Rationality Quotes July 2012

RobertLumley

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Do not quote yourself
Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB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.

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Do not quote yourself
Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB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.

Anything can be an instrument, Chigurh said. Small things. Things you wouldnt even notice. They pass from hand to hand. People dont pay attention. And then one day there's an accounting. And after that nothing is the same. Well, you say. It's just a coin. For instance. Nothing special there. What could that be an instrument of? You see the problem. To separate the act from the thing. As if the parts of some moment in history might be interchangeable with the parts of some other moment. How could that be? Well, it's just a coin. Yes. That's true. Is it?

— Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men

Nothing would happen now. All that had happened was that some pieces of metal had innocently lifted other metal; nothing more. And that pouch would lie there in the dark for an unknowable span of days, and nothing would happen then, either. It is a mysterious trait of this world that the slightest cipher or symbol of which one is utterly ignorant can determine the days of one’s life.

--The Ones Who Walk Toward Acre

7shokwave14y

--- the character Chigurh, from the same novel and author. It's almost like a koan for me - thinking about what in my history I have lost on a coin toss is a great jumping point into more introspection.