Rationality Quotes April 2014

elharo

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Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson.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

And one new rule:

Provide sufficient information (URL, title, date, page number, etc.) to enable a reader to find the place where you read the quote, or its original source if available. Do not quote with only a name.

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Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson.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

And one new rule:

Provide sufficient information (URL, title, date, page number, etc.) to enable a reader to find the place where you read the quote, or its original source if available. Do not quote with only a name.

Scholastic theology was complex, but so are many theories more highly regarded than it nowadays. Like physics.

Or consider the modern economy - when I contemplate a wireless mouse, it seems vastly more complex than the problem it solves (a mouse which requires a wire), yet, the wireless mouse still works & is nice to have.

In fact, you could probably consider every single technology and economic system a counterexample to this Taleb quote - it's all epicycles upon epicycles, techniques to solve problems which you only have because of earlier techniques you use to solve other problems, in a dizzying spiral of accumulating complexity (think of Kelly's What Technology Wants here) - yet are we really worse off than hunter-gatherers?

but so are many theories more highly regarded than it nowadays. Like physics.

Um, the entire point of the Occam's Razor/Kolmogorov complexity approach is physics isn't complicated.

0[anonymous]12y

In strict hedonic terms, I should say yes.

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Rationality Quotes April 2014

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Rationality Quotes April 2014

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