretation.

All observation and all language depends on an implicit model.

Comment author: gwern 02 November 2013 02:26:40AM 0 points [-]

As I recall, Fair Witnesses didn't ever give probabilities, they talked in binary terms. Morris, on the other hand, sounds calibrated.

Comment author: shminux 02 November 2013 03:39:46AM 0 points [-]

They never drew conclusions.