Rationality Quotes October 2011
Here's the new thread for posting quotes, with the usual rules:
- 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- Do not quote yourself.
- Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB.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.
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--Thomas Carlyle
I love this quote, but it really isn't true. People frequently forego the first one.
I don't think the first one ever gets generated unless someone else asks them why they did that something.
it must be nice to be clever enough to generate good reasons in real time, rather than having to spend all your spare cycles preemptively coming up with justifications for your actions.
I interpret "good reason" as "'good' reason".
I just ran into a surprisingly candid example of Richard Feynman talking about when he did that. He worked on the atomic bomb to make sure that Nazis didn't get it first, but then he kept working on it even after the Nazis had been defeated.
I love it too and I like to have an evil reason as well. That keeps things in perspective. And a right reason - which balances the 'good' with the 'evil' according to my ethical sentiment. But that's just a (morally ambiguous) ideal. The real reason, that which Carlyle mentions, is something else again.
I have a different angle - I like to have a stupid reason, to amuse my friends with.
--Thomas Carlyle
Indefinitely, anyway. I am reminded of another Carlyle quote that Moldbug quoted with approval (but then doesn't he always):
--Thomas Carlyle
Sharon Fenick
Theodore Roszack
--Principia Discordia (surprisingly, not quoted yet)
Maybe because it has little to do with rationality?
-- Jesse Custer, Preacher (Garth Ennis)
-- Ayn Rand
--Douglas Hofstadter
Anon
--Dan Dennet: Breaking the Spell
E.T. Jaynes's "Bayesian Methods: General Background"
-- Herodotus
The problem with that quote is that human biases often go the other way, i.e., we'd rather blame bad consequences on bad luck then admit we made a bad decision.
The quote may still have some use when applied to humans other than oneself.
I tried to track this down, and this seems to be Jaynes's paraphrase of Herodotus; pg 2 of "Bayesian Methods: General Background". (I looked through one translation, http://classics.mit.edu/Herodotus/history.mb.txt , and was unable to locate it.)
I got it out of "Data Analysis A Bayesian Tutorial" pg 4 where it is attributed to Herodotus
After some more searching and a pointer on Straight Dope, I think I've found it in Book 7 of the Histories when Artabanus is trying to dissuade Xerxes from launching his ill-fated war against the Greeks, where it is, as one would expect from Jaynes's paraphrase, different:
Or in another translation:
-- G.K. Chesterton
I so adore cliches. They create an expectation to subvert.
Do that too much and you'll end up with a "high brow" piece that's incomprehensible to anyone not familiar with the cliches you're subverting.
The short story in question is "The Dagger with Wings", originally published in The Incredulity of Father Brown.
That said, I don't quite understand why this constitutes a Rationality Quote.
To me, the lesson is that when someone appeals to your intuitions - you can just say no.
"Don't you feel there must be a supreme being, that everything has a purpose and a place in the grand order of things?"
"No."
(Fun story, incidentally.)
-- Roissy in DC
--Roissy in DC
Surrendering to the barbarians are we.
Wondering why people are down voting this, considering I and other LWers have advocated political disengagement in the context of live in first world (and other) states as a recipe for personal happiness and improved productivity, and such comments have been up voted in the past.
That could have used anonymity.
If other people think political ideology is highly relevant to status, doesn't that make it probably at least somewhat so?
Not a downvoter (and I doubt this is why people are downvoting, but I suppose it could be) but I somewhat disagree. There is a (very small) group of friends with whom I can discuss political topics without them becoming mind-killing. Frequently this is due to admitted information gaps between us, and it's about learning the specifics of an issue. It's certainly not easy though, and often involves us switching sides on each other when we see one of us using dark arts. Similarly, I would expect most LWers to be able to (somewhat) rationally discuss politics. Which is not to say that they would enjoy it/should just that I would expect them to be far more able (moreso than my friends) to do it productively.
If I had to guess why people are downvoting, though, it would be because discussing politics can bring you more happiness, and indeed does for many people, even if it's just yelling at each other. Although I feel very uncertain (p = 0.35) that this is actually the reason for downvotes.
