Quotes Repository
Quotes are a unique enough medium of expression that I'm interested in viewing quotes that people have found collectable, emotionally impactful, useful, memorable, or otherwise noteworthy - perhaps others are similarly interested. To clarify, these need not be even remotely related to rationality. I'm hijacking the mandates traditionally used for the Rationality Quotes thread, with a few modifications:
- 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- Do not quote yourself.
- Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson.
- Do not repeat quotes found in a Rationality Quotes thread.
- If possible, try to post sufficient information (URL, title, date, page number, etc.) to enable a reader to find the place where you read the quote, or its original source if available. Note that this can be helpful, but is not mandatory - I would much prefer a quote with only a name to no quote at all.
Please post any meta discussion in the top-level comment named "Meta".
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Comments (87)
Meta: How is this supposed to be different from the existing rationality quotes thread?
The idea is that it's not specifically for quotes related to rationality or other LessWrong topics.
I like Dale Carnegie in general and think his intentions are good, but disagree with this quote. A different user posted this link a couple weeks ago, I find it relevant: http://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=eng_faculty_pubs
Naive believing is easy, but not sophisticated believing. This is similar to how naive doubt regularly fails.
I've always loved the initial exchange between Gregory and Syme in "The Man Who Was Thursday".
Context: Gregory is an anarchist poet, Syme is claiming to be a poet of respectability, which Gregory maintains is impossible.
....The poet delights in disorder only. If it were not so, the most poetical thing in the world would be the Underground Railway."
"So it is," said Mr. Syme.
"Nonsense!" said Gregory, who was very rational when anyone else attempted paradox. "Why do all the clerks and navvies in the railway trains look so sad and tired, so very sad and tired? I will tell you. It is because they know that the train is going right. It is because they know that whatever place they have taken a ticket for that place they will reach. It is because after they have passed Sloane Square they know that the next station must be Victoria, and nothing but Victoria. Oh, their wild rapture! oh, their eyes like stars and their souls again in Eden, if the next station were unaccountably Baker Street!"
"It is you who are unpoetical," replied the poet Syme. "If what you say of clerks is true, they can only be as prosaic as your poetry. The rare, strange thing is to hit the mark; the gross, obvious thing is to miss it. We feel it is epical when man with one wild arrow strikes a distant bird. Is it not also epical when man with one wild engine strikes a distant station? Chaos is dull; because in chaos the train might indeed go anywhere, to Baker Street or to Bagdad. But man is a magician, and his whole magic is in this, that he does say Victoria, and lo! it is Victoria. No, take your books of mere poetry and prose; let me read a time table, with tears of pride. Take your Byron, who commemorates the defeats of man; give me Bradshaw, who commemorates his victories. Give me Bradshaw, I say!"
As the ancient saying goes, "just because two of you are arguing, does not mean that one of you is right."
If I were riding, say, the orange line in Boston and I suddenly found myself in Times Square - or even in Alewife (the terminus of the Red line), 'eyes like stars and soul again in Eden' isn't exactly how I'd put it. 'Pretty scary' is. If it happened to everyone in the train, it would be exceptionally scary.
But, one might make good poetry about the event.
The quote is easier to understand if you are familiar with Bradshaw.
I feel like they're using rather strained analogies to talk about subjective preferences in poetry as if they were objective truths. Am I missing/misunderstanding something?
It's Chesterton. It's the way he writes, and as always, he is not writing about subjective preferences, but about the true and the good.
Or, as he might put it, with a little anachronism, such rhetorical exaggeration is not a flight of fancy detached from reality; on the contrary, it is exactly because it is such a flight of fancy that it is exact. It is the dull empiric carrying out the sort of work that fills the pages of Psychological Science who (as Ioannidis has shown) is, whether he knows it or not, blown on the wind of subjective folly, and the writer of fantastic stories of sitting on a beam of light who has grasped an objective truth.
I take it you're not a fan of Chesterton? Or am I really missing something?
Chesterson is the high verbal low math failure mode.
Yes, but his failure mode is low math precisely because it is high verbal!
That's Žižuku!
I think the passage quoted here is magnificent (and my vote is on Syme's side). I can read Chesterton for entertainment, and it's good that he's writing about the true and the good, whereas LessWrong recites passwords of facile cynicism as badges of rationality the moment the subject comes up. On the other hand, his method is a set of templates that can be wound up and set walking in any direction. Despite his intentions, I do not learn from him anything that he persuades me is true, but he does provide entertaining ways of looking at things.
And this.
And what IlyaShpitser said.
Yet is not the whole book about man and man's intent? Why should poetry be limited and measured by how it reflects intent (or man)? (Also, I just thought 'confirmation bias' about Syme:) it would be horrible to arrive at a different station, yet it would be a crucial piece of data, since 'the scientific method still stands'.)
Benjamin Disraeli, source, on the speeches of Lord Stanley. I often think of this quote regarding the effectiveness (or otherwise) of different kinds of rhetoric.
For context, Prince Rupert was a cavalry commander whose charges were extremely effective at shattering the opposing cavalry, but who was often unable to restrain his troops from going too far, and consequently lost a number of important battles in the English Civil War.
