It seemed rather short
Misao Okawa, the world's oldest person, when asked "how she felt about living for 117 years."
One kid said to me, “See that bird? What kind of bird is that?” I said, “I haven’t the slightest idea what kind of a bird it is.” He says, “It’s a brown-throated thrush (or something). Your father doesn’t teach you anything!” But it was the opposite. My father had taught me, looking at a bird, he says, “Do you know what that bird is? It’s a brown-throated thrush. But in Portuguese, it’s a Bom da Peida; in Italian, a Chutto Lapittida." He says, "In Chinese, it’s a Chung-long-tah, and in Japanese, it’s a Katano Tekeda, et cetera." He says, "Now you know all the languages you want to know what the name of that bird is, and when when you’re finished with all that," he says, "you’ll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird. You’ll only know about humans in different places, and what they call the bird. Well," he says, "let’s look at the bird and what it’s doing."
--Richard Feynman, source. Full video (The above passage happens at about the 7:00 mark in the full version.)
N.B. The transcript provided differs slightly from the video. I have followed the video.
Related to: Replace the Symbol with the Substance
Feynman knew physics but he didn't know ornithology. When you name a bird, you've actually identified a whole lot of important things about it. It doesn't matter whether we call a Passer domesticus a House Sparrow or an English Sparrow, but it is really useful to be able to know that the male and females are the same species, even though they look and sound quite different; and that these are not all the same thing as a Song Sparrow or a Savannah Sparrow. It is useful to know that Fox Sparrows are all Fox Sparrows, even though they may look extremely different depending on where you find them.
Assigning consistent names to the right groups of things is colossally important to biology and physics. Not being able to name birds for an ornithologist would be like a physicist not being able to say whether an electron and a positron are the same thing or not. Again it doesn't matter which kind of particle we call electron and which we call positron (arguably Ben Franklin screwed up the names there by guessing wrong about the direction of current flow) but it matters a lot that we always call electrons electrons and positrons positrons. Similarly it's important for a chemist to know that Helium 3 and Helium 4 are both Helium and not two different things (at least as far as chemistry and not nuclear physics is concerned).
Names are useful placeholders for important classifications and distinctions.
Feynman knew physics but he didn't know ornithology. When you name a bird, you've actually identified a whole lot of important things about it.
I think Feynman's point was that a name is meaningful if you already know the other information. I can memorize a list of names of North American birds, but at the end I'll have learned next to nothing about them. I can also spend my days observing birds and learn a lot without knowing any of their names.
Assigning consistent names to the right groups of things is colossally important to biology and physics.
I don't think anyone will disagree with this. The hard part, though, is properly setting up the groups in the first place. Good classification systems took years (or centuries) of work and refinement to become the systems we take for granted today.
Not being able to name birds for an ornithologist would be like a physicist not being able to say whether an electron and a positron are the same thing or not.
Feynman has been quoted elsewhere criticizing students for parroting physics terminology without having the least idea of what they're actually talking about. There's the anecdote about students who knew all about the laws of refraction but failed to identify water as a medium with a refractive index.
[Transcript from video, hence long and choppy]
...I think the way the battle lines are drawn in the world we live in, the battle lines typically fall in terms of 'what are your conclusions?' Like: are you a republican; are you a democrat; are you a libertarian; are you a socialist? And the more I think about it, this strikes me as extremely odd.
Why should the battle lines be drawn in terms of conclusions? Another way of drawing the battle lines would be, say, in terms of how people think. So if I take someone like Matt [Yglesias?], who's one of the commenters - I read Matt's blog all the time. Matt, I think, would agree that he and I disagree on a lot of issues. Not on everything, but we disagree a lot. We disagree every day. We sort of write back and forth to each other and to others, and even if we don't call each other by name, we're, like, disagreeing in public every day.
