Rationality Quotes December 2014

Salemicus

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Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson.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 Do not quote with only a name.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Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson.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 Do not quote with only a name.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 line between a random American and a random Soviet person depends mostly on what part of the world they were born in. A person who lands on Mars is not random; they couldn't get to Mars without enthusiastically participating in the system. The people who praise the astronauts are aware of this too, and will treat the astronauts' successes as a success of the system, not mainly as the success of an individual astronaut.

They both landed on Mars. Which one touched first is random. If it wasn't, it would be signalling that one country is better, which is the exact opposite of the point of a joint mission to Mars. It's to show the two countries respect each other as equals. Getting to Mars is just a bonus.

0Kindly11y

I find it hard to think of someone who "enthusiastically participates in the system" in order to go to space as being morally culpable for everything that the system has done. It's not quite a matter of choosing between participating in the system or being punished by the system. It's possible to live an inconspicuous life with only mild risk of suffering the consequences of no enthusiastic participation. But this is incompatible with accomplishing something noteworthy. I can admire someone who has the ambition of going to space, but denies that ambition on moral grounds because it would support a political faction. However, I think a moral framework that demands this is unreasonably strict.

0[anonymous]11y

That particular person didn't care for the system. He was the Editor-in-chief of a (fictional) journal 'Science and thought', dedicated to protecting population from fraud and literally wasn't afraid of the devil. But he did care about space exploration. The quote was meant to express the muchsimpler message about selective pressure'out there' that makes ordinary oneupmanship as a habit of mind irrelevant.

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Rationality Quotes December 2014

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Rationality Quotes December 2014

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