Rationality Quotes August 2013

Vaniver

Another month has passed and here is a new rationality quotes thread. The usual rules are:

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Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson.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 has passed and here is a new rationality quotes thread. The usual rules are:

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Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson.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.

An educated mind is, as it were, composed of all the minds of preceding ages.

Le Bovier de Fontenelle

An educated mind is, as it were, composed of all the minds of preceding ages.

This explains all those urges I get to burn witches, my talent at farming, all my knowledge at hunting and tracking and my outstanding knack for feudal political intrigue.

(Composition is not the relationship to previous minds that education entails. Can someone think of a better one?)

0Document13y

Is that a praise of educated minds, or a caution against too readily classifying a mind as educated? (Possibly related: http://lesswrong.com/lw/1ul/for_progress_to_be_by_accumulation_and_not_by/)

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Rationality Quotes August 2013

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Rationality Quotes August 2013

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