But at the same time when I read Matt I have this feeling like 'if I were a progressive, this is the argument I would make'. I feel that way when I read Matt. There's other writers, like when I read Paul Krugman, I don't feel that way. I don't think if I were progressive I would argue like Paul Krugman.
So this me
Why should the battle lines be drawn in terms of conclusions?
Suppose I agree with someone's conclusion, and disagree with them on the method used to reach that conclusion. Are we political allies, or enemies? That is, of course "politics" is the answer to 'why should the battle lines be drawn this way?'
Now, for Tyler as a pundit, the answer is different. Staying in an intellectual realm where he thinks like the other people around him makes it so any disagreements are interesting and intelligible.
This is sort of related to what Scott argues in "In Favor Of Niceness, Community, And Civilization".
your political allies are those whose actions support your goals and your political enemies are those whose actions hurt your goals.
! That's not how other humans interpret "alliance," and using language like that is a recipe for social disaster. This is a description of convenience. Allies are people that you will sacrifice for and they will sacrifice for you. The NAACP may benefit from the existence of Stormfront, but imagine the fallout from a fundraising letter that called them the NAACP's allies!
Whether or not someone is an ally or an enemy depends on the context. As the saying goes, "I against my brother, and I and my brother against my cousins, I and my brother and my cousins against the world"--the person that has the same preferences as you, and thus competes with you for the same resources, is potentially an enemy in the local scope but is an ally in broader scopes.
One problem is that most people think we are always in the short run. No matter how many times you teach students that tight money raises rates in the short run (liquidity effect) and lowers them in the long run (income and Fisher effects), when the long run actually comes around they will still see the fall in interest rates as ECB policy "easing". And this is because most people think the term "short run" is roughly synonymous with "right now." It's not. Actually "right now" we see the long run effects of policies done much earlier. We are not in an eternal short run. That's the real problem with Keynes's famous "in the long run we are all dead."
Nothing is more dangerous than an idea if it's the only one you have.
-- Émile Auguste Chartier, Propos sur la religion, 1938
Because it is often easy to detect the operation of motivated belief formation in others, we tend to disbelieve the conclusions reached in this way, without pausing to see whether the evidence might in fact justify them. Until around 1990 I believed, with most of my friends, that on a scale of evil from 0 to 10 (the worst), Communism scored around 7 or 8. Since the recent revelations I believe that 10 is the appropriate number. The reason for my misperception of the evidence was not an idealistic belief that Communism was a worthy ideal that had been betrayed by actual Communists. In that case, I would simply have been victim of wishful thinking or self-deception. Rather, I was misled by the hysterical character of those who claimed all along that Communism scored 10. My ignorance of their claims was not entirely irrational. On average, it makes sense to discount the claims of the manifestly hysterical. Yet even hysterics can be right, albeit for the wrong reasons. Because I sensed and still believe that many of these fierce anti-Communists would have said the same regardless of the evidence, I could not believe that what they said did in fact correspond to the evidence. I made the mistake of thinking of them as a clock that is always one hour late rather than as a broken clock that shows the right time twice a day.
Jon Elster, Explaining Social Behavior: More Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences, Cambridge, 2007, pp. 136-137, n. 16
I just realized what bothers me about this quote. It seems boil down to Elster trying to admit that he was wrong without having to give credit to those who were right.
Realistic goals do not need a lot of dream investment but rather time and effort and it is safe to invest dreams in unrealistic ones.
I think this is factually untrue. It seems to me that time and effort investment follows dream investment, for basic psychological reasons.
When I have read Eliezer's mis-investment of emotions argument it came accross to me an elitistic Bay Area upper middle class thing.
I think that's because you misread it, or you're identifying correct financial attitudes with being upper middle class and throwing in the rest of the descriptions for free. Here's the part where he talks about mechanisms:
If not for the lottery, maybe they would fantasize about going to technical school, or opening their own business, or getting a promotion at work—things they might be able to actually do, hopes that would make them want to become stronger.