This is of course, the same Prince Rupert for whom the Prince Rupert's Drop is named. Although this is ostensibly because he was the man who demonstrated it to the Crown, I always found some amount of schadenfreude in the fact that the man was known for cavalry charges that went too far and shattered his line as well as the enemy's.
This one should help you empathize with other people more.
-Neil Gaiman
I agree with Jiro that the typical mind fallacy is likely a large factor here, but I only see it as affecting the quantity/sophistication of worlds-inside-head, and not the quality that most people have them (I won't go as far as the quote's claim that all people have them, though.). I still agree with the sentiment that it's important to remember that people's inner lives are often much more complex and subjectively rational than we may see from the outside.
This seems like typical mind fallacy. Especially since the quote comes from a writer, who is used to having lots of worlds in his head and may be especially prone to making unwarranted assumptions that his mind is thus typical.
I think this is an uncharitable reading of the purpose of Gaiman's quote. His quote isn't really meant to be a factual claim but an inspirational one.
Now obviously some people will find more inspiration from quotes that express a truth as compared with those that don't. Perhaps you're such a person (I suspect that many people on LW are). At risk of irony, however, it's best not to assume that everyone else is the same as you in that regards.
Evaluating something with an emotional purpose in accordance with its epistemic accuracy (instead of its psychological or poetic force) is likely to lead to an uncharitable reading of many quotes (and rather reinforces the straw vulcan stereotype of rationality).
I interpret his statement as contradicting the typical mind fallacy. He invites us to consider that others' conceptions of the world might be "unimaginable" to us.
Given that his meaning by "worlds" is ambiguous, it seems unfair to claim he is making a mistake; unless you're suggesting that people don't have private thoughts or that you know what Neil Gaiman would and wouldn't find interesting.
-Richard Hamming, You and Your Research
I doubt this is literally true.
I suspect it is in a research context. It feels literally true in a programming context.
The same critical concept in two different disciplines:
"Of several responses made to the same situation, those which are accompanied or closely followed by satisfaction to the animal will, other things being equal, be more firmly connected with the situation, so that, when it recurs, they will be more likely to recur; those which are accompanied or closely followed by discomfort to the animal will, other things being equal, have their connections with that situation weakened, so that, when it recurs, they will be less likely to occur. The greater the satisfaction or discomfort, the greater the strengthening or weakening of the bond." - Edward Thorndike's Law of Effect, Animal Intelligence: Experimental Studies, 1911
"Public services are never better performed than when their reward comes in consequence of their being performed, and is proportioned to the diligence employed in performing them." - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776
The tersest phrasing I've seen was "You get more of what you reward, less of what you punish". Google finds a 1990 book calling it an "old adage" so I've no idea what the source is.
From what I've read there is one important exception, though: if you apply an extrinsic reward or punishment to a behavior, people can see this as a replacement for rather than a supplement to whatever intrinsic rewards or punishments they had previously associated with that behavior, and this can actually reduce the desired behavior.
~ W. H. Auden, A Certain World: A Commonplace Book
But no option for "I can see that this is trash and, though at present I like it, I believe that with perseverance I shall come to discard it."?
For completeness we should also add "I can see that this is good and, though at present I like it, I believe that with perseverance I shall come to dislike it", along with a few others. Though I think it's obvious why that one was left out.
As for your example; aside from unhealthy addictions, why would one want to discard something they currently like, even if it is trash? Some of my favorite movies are trash. I suppose one could make the argument that life is currently too short to waste on sub-par media, but that would depend on how much one's valuation of watchability depends on the artistic quality of the product. For me, at least, the entertainment value I get from a work of art is only partly related to the artistic merit.
For the same reason that one might want to acquire a taste for something good but presently disliked. Elevating one's taste to spend more time with the good implies spending less time with the bad.
Hmm. I notice I am getting confused about the difference between liking something and judging it to be good. Is there even a difference? If there is, is the goal to consume a higher proportion of good media even if you dislike it, or more media that you like, even if it is not good?
Maybe "good", if it is to mean something different than "liked", just means "liked by other people whose opinions we hold in esteem".
Good/trash = High status/low status. High status is probably correlated with more-or-less-objectively good things (eg it somehow makes you smarter/more empathetic/better informed), but it's also correlated with being unnecessarily obtuse (so that being able to appreciate it has signalling value).
For example, I can "like" junk food without having the slightest notion of it being "good". With media, my general rule of thumb is that "like" is something that happens in the moment, but judging something good requires that it had a positive impact that went beyond passing the time. I find that "good" things usually prompt some kind of reflection after the fact. I've also found that good media holds up on repeat viewings/readings and each time there seems to be something that I hadn't noticed before.
I hate being vague about it, but such is the nature of the beast.
As far as I would use the words, judging is a more active process than liking.
My system II might make an active decision that broccoli is good for me while my system one doesn't like broccoli.
How about "I can see this is trash and, though at present I don't like it, I believe that with perseverance I shall come to like it"?
Goodness is not an inherent property of the book. The closest you could get is talking about what people in general will like. Once you do that, you can get more specific, and talk about what certain demographics will like.
