Rationality Quotes Thread February 2015

Vaniver

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Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson.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 Do not quote with only a name.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Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson.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 Do not quote with only a name.

Hypocrisy doesn't bother me. Everyone's got his ideal, and then the reality of what he can actually deliver. Scratch hypocrisy, and you're more likely to lose the ideal than the reality.

Milo Behr, Beowulf: A Bloody Calculus.

Love it -- mainly because it invokes one of my favourite paradoxes.

If you preach hypocrisy, and you are in fact hypocritical, than you're not a hypocrite. And if you aren't a hypocrite, then you are.

12Richard_Kennaway11y

Hypocrisy does not mean falling short of one's ideals. It means only pretending to hold them.

1maxikov11y

Hypocrisy isn't actually fundamentally wrong, even is deliberate. The idea that it's bad is a final yet arbitrary value that has to be taught to humans. Many religions contain the Golden Rule, which boils down to "don't be a hypocrite", and this is exactly an indicator that is was highly non-obvious before it permeated our culture.

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Rationality Quotes Thread February 2015

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Rationality Quotes Thread February 2015

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