Going to technical school is not an "elitistic Bay Area upper middle class thing." Yes, later he talks about dot-com startups doing IPOs, but the vast majority of new businesses started are things like barbershops and restaurants, and people go to technical school to learn how to repair air conditioning systems, ...
You shouldn't give credit or discredit directly for correctness of predictions, if you have information about how those predictions were made. If you saw someone make their guess at tomorrow's Dow Jones figure by rolling dice, you don't then credit them with any extra stock-market expertise when it happens that their guess was on the nose; they just got lucky. (Though if they do it ten times in a row you may start to suspect that they have both stock-market expertise and skill in manipulating dice.)
Someone else follows the citation trail and claims the source thinks the actual number is lower:
households with an income of less than $10 000 spend, on average, approximately 3% of their income on the lottery.
Upvoted for checking claims :-)
The link actually says that he cannot find the original source for the 9% number, but in the process found a 3% number.
I'll dig around for better numbers if I have time, but we can also look at significance from the other end:
State lotteries have become a significant source of revenue for the states, raising $17.6 billion in profits for state budgets in the 2009 fiscal year (FY) with 11 states collecting more revenue from their state lottery than from their state corporate income tax during FY2009.
P.S. An interesting paper. Notable quotes:
...The introduction of a state lottery is associated with a decline of $115 per quarter in household non-gambling consumption. This figure implies a monthly reduction of $23 in per-adult consumption, which compares to average monthly sales of $18 per lottery-state adult. The response is most pronounced for low-income households, which on average reduce non-gambling consumption by three percent. Among households in the lowest income third of the CEX sample, the data demonstrate a statistically significant reduction in expenditures on food eaten in the home (3.1 percent) and on home mortgage, rent, and o
It's also not always good advice. Sometimes you should just satisfice. Chess is often one of these times, as you have a clock. If you see something that wins a rook, and spend the rest of your time trying to win a queen, you're not going to win the game.
Always take into consideration the fact that you might be dead wrong
--Sam Vimes, Jingo, Terry Pratchett
The vanity of teaching often tempteth a Man to forget he is a Blockhead.
George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax, Political, Moral and Miscellaneous Reflections
The mistakes are there, waiting to be made.
Savielly Tartakower, on the starting position in chess. Source.
You cannot change and yet remain the same, though this is what most people want.
The specific context of that is in changing bad habits; the only way to improve is to do something different. Typically people would rather keep doing the same thing, but with better consequences.
Having got on well by adopting a certain line of conduct, it is impossible to persuade men that they can get on well by acting otherwise. It thus comes about that a man's fortune changes, for she changes his circumstances but he does not change his ways.
-Niccolo Machiavelli, The Discourses
Any model makes some inaccurate predictions but models can retain utility despite significant propensities for inaccuracy. Inaccurate predictions aid the choice of models for future predictions. Because of this, the central scientific problem in the computational study of the MBH mechanism is not the inaccuracy of the predictions. Rather, it is the absence of any particular prediction at all.
--R. Erik Plata and Daniel A. Singleton, A Case Study of the Mechanism of Alcohol-Mediated Morita Baylis-Hillman Reactions. The Importance of Experimental Observations.
"The danger in trying to do good is that the mind comes to confuse the intent of goodness with the act of doing things well."
When writing the history, the writer is sitting outside the time, in Olympian detachment, surveying what was said and done, with the knowledge of what overhyped fads will fall by the wayside, and what ignored actions will prove to be crucial. He hasn't got that for the present era; the writer is still meshed in the circumstances that lead to the hyping and the ignoring. Not to mention that he is very likely to be a partisan in the matter -- most who write histories of a thing are passionately attached to the thing itself. Which can also lead to a shocking change in tone in the last chapter too, as the calm recitation of facts gives way to the sound of axes grinding, even if the writer manages to make interesting observations.