For those who believe that there is something more objective about aesthetic quality than just likeability, it usually has nothing to do with what people in general like. It's more about such things as exercise of excellence and virtue on the creator's part, and these things are, to some degree, objective.
Exercise of excellence and virtue doesn't seem objective either. I also don't see the value of a book that's not entertaining. Unless it's educational or something.
Well, whether the creator of the work exercised a particular virtue or excellent skill in the creation of the work can be reasonably objective. It is, in particular, objective in a way that the work's being liked is not: it is independent of the observer.
If the virtue or skill is a given, yes. But what virtues and skills are important is subjective. Even the difference between a vice and a virtue is subjective.
Yes, but that's subjectivity one level higher, as it were: is quality X important? That's relative to a subject who makes the value judgment. But when X is "being liked", then quality X in itself is observer-relative, in a way that other things like the skill exercised by the creator are not (and "being liked by most people" also isn't).
The skill exercised by the creator is every bit as subjective as the quality of what he makes. Being skilled just means consistently making things of high quality.
Just... no. I am not talking about some vague thing such as "being skilled at writing", which you might be able to paraphrase as "consistently writing things of high quality". The kind of skill that I have in mind which might confer value on a work of art is basically the ability to do something very non-trivial which need not in any way involve a value judgment. A very simple example would be to paint something with realistic lighting.
How is a painting exercising the creator's skill of painting something with realistic lighting (skill of the creator) any different from a painting having realistic lighting (quality of the creation)? A painting having realistic lighting is not observer-relative, but the importance of realistic lighting is. You can't objectively call the painting "good", you can only say it has realistic lighting. And given how many things there are that you can objectively grade a painting on, it's all too easy to only talk about the good qualities of paintings you like and the bad qualities of paintings you dislike.
-Rainbow Dash, lyrics to Sinking Ships, a song from Bittersweet, a fan-made episode of MLP:FiM.
-Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica
Meta
This quotes repository is linked from the sidebar on the right of the site as the "Latest Rationality Quote" space, and quotes in it are showing up as the "Latest Rationality Quote." This is misleading, and may be because you have "quotes" in the tags for this article.
Is there any way to address this?
Removing the "quotes" tag would have done it, or replacing it with quotes-repository. (The issue is 'fixed' now because I made the March quotes thread, but is an issue with these sorts of threads going forward.)
I don't see a reason for that limit. Celebrating our in group is good. If you repeat this thread I would advocate to remove that line.
Echo chambers are bad.
Cutting outside input is bad. Repeating important things usually isn't.
"Lernen, lernen und nochmals lernen." -- plastered everywhere in Soviet schools.
This rule is a fence against the situation where Lenin quotes appear everywhere. You think we should move the fence, lots of folks seem to disagree.
LW is not in a lot of danger of missing or forgetting some important thing Robin/EY/Scott/etc. said. LW is in danger of hero worship, and other related cultishness badness.
I think that LW has enough contrarianism and "Why our kind can't cooperate" describes a real issue.
Spaced repetition theory suggests that it's quite useful to repeat important things that people say.
I also consider it to be quite useful to have a debate about what bits of what Robin/EY/Scott say are of particular importance and what bits aren't. Quotes help the quest of focusing on specific ideas instead of getting lost in complexity.
The rule in this thread allows quotes from Scott.
I am taking my reference class and going home.
So, I think that having each LW page pull a quote from the Best Of Rationality Quotes and put it somewhere would be neat; also, we could have links to the featured articles from the Main Page on every page, so that more people will see them (and it will serve more like the Sequences Rerun). I don't think we really need to have the same thing in many places, instead of pointing to it many times; if I post Yvain's best quotes every month, that gets me a lot of karma I don't really deserve. If, every month, I find five external rationality quotes that haven't been posted here in the years and years of monthly rationality quotes, then that gets me a lot of karma that I do deserve. (And seeing things on an actual spaced repetition schedule is likely better than seeing them as frequently as people decide to repost them.)
I believe this has come up and the consensus (or, at least, my position) was that quotes by Scott should not be allowed in the Rationality Quotes thread.
It's not about posting quotes of third parties that Yvain posted in the quotes thread but choosing quotes from his other writing. Making specific choices about what of his long articles is quote worthy is a decision that adds value.
Quoting writing often means to make a choice to select certain passages of writing over other passages. It's not just repeating the same thing.
This isn't directly the Rationality Quotes thread and as we are starting a new thread, it's worth to be clear about it's rules.
Perhaps we could have an irregular thread for doing just that and trying to find the best passages from LW and peripheral rationality sites?
ETA: Maybe we could also try a thread for summarizing long articles with or without direct quotes?
I did a while ago open such a thread and the amount of contribution it got was relatively low. I don't see a reason to have the thread separate from this thread.
You might be interested in this tag, and the two threads made specifically for quoting from LW/OB. I believe there have been more recent ones--specifically, I think there was one in 2013--but I'm not finding it easily. (Every term I would search for shows up in a lot of other places!)
I don't think either of those threads suggests that people want to cite LW/OB too much.