"Don’t ask yourself if something is fair. Ask someone else--a stranger in the street, for example." -Lemony Snicket
Why? How does knowing about this 'fairness' thing help me? (This was the line I was expecting the quote to go after the first sentence.)
If you want a truly amoral reason to care, it is this: most other people do, and these are the people you will have to convince of any proposal you want to make about anything, ever. If you propose something unfair, and are called on it, you will lose status and your proposal is unlikely to be adopted.
I would be deeply surprised if you did not care at all about fairness. I tend to think that at least some regard for fairness is part of the common mental structures of humans (there's a sequence post about this but I can't find it)
There is enough neuroatypicality here that I am only barely surprised when someone deviates significantly typical human morality.
But mostly in the form of aspergers-like attributes, and this specific form of non-typicality isn't supposed to be very different to "normal people" in terms of moral feelings, as far as I've been told, anyway. (And in fact I vaguely remember reading an article on how "aspies" tended to care about morality more than the normals... ETA: found it. Doesn't look like a particularly trustworthy source though.)
I love fairness. "Ethical Inhibitions" may be the one you are thinking of (or of interest anyway). Possibly my favorite post.
Agreed, but I don't think the quote necessarily disagrees with you. I interpreted it to mean, "If you want to know if something is fair, you can't just consult yourself." This says nothing about whether fairness is helpful or desirable, it's just warning against committing the typical mind fallacy with respect to fairness.
-- AJ Milne
--#122 Assorted Opinions and Maxims, Friedrich Nietzsche
Upvotes for irony if anyone can find an earlier version of the quote from a European source.
David Hume
Roughly true, but downvoted for being basic (by LW standards) to the point of being an applause light. Good Rationality Quotes are ones we can learn from, not just agree with.
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, ch. 8
From the film The Maggie. The quote is excerpted from here.
Background: Earlier part of the 20th century, the west coast of Scotland. Marshall, an American, is in a small chartered aircraft chasing a Clyde puffer captained by Mactaggart, with whom he has business. He and the pilot have just caught sight of her in the sea below. Night is approaching.
Marshall: Where do you reckon they're making for?
Pilot: It looks like they're putting into Inverkerran for the night.
Marshall: Tell me, if they thought I thought they were going to Inverkerran, where do you reckon they would make for then?
Pilot: Strathcathaig, maybe.
Marshall: This sounds silly, but if they thought I'd think they were going to Strathcathaig because it looked as if they were going to Inverkerran -- where would they go then?
Pilot: My guess would be Pennymaddy.
Marshall: If there's such a thing as a triple bluff, I bet Mactaggart invented it. Okay, Pennymaddy.
--Cut to aboard the puffer--
Mactaggart: Aye, he'll have guessed we're making for Inverkerran.
Hamish: Will he not go there himself, then?
Mactaggart: Oh, no. He'll know we know he's seen us, so he'll be expecting us to head for Strathcathaig instead.
Hamish: Will I set her for Pennymaddy, then?
Mactaggart: No, If it should occur to him that it's occurred to us that he's expecting us to go to Strathcathaig, he would think we'll be making for Pennymaddy.
Hamish: Well, then, shall I set her for Penwhannoy?
Mactaggart: No. We'll make for Inverkerran just as we planned. It's the last thing he's likely to think of.
--Sappho #7; trans. Barnard (seen on http://www.nada.kth.se/%7Easa/Quotes/immortality )
Combine this with Nietzsche's "God is dead."
--William James, "The Will to Believe" (section VII)
From the first episode of Dexter, season 6:
Batista: "...it's all about faith..."
Dexter: "Mmm..."
Batista: "It's something you feel, not something you can explain. It's very hard to put into words."
Dexter smiles politely, while thinking to himself: Because it makes no sense.
People put plenty of things into words that make no sense. Words are only words; that's why humanity invented mathematics.
Lives of quiet desperation paradoxically may surface as ebullient market bubbles.
