Rationality Quotes February 2014

A1987dM

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Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson.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Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson.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

From McKee's textbook of psychoanalysis:

"Story begins when an event, either by human decision or accident in the universe, radically upsets the balance of forces in the protagonist's life, arousing in that character the need to restore the balance of life. To do so, that character will conceive of an "Object of Desire," that which they [believe] they need to put life back into balance. They will then go off into their world, into themselves, in the various dimensions of their existence, seeking that Object of Desire, trying to restore the balance of life, and they will struggle against forces of antagonism that will come from their own inner natures as human beings, their relationships with other human beings, their personal and/or social life, and the physical environment itself. They may or may not achieve that Object of Desire; they may or may not finally be able to restore their life to a satisfying balance. That, in the simplest possible way, defines the elements of story."

Everything that happens in your life is digested by you through this process, so it would be worth your time to memorize it.

-The Last Psychiatrist

Am I missing something, or is this almost a tautology? "Sometimes you will desire things. I don't know if you'll obtain them." Is there anything else that that quote says?

4EGarrett12y

A lot of stories are about characters trying to fix problems in their lives, but to claim that this is "story" as a whole isn't really accurate. You could gather a bunch of kids around a campfire and tell them how the Earth turns and the Sun rises in the morning when we rotate into its light, then it becomes dark as we spin away from it. If the kids didn't know this, they would probably be fascinated by it. This would have nothing to do with a character putting their life in order. In order to innovate, it helps to find the most reductionist definitions of things that you can, so you can find new ways to do that thing. In the case of "story," it's more accurate to say that it's communicating a series of events that give people enjoyable emotions. You get a lot of potential emotions out of talking about people trying to overcome problems, but you also get some enjoyable emotions out of other things, like my example of the Sun lighting the Earth, which gives the feeling of satisfying curiosity.

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Rationality Quotes February 2014

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Rationality Quotes February 2014

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