If a man proves too clearly and convincingly to himself . . . that a tiger is an optical illusion--well, he will find out he is wrong. The tiger will himself intervene in the discussion, in a manner which will be in every sense conclusive.
~G. K. Chesterton
Edit: I noticed that this was more than 140 characters, but it works fine for Facebook.
If a man convinces himself that a tiger is an illusion, the tiger himself will intervene in a conclusive manner
Not the most elegant rewording - anyone got anything better?
During the latest London Meetup, I asked: "If you could spread one meme about rationality to the mainstream, what would that be?"
I realize that certain parts of rationality, like cognitive biases, should be taught as a unit, but I hypothesize that there exist rationality-enhancing lessons that can fit in 140 characters and stand on their own. Given that we want to spread rationality to those close to us and everyone else as well, it may be useful to work on developing compact versions of our most potent insights, and work on phrasing them in a way that is accessible to the mainstream.
So this thread is a challenge to do just that: pick a rationality-related insight, and try to find 140 characters (or less) that express it well for the purpose of spreading it further. It may be a quote that has appeared in our quotes thread, it may be in the form of a joke, or maybe just a compact insight that can resonate. A non-obvious challenge is to avoid getting evaluated as 'obviously true' and discarded. I guess a better target reaction is ("this sounds intriguing"->"huh, I hadn't thought about this that way!")
Don't worry too much about getting it perfect the first time; we can use the threaded comments system to collaborate. If you see a way to improve a sentence, propose the improvement as a response to it. forming a tree of alternative versions, with votes to sort them.
If you see a version of a meme developed somewhere in the thread that reaches your required awesomeness threshold, you can also post it to your (facebook/twitter/whatever else) followers. I certainly will.
Edit: As per Luke's suggestion, I went and made a twitter account that we can use to tweet good sentences that come out of this thread. Feel free to follow.