Peter Thiel, The Optimistic Thought Experiment
Pierre Duhem The aim and structure of physical theory
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
"A scientific theory should be as simple as possible, but no simpler."
Einstein
Sounds good, but may not be meaningful outside of physics, where by "theory" you usually mean model, and a model can be made simpler or more complex as the occasion demands.
Considering my brain is too small for the universe, making the theory as simple as possible sounds like a good strategy when dealing with hard problems.
“Uniformity is death. Diversity is life”
Mikhaïl Bakounine
Fred Clarke, August 9
Alternative link, for anyone else who had problems with the typepad one.
Tim Kreider, Artist's Note for The Pain
"Real magic is the kind of magic that is not real, while magic that is real (magic that can actually be done), is not real magic."
-Lee Siegle
Isaac Asimov
House, episode 2x24, "No Reason"
Or if something doesn't make sense, you may not have learned to think like reality.
Isn't possible that you've just asked a Wrong Question? Although I guess you could claim that you have then made an assumption that the question could be answered . . .
Apple
There's a nice quote from George Bernard Shaw on the same subject: "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
It's more demonstrative imho ^^
Ah, that one.
I may lack the context to properly appreciate this quote, but evaluating it on its own merits, I've always thought it's unfair - I think the judgemental aspect isn't necessarily warranted.
It's unreasonable to want to adapt the world to ourselves, now? In many cases I think it's just a good idea, and there are plenty of examples that I don't think anyone would feel any need to disagree with. Humankind changed the world when they eliminated smallpox, for example.
I may be missing the point.
Maybe the key to understand the quote is that "reasonable" and "unreasonable" are social judgements, society would rather want people to conform to the norms/world than have them change it. At least that's the way I read the quote.
"Reason" in general seems to be a good set of heuristics. Trying to be reasonable will help you make financial decisions, plan ahead for common contingencies, work hard yet sustainably, get into stable relationships, etc. Another good point of reason is that its failings tend to be known or easy to predict; for example, it tends to select low-variance strategies, discount excitement, and underestimate the duration and magnitude of personality changes. That makes it easier to evaluate: use it much more for mortgages than for romance.
The ones who do are a proper subset of the ones who think they can, and there are serious costs to being in the difference between the two sets.
Traditional saying.
Not every change is a catastrophe, but every catastrophe is a change.
-What the Wise Master might have said, if he were making a different point.
Apart from compound interest.
... even "staying the course" can be considered risking something if you have the proper mindset.
At which point the saying becomes equivalent to "don't exist, nothing gained." Not a very informative interpretation.
Nothing ventured, less lost, however.
-Confucius
-A Softer World
That's terrible advice. Far better to spend that time thinking of a better attack plan. Make sure it includes contingencies to deal with anyone who may wish to avenge whoever you are killing.
My understanding is that the advice is to be aware that you could also end up dead, so you should dig an extra grave for yourself. It's not practical advice, it's a warning that revenge is dangerous and not worth it.
Boy, Less Wrong can be really literal-minded sometimes.
I think the point of the quote is that it's yet better to spend that time doing productive things unrelated to revenge, given that generating enough such contingencies is pretty costly.
Edit: Actually, wedrifid is right.
No, it isn't. That is another point that could be made in the general area of "Boo Revenge". The most useful point that is conveyed, via assuming it as a premise, is that taking revenge is dangerous.
I argue that quotes don't (or rather shouldn't) get credit for all possible supporting arguments for the general position they are applauding.
-- The Last Psychiatrist, "The Rise and Fall of Atypical Antipsychotics"
I went and read the original article and was massively entertained, mainly because I just studied for weeks to memorize all those drug names. I remember it saying in our textbook that the second-generation "atypical" antipsychotics had fewer side effects...and I was surprised because my friend is on a second-generation antipsychotic (Zyprexa) and at some point has had pretty much every possible side effect.
I read TLP with a giant grain of salt, because sometimes the things he says about the psychiatric profession just seem downright implausible.
