Rationality Quotes Thread December 2015

elharo

Another month, another rationality quotes thread. The rules are:

Provide 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. Do not quote with only a name.
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Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson.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.

Another month, another rationality quotes thread. The rules are:

Provide 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. Do not quote with only a name.
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Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson.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.

This appears to be empirically incorrect, at least in some fields. A few examples:

Creationists are much less willing to adjust their beliefs on the basis of evidence and argument than scientifically-minded evolutionists, but evolution rather than special creation is the consensus position these days.
It looks to me (though I confess I haven't looked super-hard) as if the most stubborn-minded economists are the adherents of at-least-slightly-fringey theories like "Austrian" economics rather than the somewhere-between-Chicago-and-Keynes mainstream.
Consensus views in hard sciences like physics are typically formed by evidence and rational argument.

Depends on what you mean by "consensus". For example, in some organizations it means "we will not make a decision until literally everyone agrees with it". In which case, stubborn people make all the decisions (until the others get sufficiently pissed off and fire them).

4DanArmak10y

We have a special name for this; it's called science, and it's rather rare. It might still be a pretty good generalization of all human behavior to say that consensus tends to be dominated by those who won't change their opinion. Actually, I don't think it's a good generalization for reasons other than science. Most conflicts or debates devolve to politics, where people support someone instead of some opinion or position. And in politics, the top person or party is often replaced by a different one.

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Rationality Quotes Thread December 2015

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Rationality Quotes Thread December 2015

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