satt comments on Rationality Quotes June 2014 - Less Wrong

9 Post author: Tyrrell_McAllister 01 June 2014 08:32PM

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Comment author: Lumifer 04 June 2014 02:41:56PM 7 points [-]

Funny how the same meaning expressed by different people led to so much outrage...

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

source

Comment author: satt 05 June 2014 01:56:28AM 2 points [-]

The parent comment and the replies to it are a case study in how different people intuitively draw strongly opposed conclusions from a piece of ambiguous, politically charged evidence.