Speaking as a person in the field - while true in general, in this particular case he is completely correct. Atypical antipsychotics have turned out to be massively misrepresented by the pharmaceutical companies. To avoid misunderstandings: I am a great supporter of pharmacological interventions, and I don't think that "Big Pharma" is an evil force, but this case has been one of the darkest spots on the image of the profession in the last decade.
The excellent and highly recommended "Mind Hacks" blog has been following the slow crash of the atypicals for a while. Latest can be seen here.
It reads like the writing of someone with an enormous axe to grind...
-- Drusas Achamian, in "The White-Luck Warrior" by R. Scott Bakker
Robert A. Heinlein
So very true (in reality) and so very wrong (morally) at the same time. It's my sincere hope that work on Raising the Sanity Waterline will eventually annihilate the relevance of this quote to modern society.
Bertrand Russell
Carl Linderholm, Mathematics Made Difficult.
I do not understand.
-- Carl Linderholm, Mathematics Made Difficult
Let me explain why it's not easy to see that 5+4 is not 6.
Earlier, the numbers were defined as
2 = 1+1
3 = 1+2
4 = 1+3
5 = 1+4
6 = 1+5
7 = 1+6
8 = 1+7
9 = 1+8.
Where + is associative.
Consider a "clock" with 3 numbers, 1, 2, 3. x+y means "Start at x and advance y hours".
3
2 -> 1
Then 1+1 = 2 and 2+1 = 3, as per our definitions. Also, 3+1 = 1 (since if you start at the 3 and advance 1 hour, you end up at 1). Thus 4 = 1, 5 = 4+1 so 5 = 1+1 = 2.
So 6 = 5+1 = 5 + 4.
Thus I make no apologies for focusing on income. Over the long run in- come is more powerful than any ideology or religion in shaping lives. No God has commanded worshippers to their pious duties more forcefully than income as it subtly directs the fabric of our lives.
-- Gregory Clark, A farewell to Alms
[ In his interesting book on economic history, Gregory Clark follows Adam Smith ]
Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2
-Scott Aaronson, from here
Sam Hughes
"What do you think the big headlines were in 1666, the year Newton posited gravitation as a universal force, discovered that white light was composed of the colors of the spectrum, and invented differential calculus, or in 1905, the “annus mirabilis” when Einstein confirmed quantum theory by analyzing the photoelectric effect, introduced special relativity, and proposed the formulation that matter and energy are equivalent? The Great Fire of London and the Anglo-Dutch War; The Russian Revolution and the Russo-Japanese War. The posturing and squabbling of politicians and the exchange of gunfire over issues that would be of little interest or significance to anyone alive now. In other words, ephemeral bullshit. These insights and discoveries are the real history of our species, the slow painstaking climb from ignorance to understanding."
On the other hand, those thousands of lives cut short by violence are also the real history of our species — the misery we are climbing out of. The value of the discovery of the spectrum of light lies in its being put to use in ensuring that London never burns again.
I'm tempted to agree but at another level tempted to disagree. The Great Fire, the Anglo-Dutch War and the Russo-Japanese war might not have had such large scale impacts, but the Russian Revolution laid to formation of the USSR and the cold war, leading to one of the greatest existential risk to human ever. Much of the science done in the 1950s and 60s was as part of the US v. USSR general competition for superiority. Without the Russian Revolution we might very well have never gone to the moon.
Also, Newton wasn't the first person to posit gravity as a universal force. Oresme discussed the same idea in the 1300s. Newton wasn't even the first person to posit an inverse square law. He was just the first to show that an inverse square law lead to elliptical orbits and other observed behavior. See this essay.
We most likely would not have been to the moon without the Russian Revolution (at least, not by 1969). Kennedy himself thought the space race was a great waste of resources, but supported it as a PR move against the USSR.
The quote is indeed imperfect, but I think the sentiment it conveys is accurate.
After all, in a thousand years or so, Russian revolution and the USSR will be as important as the Mongol invasion and the Khanate of the Golden Horde are today. If we didn't get to the moon fifty years ago, there would have been some other conflict pushing some other line of advancement.