The irony is that anyone who's done the history of things will have read, in his research, many, many, many writers making idiots of themselves because they do not realize they are enmeshed in their era, and yet this does not stop doing the same thing over again.
"Politics selects for people who see the world in black and white, then rage at all the darkness" -- Megan McArdle
Anger is an evolutionary strategy that helps us deal with threats. It focuses our mind on the target, suppresses our fear and drives us to attack.
Anger is not evolution's answer to generic "threats." You don't get angry at the saber-toothed tiger charging you. Rather, it is a response to threats to social cohesion. People who break the rules make us angry even when they don't directly harm us. It's why people find themselves yelling at pedestrians who cross against the light even when the delay to the driver is a matter of seconds.
That's why politicians are angry: because they are trying to artificially create a sense of social cohesion in their coalition of voters.
Rob Lyman, in a discussion of why so many politicians have an angry persona.
You don't get angry at the saber-toothed tiger charging you.
The what? Rob never stubbed a toe in the dark and then launched an angry tirade on the offending piece of furniture?
The number of times I told my first, very bad car to eat a bag o' penises is, well, high.
And there is the saying that programmers know the language of swearing best - many bugs make one angry, not angry at something clear, just angry. Angry at the situation in general. Like why the eff had this had to happen to me when I need to run this script before I can go home? Aaargh. That kind of thing.
Your examples merely serve to reinforce the notion that what makes us angry is people breaking the (possibly unwritten) rules or violating social cohesion.
That clashes with my introspection, unlike DeVliegendeHollander's account. When I stub my toe in the dark and start swearing, my thoughts are not anything to do with social rules or their violation (at least not at a conscious level); typically no one else is around, no other person enters my mind, and I'm just annoyed that I'm unnecessarily experiencing pain, and that annoyance doesn't feel like it has a moral element to it. It feels like a straightforward reaction to unexpected, benefit-free pain.
Sounds rather forced to me. How about a simpler hypothesis that anger is frustration, the expression of the bad feelings coming from expectations not being fulfilled?
But, above all, there is the conviction that the pursuit of truth, whether in the minute structure of the atom or in the vast system of the stars, is a bond transcending human differences.
-- Arthur Eddington, "The Future of International Science", as quoted in An Expedition to Heal the Wounds of War: the 1919 Eclipse Expedition and Eddington as Quaker Adventurer
Gordon [Tullock] was on my dissertation committee. After reading all 252 pages of my dissertation within twelve hours of my submitting it, Gordon caught me in the Public Choice hallway at Virginia Tech to give me his assessment: "Minimal but acceptable." To which I replied, "Optimal. Done!"
-- Richard McKenzie, quoted on Econlog
Related engineer joke: "anybody can build a bridge that won’t collapse–but it takes a real engineer to build a bridge that just barely avoids collapse."
As to a "science" of human conduct, I have mentioned some difficulties, notably that one of the most distinctive traits of man is make-believe, hypocrisy, concealment, dissimulation, deception. He is the clothes-wearing animal, but the false exterior he gives to his body is nothing to that put on by his mind.
Frank Knight, "The Role of Principles in Economics and Politics" p.11
Probably not found anywhere online, my favorite college professor, Ernest N. Roots, used to say, " Things that are simply remarkable, become remarkably simple, once they are understood". This has been my personal defense against arguments from ignorance ever since.
I am a scientist, albeit the most junior kind of scientist, and I reckon "science" can legitimately refer to a set of answers or a methodology or an institution.
I doubt anyone in this thread would object if I called a textbook compiling scientific discoveries a "science textbook". I'm not sure even Taleb would blink at that (if it were in a low-stakes context, not in the midst of a heated argument).
Eric S. Raymond: "Interesting human behavior tends to be overdetermined."
