Rationality Quotes 27

0Eliezer_Yudkowsky22 February 2009 01:55AM

"Believing this statement will make you happier."
        -- Ryan Lortie

"Make changes based on your strongest opportunities, not your most convenient ones."
        -- MegaTokyo

"The mind is a cruel, lying, unreliable bastard that can't be trusted with even an ounce of responsibility.  If you were dating the mind, all your friends would take you aside, and tell you that you can really do better, and being alone isn't all that bad, anyway.  If you hired the mind as a babysitter, you would come home to find all but one of your children in critical condition, and the remaining one crowned 'King of the Pit'."
        -- Lore Sjoberg

"Getting bored is a non-trivial cerebral transformation that doubtlessly took many millions of years for nature to perfect."
        -- Lee Corbin

"The views expressed here do not necessarily represent the unanimous view of all parts of my mind."
        -- Malcolm McMahon

"The boundary between these two classes is more porous than I've made it sound.  I'm always running into regular dudes--construction workers, auto mechanics, taxi drivers, galoots in general--who were largely aliterate until something made it necessary for them to become readers and start actually thinking about things.  Perhaps they had to come to grips with alcoholism, perhaps they got sent to jail, or came down with a disease, or suffered a crisis in religious faith, or simply got bored.  Such people can get up to speed on particular subjects quite rapidly.  Sometimes their lack of a broad education makes them over-apt to go off on intellectual wild goose chases, but, hey, at least a wild goose chase gives you some exercise."
        -- Neal Stephenson, In the Beginning was the Command Line

Comments (8)

Peter522 February 2009 01:11:30PM0 points [-]

Lore Sjรถberg prefers to write his last name with an รถ (o with umlaut), as a Google search will verify.

pdf23ds22 February 2009 05:40:23PM0 points [-]

I went and read that Neal Stephenson book. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone--it's awfully dated and doesn't seem to have a strong point at the end that makes all the meandering worthwhile.

anonymous_coward722 February 2009 08:08:31PM1 point [-]

I feel doubly let down. Not only did I too go and read the peice by Stephenson, which was disappointing, but when I came back here to express my disappointment I found I'd been beaten to it.

The quote itself is still a very good one, though.

Eliezer_Yudkowsky22 February 2009 08:13:54PM0 points [-]

Sorry about that. It's been a long time since I read the Stephenson piece in question, and all I had was the quote in my file. If I'd realized, I wouldn't have quoted it, or would have dropped a warning in the comments.

Jeroen223 February 2009 01:07:29PM0 points [-]

Do you have a reference for the Malcolm McMahon quote? Thanks.

Dmitriy_Kropivnitskiy23 February 2009 09:31:04PM0 points [-]

I cannot seem to google the Ryan Lortie quote. Where did that come from?

Fredrik_Bränström23 February 2009 11:37:09PM0 points [-]

anonymous coward & pdf23ds: Interesting that you went off on such an intellectual wild goose chase... ;)

Paul_Gowder224 February 2009 06:21:18AM0 points [-]

Lore Sjoberg is my new hero.