It is also, for the actual point of the quote, irrelevant who made the discoveries. The point is that in long range, the importance of those discoveries will always overshadow ephemeral political events.
Which is to say: pretty important. Not that it's important what exacly some boundary was, or who did what to whom...but all these things are part of the overall development of our current state of affairs, from the development of paper money to credit systems, from Chinese approach to Tibet to the extent of distribution of Islam.
I think it's risky to assume that "science", while more easily identified as rational, is in fact more rational than the rational facts of history, and its causal relationship to the present.
Discoveries in science are, in a sense, what "has to be". But while histroy could have been different, itt wasn't, and it simply "is what it is".
André Gide
Ayn Rand
This view is much too binary. There are a myriad variety of choices of what to focus on, what aspect of it to focus on, and how much effort to apply to the focus. Someone can be purposefully aware of a very specific task, say a high speed race, with the bulk of their thinking down at the level of pattern matching. Someone can do highly abstract symbolic manipulations while half asleep and still recognize when they bump into the right set of manipulations to solve the problem.
It's too bad this has already dropped off the front page. Someone should request sticky threads here, although I don't care enough.
"It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible. What we know as blind faith is sustained by innumerable unbeliefs."
What is unbelief?
Adolph Hitler
What misfortune for all that those in power don't either.
An alternate, and perhaps even more frightening hypothesis: the people in power do think, and they're doing their best.
-- Hans. The Troll Hunter
Kaboom!
Voltaire
"I can do parkour for the rest of my life without even moving. Just efficient thinking."
Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins, via the Doobie Brothers
The Magician King by Lev Grossman
Ibid.
Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
I've downvoted this for the following reasons. Appearances are deceiving and also people may present false appearances for their own benefit. What cannot be seen is still in effect (Gravity) Etc.
In a practical demonstration, what appears to be a piece of stone. Behind it, It's sand. It's pressed together over time, precipitation of minerals causes binding. Inside there could be some old fossil. Who knows.
Let's see if we can salvage it into a reasonable statement about epistemology:
-- A woman being shown an amazing horse, upon being informed that the horse will "take you 'round the universe, and all the other places too."
I'll admit, this insight is more impressive with musical accompaniment.
Samuel Florman
Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog, Engineers of Jihad (p.51)
No vote, but I've known several engineers who believe in black magic, voodoo, and/or rain dances.
I'm very confused by the downvotes, could someone explain?
First off, it's easy to cheer "yay science!" and rag on low status beliefs, but does this quote tell us that this person is good at determining truth value in cases of controversy? If an experiment returns a particular result, do they feel compelled to believe it? What would they think, for example, about the OPERA measurements?
Second, a cheer for the epistemic rationality of engineers is particular is likely to be unpopular because engineers are somewhat famous for standing on the frontiers of crank science, and have a reputation for being more likely than others with "scientific" backgrounds to overestimate their own understanding and throw their credentials behind bad science.
This is in fact, what the other person I mentioned commented, which I agree with, in retrospect. I had the advantage of context though - the author didn't specifically mean to laud engineers - this statement was made in the context of an engineering ethics textbook (essay? It's hard to remember, it was awhile ago).
Didn't downvote, but:
Interesting, thanks. And good points. Someone had already PMed me their reason for downvoting though (not mentioned in your list), but didn't want to influence future votes.
Professor Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore
Not sure I want to take that from someone who died.
Is all wisdom about living by anyone who is no longer alive made worthless by that fact? That seems rather arbitrary!
-- Discordian saying
Because they only had time to discover three quarters of the recipe for immortality before they died...
Can't get refrigerated shipping out there in the desert.
Jerky-of-the-month club?
Because it's not about food, but the challenge? Without the roadrunner, Wile E. is nothing. He depends on not succeeding. (Just noticed what a great role model he is.)
