Rationality Quotes November 2014

elharo

Another month, another rationality quotes thread. The 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Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson.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.
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 Do not quote with only a name.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, another rationality quotes thread. The 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Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson.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.
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 Do not quote with only a name.

The confusion here has nothing to do with the meaning of "false," or the distinction between accuracy and precision.

If I'm using a known 50-g weight to calibrate a scale, and I look at the scale reading (which says "51g"), and thereby conclude that the scale is off by 1g, I don't think you're at all justified in concluding that I've observed that the weight is 51g.

I mean, I agree that if I had made such an observation, it would be a mistaken observation.

But I don't agree that I made any such observation in the first place. For example, if you asked me after weighing the weight "What is the mass of the weight?" I would most likely answer "50g," because being able to say that with confidence is the whole point of using standard-mass callibration weights in the first place.

I am confused. In your example what are you saying your observation is, and do you consider it true or false? Also, what do you consider "known" before the observation?

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Rationality Quotes November 2014

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