Rationality Quotes December 2013

Cyan

Rationality quotes time!

The usual rules:

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Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson.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.

Rationality quotes time!

The usual rules:

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Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson.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.

I think Eugine Nier was talking about real-world warriors, not stories. (I don't think all the people who enjoy watching HIMYM for the Barney Stinson character also have positive attitudes towards real-world PUAs, I know at least one person (namely myself) who enjoyed playing Carmageddon but is generally horrified by real-world serious violence for frivolous purposes, etc.)

IME people who worship warriors as heroes tend to come from the right-wing/theist/low-Openness/nationalist cluster, and there are plenty of people from the other ‘side’ who condemn them as murderers (or pity them as slaves, as the case may be) instead. And the people who dislike advertisers, lawyers, and financial traders for playing zero-sum games are more likely to be from the latter cluster, so fewer people may be inconsistent than Eugine Nier realizes

4Richard_Kennaway12y

I had in mind real figures, and mythologised versions of them. Shakespeare's Henry V, for example. [...] I'm not sure what this has to do with it, as people who commit real-world serious violence for frivolous purposes are not regarded as valiant heroes, even in war. [...] Eugine said "they're generally considered valiant heroes". What process led to your fingers typing "worship"? [...] This looks like pure politics devoid of rational content. Perhaps I am reading too much into this, but it sounds to me that "right-wing/theist/low-Openness/nationalist" is a way of implying "therefore they don't count, because they're wrong/stupid/ignorant/malicious/brain-damaged/subhuman/Republican", and "side" is in quotes because where you stand doesn't feel to you like a "side", it feels like reality itself. Are the entrails leading me astray? [...] How big is this "plenty"? America still has a huge military, and I haven't heard of any mainstream agitation for shutting it down as a gang of murderers and slaves, which would be the consequence of actually believing that. In fact, I rather doubt that any country anywhere, ever, has had any substantial movement for disbanding its military on these grounds.