According to certain versions, Chuck Jones and his team established a set of rules for the cartoon (such as "The audience's sympathy must remain with the Coyote" and "Whenever possible, make gravity the Coyote's greatest enemy"). One of them is supposed to have been:
To quote Warner's famous essay on cartoonialism, "The struggle itself...is enough to fill a character's heart. One must imagine Coyote happy."
T-Rex: If I lived in the past I'd have different beliefs, because I'd have nobody modern around to teach me anything else!
FACT.
And I find it really unlikely that I would come up with all our modern good stuff on my own, running around saying "You guys! Democracy is pretty okay. Also, women are equal to men, and racism? Kind of a dick move." If I was raised by racist and sexist parents in the middle of a racist and sexist society, I'm pretty certain I'd be racist and sexist! I'm only as enlightened as I am today because I've stood on the shoulders of giants.
Right. So that raises the question: Is everyone from that period in Hell, or is Heaven overwhelmingly populated by racists?
-- T-Rex, Dinosaur Comics
I believe this was the point EY was trying to make in Archimedes's Chronophone. In short, it's a lot harder to send advice to the past when you can only transmit your justification for believing the advice. If your true reason for holding your "enlightened" views is because they're popular, then the recipients on the other side will only hear that they should do whatever practice was popular for them.
I think the obvious answer would be that Heaven is overwhelmingly populated by ex-racists. Once they get there, they'd have people around to teach them better stuff.
Who would teach them? The more severe racists from periods even further back?
Maybe the dead of other races, provably ensouled and with barriers to communication magically removed.
I think the assumption is that divine beings would be there.
Are you assuming people from the past are always more racist for any given time period?
That's a good point, there would be many many exceptions to such a prediction.
So at most, all I can say is that the racists in heaven are unlikely to find much in the way of 20th century ideals until people from the 20th century start dying and showing up there.
All that's needed is a belief in purgatory.
We'd probably all end up there too, based on the near certainty that we're doing things that people in the future will correctly consider as obviously immoral.
Ran Prieur
Brandon Watson
Sam Harris, "Lying"
As any decent defense attorney will tell you: if you're accused of something you didn't do, this is still an extremely bad approach.
Definitely. If questions arise you should always point others back to your attorney! ;)
For a defendant, lying is the only thing worse than telling the truth. Telling the truth is still often a terrible idea, particularly for a person accused in the formal American legal system.
(Edited to change meaning to what I originally intended but typed incorrectly. Original words were "For a defendant, the only thing worse than lying is telling the truth," but the above is what I had intended.)
Don't defence attorneys (at least in the USA) heartily recommend shutting up as opposed to lying?
Yes.
I think this is actually a myth. It's appealing, to us who love truth so much, to think that deviating from the path of the truth is deadly and dangerous and leads inevitably to dark side epistemology. But there is a trick to telling lies, such that they only differ from the truth in minor, difficult to verify ways. If you tell elegant lies, they will cling to the surface of the truth like a parasite, and you will be able to do almost anything with them that you could do with the truth. You just have to remember a few extra bits that you changed, and otherwise behave as a normal honest person would, given those few extra bits.
Worse, you can simply let people catch you, then get angry with them and bully them into accepting your claims not to have lied out of a mix of imperfect certainty and conflict avoidance. By doing this you condition them to accept the radical form of dominance where they have the authority to tell you what you are morally entitled to believe.
*where you have the authority to tell them (?)
Yep. Sorry.
You're not actually disagreeing with Harris. Crafting efficient lies that behave as you describe is hard, particularly on the spot during conversation. Practice helps, and having your interlocutor's trust can compensate for a lot of imperfections, but it's still a lot of work compared to just sharing everything you know
Hm, that gives me an idea: study lying as a computational complexity problem. Just as we can study how much computing power it takes to distinguish random data from encrypted data, we can study how much computing power it takes to formulate (self-serving) hypotheses that take too much effort to distinguish from the truth.
Just a thought...
(Scott Aaronson's paper opened my eyes on the subject.)
I don't know much about the problem in question, but there's a related open problem in number theory.