Example sources:
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=4213
I didn't understand this quote out of context so I followed one of the links and he explains it in this comment:
It's something I learned from animal ethology. An "overdetermined" behavior is one for which there are multiple sufficient explanations. To unpack: "For every interesting behavior of animals and humans there is more than one valid and sufficient causal theory." Evolution likes overdetermined behaviors; they serve multiple functions at once.
Of all the causes which conspire to blind
Man's erring judgment, and misguide the mind,
What the weak head with strongest bias rules,
Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools.
-Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism
Facts push other facts into and then out of consciousness at speeds that neither permit nor require evaluation.
Neil Postman from Amusing ourselves to Death, p 70
Suppose I think, after doing my accounts, that I have a large balance at the bank. And suppose you want to find out whether this belief of mine is "wishful thinking." You can never come to any conclusion by examining my psychological condition. Your only chance of finding out is to sit down and work through the sum yourself.
-- C. S. Lewis
History teaches us, gentlemen, that great generals remain generals by never underestimating their opposition.
Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna: The Alamo: Thirteen Days to Glory (1987) (TV)
The history of human thought would make it seem that there is difficulty in thinking of an idea even when all the facts are on the table.
--Isaac Asimov, "How Do People Get New Ideas?"
Social problems are not only hard but finally insoluble. Yet many of them will inevitably get some kind of "treatment"; it is a question of better or worse, or of making things better, more or less, or making them worse than before, even to downright disaster. As I remember hearing "Tommy" Adams say in a classroom, we must not call any problems insoluble which must be solved in some way and for which some solutions are better, or worse, than others.
Frank Knight, "The Role of Principles in Economics and Politics" p.19
His cla...
I never was good at learning things. I did just enough work to pass. In my opinion it would have been wrong to do more than was just sufficient, so I worked as little as possible.
Manfred von Richthofen
Scott Adams posted his "My best tweets" collection. About half of them are examples of instrumental rationality in action, and most are worth a laugh. Some of my favorites from the Arguing with Idiots section are in the repiies.
This is Hari's business. She takes innocuous ingredients and makes you afraid of them by pulling them out of context.... Hari's rule? "If a third grader can't pronounce it, don't eat it." My rule? Don't base your diet on the pronunciation skills of an eight-year-old.
From http://gawker.com/the-food-babe-blogger-is-full-of-shit-1694902226
[S]tupidity is one of two things we see most clearly in retrospect. The other is missed chances.
Stephen King, 11/22/63
“My gripe is not with lovers of the truth but with truth herself. What succor, what consolation is there in truth, compared to a story? What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney? When the lightning strikes shadows on the bedroom wall and the rain taps at the window with its long fingernails? No. When fear and cold make a statue of you in your bed, don't expect hard-boned and fleshless truth to come running to your aid. What you need are the plump comforts of a story. The soothing, rocking safety of a ...
The Bible says that God made the world in six days. Great Uncle Charles thinks it took longer: but we need not worry about it, for it is equally wonderful either way
-- Margaret Vaughan Williams
[F]ingertips without maps are empty; maps without fingertips are blind.
-- Paul Churchland, chapter 2 of Plato's Camera
I know a man who, when I ask him what he knows, asks me for a book in order to point it out to me, and wouldn't dare tell me that he has an itchy backside unless he goes immediately and studies in his lexicon what is itchy and what is a backside.
-Montaigne, On Pedantry
This argument also relies on a ridiculous definition of rational.
Whilst rational economic actors do attempt to maximise their profit, the argument ignores that this takes place in the context of varying time windows. In effect it argues that it’s “rational” to take a tiny increase in profit today even if that destroys your business and all the potential long term profits you could obtain tomorrow and the day after. This definition is absurd and no actual business works that way.
Mike Hearn, Replace by Fee, a Counter Argument
"Politics selects for people who see the world in black and white, then rage at all the darkness" -- Megan McArdle
Which people do you mean with that?
Politicians might talk in terms of black and white to appeal to voters but most of them don't think that way.
Another month, another rationality quotes thread. The rules are: