Rationality quotes: October 2010

Morendil

This is our monthly thread for collecting these little gems and pearls of wisdom, rationality-related quotes you've seen recently, or had stored in your quotesfile for ages, and which might be handy to link to in one of our discussions.

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be voted up/down 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Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB.
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be voted up/down 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Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB.
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.

Is there a general name for that shape of argument? It or something close to it seems to be a recurring pattern.

"People who can manage their lives will, despite MMOs.". (People who lose time playing MMOs are bad at managing life, so they would've lost the time anyway.)
"There's only two possible outcomes for their relationship. They split, or they stay together forever. If it's split, then the sooner it happens the better for everyone. If it's stay, then my meddling won't matter.".
"No one you would want to meet would find you boring.".

(Edit: removed opening "also".)

Is there a general name for that shape of argument?

Disjunctive reasoning. I liked the example in this post.

0Document16y

Also: * The phrase "the people who mind don't matter and the people who matter don't mind". Similarly, the phrase/meme "haters gonna hate" (edit: although that usually has further information implied). * Possibly the saying that if you're worried you might be crazy, it proves that you're not. (Although the problem with that could have more to do with taking your conclusion and adding it back to the evidence pile, ala One Argument Against an Army.) * "And people do stupid things no matter what -- beer or grass or whatever are all incidental to that central fact.". That's fits under "predestination fallacy", but possibly not the concept I was originally thinking of, which was something like "argument by subtly-flawed categorization". * "If I lied the first time, I'm not going to tell you the truth just because you ask twice.". I'll edit this post with any further examples. Last edited 2010/11/07.

3NancyLebovitz16y

False dilemna. Also false dicholomy or possibly black and white thinking.

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Rationality quotes: October 2010

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