Suppose I am thinking of a positive integer from 1 to n. You know this and know n. You want to figure out my number but are only allowed to ask if my number is in some range you name. In this game it is easy to see that you can always find out my number in less than 1+log2 n questions.
But what if I'm allowed to lie k times for some fixed k (that you know). Then the problem becomes much more difficult. A general bound in terms of k and n is open.
This suggests to me that working out problems involving lying, even in toy models, can quickly become complicated and difficult to examine.
Are you familiar with the seemingly similar question about the prisoners, king, and coin? I don't know the name, but it goes like this:
The answer is yes, and there's a known bound on how long it takes. (Got this from slashdot a long time ago.)
Edit: Found it. Here's the discussion that spawned it, and here's the thread that introduces this problem, and here's a comment with a solution. Apparently, the problem has a name it goes by.
Edit2: This also serves as a case study in how to present a problem as succinctly as possible. The only thing I got wrong about its statement was that the king chooses the order of the prisoners going into the CC (rather than it being random), although given the constraint that each prisoner is eventually brought in infinite times, and the strategy must work all the time, I don't think it changes the problem.
It is customary to add at the end of such confessions, "or so I'm told", which is technically not a lie but merely an implicature.
Being embarrassed about your knowledge is anathema to rational conversation. You can see it in drug policy debates, where nobody talks about how relatively harmless marijuana is, for fear that people might know that they smoke it. You can see it in censorship debates, where no community member is going to stand up and say "hey, this porno doesn't violate my standards, in fact it's pretty hot". We can stand around pretending to be good people, or we can get at the truth.
I'm more willing to admit to lying here, because I trust you guys more than most people to take that admission only for what it is, and no more.
You sound like you're advocating radical honesty. It seems like there should be a middle ground of making sure relevant information is introduced, but doing it in a way that minimizes derailing self-disclosure (or self-disclosure that could cost you in status).
Also, arguing from personal experience can be form of defection, shifting the conversation to an arena where one's convincingness is proportional to one's willingness to lie. (I think I have some comments saved that say that better than I can.)
Bertrand Russell
Hydrogen atoms have exactly one proton.
Or a mathematician.
http://xkcd.com/263/
I think it's safe to say that Bertrand Russell knew about mathematicians, as he was one himself. :-)
He did say "all exact science", a phrasing I think he probably chose carefully, so I'd charitably interpret the remark as being about people uttering purported scientific truths.
George E. Forsythe
W. Stanley Jevons
Three proposed derogatory labels from Dilbert creator Scott Adams:
Labelass: A special kind of idiot who uses labels as a substitute for comprehension.
Binarian: A special kind of idiot who believes that all people who hold a different view from oneself have the same views as each other.
Masturdebator: One who takes pleasure in furiously debating viewpoints that only exist in the imagination.
What's the word for someone who sees errors as defining character attributes that only occur in "idiots" and not decent, sensible people like theirself and their friends and readers?
I don't think Adams thinks highly of himself or his readers.
Indeed. He often describes his motivation for posts as "Dance, monkeys, dance!"
That's something I have to occasionally remind myself not to be, as an atheist.
Jorge Luis Borges, "The Secret Miracle".
Is that actually true? A lot of authors are their own toughest critics; they're so close to what they write that they see all its imperfections, and tend to obsess over flaws that aren't actually that noticeable to most of their readers.
See:
Kruger, J., & Gilovich, T. (2004). Actions, intentions, and trait assessment: The road to self-enhancement is paved with good intentions. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 328-339. pdf
"Like every human" would be more correct.
Scott Aaronson
I've read the source and context of that and it's really not impressing me as a rational thing to do... it's a clever/smartass thing to do, but in what way did Ilyssa win? Surely she didn't expect Eric to enlighten her on the subject in some way she hadn't thought about before, and now she is "miserable about Eric", and didn't get to enjoy Hamlet.
The "I can't stop myself" says it all - she can't choose not to defect. That's not a strength.
Another quote from that source amuses me:
Reminds me of Secular Heaven