Rationality Quotes October 2011

MinibearRex

Rationality Quotes October 2011 — LessWrong

Comment Permalink

I feel very confident about the first three. Less so about the last two, but I still feel like he generally would agree with them. If that's not the general consensus though, (Judging by the downvotes, it isn't) I'll change the attributions.

This raises an interesting question though: when is it appropriate to attribute it to the author? The most obvious example I can think of would be John Galt's speech in Atlas Shrugged - surely it's reasonable to attribute that to Rand: it's practically a nonfiction essay slapped in the middle of a book. Less ambiguous though: what about the words of a narrator? (I have a quote by Virginia Woolfe that was said by the narrator) Should that be attributed to the author? What if the narrator is a character in the story (Camus, The Plague, another one of my quotes)?

ArisKatsaris15y-10

This raises an interesting question though: when is it appropriate to attribute it to the author?

Never. It's fiction, so you should never attribute a quote from there to a real person. Never, never, never.

5Kaj_Sotala15y

This seems like an obvious case where you should have a policy of always doing X, even if not-X was right most of the time, because not-X will occasionally be wrong and cause harm while there's no harm in doing X. In other words, you should always have a (character, work, author) attribution, or (work, author) if it's said by the narrator. There's no reason to not do it, and an obvious reason why you should do it (because you will be wrong from time to time).

-1JoshuaZ15y

The third quote might be something Eliezer would agree about in the context of Malfoy in particular. The quote in a more general context is much more problematic. How many violent extremist groups would agree that the deaths they cause are sad? I'm not sure Eliezer expects to come to terms with them except in some very abstract far setting after some AGI has implemented some form of CEV or something like that. All the questions you raise can be easily handled by simply quoting all the potentially relevant information. When in doubt, supply more, not less information.

See in context

6

Rationality Quotes October 2011

6

6

6

Rationality Quotes October 2011

6

6