The truth comes as conqueror only because we have lost the art of receiving it as guest.
“It is wise to take admissions of uncertainty seriously,” Daniel Kahneman noted, “but declarations of high confidence mainly tell you that an individual has constructed a coherent story in his mind, not necessarily that the story is true.”
Superforcasting, p. 85
"The remedy lies, indeed, partly in charity, but more largely in correct intellectual habits, in a predominant, ever-present disposition to see things as they are, and to judge them in the full light of an unbiased weighing of evidence applied to all possible constructions, accompanied by a withholding of judgment when the evidence is insufficient to justify conclusions.
I believe that one of the greatest moral reforms that lies immediately before us consists in the general introduction into social and civic life of that habit of mental procedure which...
It is knowledge, in general, which is pursued solely by man, and which is pursued for the sake of knowledge itself, because its acquisition is truly delightful, and is unlike the pleasures desirable from other pursuits [...] For the good cannot be brought forth, and evil cannot be avoided, except by knowledge.
For superforecasters, beliefs are hypotheses to be tested, not treasures to be guarded. It would be facile to reduce superforecasting to a bumper-sticker slogan, but if I had to, that would be it.
Philip E. Tetlock in Superforecasting
Context: Brady is talking about a safari he took and the life the animals he saw were leading.
Brady: It really was very base, everything was about eating and not dying, pretty amazing.
Grey: Yeah, that is exactly what nature is, that's why we left.
-- Hello internet (link, animated)
Might be more anti-naturalist than strictly rationalist, but I think it still qualifies.
...If there’s a single lesson that life teaches us, it’s that wishing doesn’t make it so. Words and thoughts don’t change anything. Language and reality are kept strictly apart—reality is tough, unyielding stuff, and it doesn’t care what you think or feel or say about it. Or it shouldn’t. You deal with it, and you get on with your life.
Little children don’t know that. Magical thinking: that’s what Freud called it. Once we learn otherwise we cease to be children. The separation of word and thing are the essential facts on which our adult lives are founded.
No matter how brilliant our scientist is, or how intricately he himself understands his discovery, if he fails to convey it to the scientific community in such a way that they have ready access to it and can understand it, unfortunately that community will not benefit from what he has discovered. The moral of this story is that the means by which knowledge is conveyed are every bit as important as that knowledge itself.
Barry Smith in Applied Ontology
...Though evolution, as such, did encounter resistance, particularly from some religious groups, it was by no means the greatest of the difficulties the Darwinians faced. That difficulty stemmed from an idea that was more nearly Darwin’s own. All the well-known pre-Darwinian evolutionary theories—those of Lamarck, Chambers, Spencer, and the German Naturphilosophen—had taken evolution to be a goal-directed process.
The “idea” of man and of the contemporary flora and fauna was thought to have been present from the first creation of life, perhaps in the mind of
In my experience on this planet, anything that is both important and corruptible (without detection) is already corrupted.
Does this fit with your experience? As a cynical economist, I'm pleasantly surprised at how non-corrupt grading is at U.S. colleges.
Waste not your Hour, nor in the vain pursuit Of This and That endeavour and dispute; Better be jocund with the fruitful Grape Than sadden after none, or bitter, Fruit.
Omar Khayyam http://classics.mit.edu/Khayyam/rubaiyat.html Verse LIV
Part of what the acceptance of Ohm’s Law demanded was a redefinition of both ‘current’ and ‘resistance’; if those terms had continued to mean what they had meant before, Ohm’s Law could not have been right; that is why it was so strenuously opposed as, say, the Joule-Lenz Law was not.
Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
...If the development by the enemy as well as by us of thermonuclear weapons could have been averted, I think we would be in a somewhat safer world today than we are...I do not think we want to argue technical questions here, and I do not think it is very meaningful for me to speculate as to how we would have responded had the technical picture at that time been more as it was later.
However, it is my judgement in these things that when you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you h
It really is a nice theory. The only defect I think it has is probably common to all philosophical theories. It's wrong. You may suspect me of proposing another theory in its place; but I hope not, because I'm sure it's wrong too if it is a theory.
Saul A. Kripke in Naming and Necessity
...The actual developments of society during this period were determined, not by a battle of conflicting ideals, but by the contrast between an existing state of affairs and that one ideal of a possible future society which the socialists alone held up before the public. Very few of the other programs which offered themselves provided genuine alternatives. Most of them were mere compromises or half-way houses between the more extreme types of socialism and the existing order. All that was needed to make almost any socialist proposal appear reasonable to thes
...If we consider an actual territory (a) say, Paris, Dresden, Warsaw, and build up a map (b) in which the order of these cities would be represented as Dresden, Paris, Warsaw; to travel by such a map would be misguiding, wasteful of effort. In case of emergencies, it might be seriously harmful. We could say that such a map was 'not true', or that the map had a structure not similar to the territory (...). We should notice that:
A) A map may have a structure similar ot dissimilar to the structure of the territory.
B) Two similar structures have similar 'logica
People think you speak your own pain because you demand recognition and sympathy or you're playing a victim. Rarely do you realise you speak your pain to save someone else from the demons in their own mind. That's what it's like being a survivor.
-Grace Durbin in The Survivor
The mentality of victim hood and self pity are the worst things that can happen a person. Whether you’ve got a mentall illness, or an offended social justice warrior, islamphobe or racist labeller, or you’re a chansurfing gynophobe or redpiller, it’s better to look at yourself than see hatred in the world.
...The actual developments of society during this period were determined, not by a battle of conflicting ideals, but by the contrast between an existing state of affairs and that one ideal of a possible future society which the socialists alone held up before the public. Very few of the other programs which offered themselves provided genuine alternatives. Most of them were mere compromises or half-way houses between the more extreme types of socialism and the existing order. All that was needed to make almost any socialist proposal appear reasonable to thes
I was early taught to work as well as play, My life has been one long, happy holiday; Full of work and full of play — I dropped the worry on the way — And God was good to me every day.
I do not think that there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature.
-Verses written on his eighty-sixth birthday (8 July 1925)
Another month, another rationality quotes thread. The rules are: