Another monthly installment of the rationality quotes thread. The usual rules apply:
  • 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  • Do not quote yourself.
  • Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, Overcoming Bias, or HPMoR.
  • No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.
Rationality Quotes March 2013
New Comment
343 comments, sorted by Click to highlight new comments since:
Some comments are truncated due to high volume. (⌘F to expand all)Change truncation settings

Remember the exercises in critical reading you did in school, where you had to look at a piece of writing and step back and ask whether the author was telling the whole truth? If you really want to be a critical reader, it turns out you have to step back one step further, and ask not just whether the author is telling the truth, but why he's writing about this subject at all.

-- Paul Graham

[-]satt720

There’s an old saying in the public opinion business: we can’t tell people what to think, but we can tell them what to think about.

— Doug Henwood

6wedrifid
This one is excellent! Thankyou satt! (Almost disappointing that it was 'wasted' as a mere reply.)
8Qiaochu_Yuan
This is one lesson I think The Last Psychiatrist is good at teaching.

It seems to me that The Last Psychiatrist makes up theories about what people really mean according to his mental habits. Is there any way of checking his claims?

7Qiaochu_Yuan
What I've gotten out of reading TLP is not detailed psychological theories so much as suggestions for where to look for hypotheses about why people do what they do, e.g. hypotheses focused on preserving a particular self-image. If I find that looking for such hypotheses helps me predict what people do in the future better than looking for other types of hypotheses, that might be considered evidence that TLP's point of view is a fruitful one.

You know something is important when you're willing to let someone else take the credit if that's what it takes to get it done.

-Seth Godin

A leader is best when people barely know that he exists, not so good when people obey and acclaim him, worst when they despise him. Fail to honor people, They fail to honor you. But of a good leader, who talks little, when his work is done, his aims fulfilled, they will all say, "We did this ourselves."

Tao Te Ching

7lew2048
Harry S. Truman “It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.” ― Harry S. Truman tags: accomplishment, achievement, inspirational, misattributed, modesty, recognition 235 people liked it like Ronald Reagan “There is no limit to the amount of good you can do if you don't care who gets the credit.” ― Ronald Reagan
[-]Pfft110

Cute. :) And someone on Wikiquotes traces it back to

"The way to get things done is not to mind who gets the credit." --Benjamin Jowett (1817-1893)

Somehow it seems appropriate that it's hard to track down the originator of this idea.

4Neotenic
Could we use "threshold for letting someone else take credit" as a signal for altruism?
6ModusPonies
Seems difficult. The people sending this signal are necessarily sending it really quietly. I guess it could be a good way to evaluate someone you know well. It wouldn't work to pick an altruist out of a crowd if you're, say, looking at job applicants.
0foolishcriminalirony
...or something to that effect from someone in Rise and Fall of the Third Reich on the scope and possibilities of national politics. Can't find the quote atm.

On the presentation of science in the news:

It's not that clean energy will never happen -- it totally will. It's just that it won't come from a wild-haired scientist running out of his basement screaming, "Eureka! I've discovered how to get limitless clean energy from common seawater!" Instead, it will come from thousands of scientists publishing unreadable studies with titles like "Assessing Effectiveness and Costs of Asymmetrical Methods of Beryllium Containment in Gen 4 Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors When Factoring for Cromulence Decay." The world will be saved by a series of boring, incremental advances that chip away at those technical challenges one tedious step at a time.

But nobody wants to read about that in their morning Web browsing. We want to read that while we were sleeping, some unlikely hero saved the world. Or at least cured cancer.

David Wong — 5 Easy Ways to Spot a BS News Story on the Internet

I don't understand why we can't simply build an LFTR. I can't find anything online about why we can't just build an LFTR. I get the serious impression that what we need here is like 0.1 wild-haired scientists, 3 wild-haired nuclear engineers, 40 normal nuclear engineers, and sane politicians. And that China has sane politicians but for some reason can't produce, find, or hire the sort of wild-haired engineers who just went ahead and built a molten-salt thorium reactor at Oak Ridge in the 1960s.

9Elithrion
I think looking at politicians as insane is entirely the wrong approach. Most of them are sane enough, they just operate under some perverse incentives (and I wouldn't bet on China's being too reasonable either). That said, allegedly China does have plans for thorium, although I'm not too familiar with the details. (Also, recent article suggesting plans are still going.)
5somervta
Well, that very same Cracked article has this to say: "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LFTR#Disadvantages" Interestingly, that same wiki page possible solutions to most of the disadvantages Personally, I think the biggest reason is that Carter stopped the research decades ago, so there are no actual examples of the technology to evaluate. People thereby assume that because no-one is doing it, it must not be worthwhile.
9Eliezer Yudkowsky
Those are not very impressive disadvantages.
8Sengachi
So far as I can tell, the only insurmountable disadvantage is that you can't use a Thorium reactor to make nuclear bombs. Wait, did I say disadvantage? I meant advantage. Or, well ... are you a politician or an average person? That'll make the difference between advantage and disadvantage.

Considering that politicians get ahead by gaining the approval of their constituents, I'd think that now that America is no longer in an arms race, a politician could probably get ahead by proclaiming support for sustainable nuclear energy which does not have a chance of producing weapons.

Except for where that would mean announcing support for nuclear energy.

[-]MLS120

"Or, well..."

Was that subtle framing intentional?

3adam_strandberg
According to Wikipedia, there are at least 4 groups currently working on LFTRs, one of which is China: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LFTR#Recent_developments
0Eliezer Yudkowsky
Right. They're hiring 150 PhD students and it's still supposed to take 20 years. This seems like a prime instance of the We Can't Do Anything Effect.
2IlyaShpitser
A working LFTR is worth a lot of money. If this is so easy, everyone is missing out on an easy way to get rich.
8Eugine_Nier
In nearly all countries you need a permit to build a nuclear reactor, and said permits are frequently denied for political reasons. Not to mention that the biggest risk of building a nuclear power plant is probably having it shutdown by anti-nuclear activists before you can recoup the cost of building it.
8James_K
That second point is particularly important. Since present governments cannot reliably bind future governments, credibility is a big issue with any politically-sensitive project with a long time horizon.
7Eliezer Yudkowsky
No, the economy is missing out on an easy way to get rich. No one person is missing out on an easy way to get rich. China wants to build LFTRs but can't solve some sort of hiring problem (I have friends who've been offered positions in China, and the Chinese definitely think their academic culture is inferior to Western academic culture, and they appear to be correct). Also I am generally quite willing to believe people are crazy.
3IlyaShpitser
"Coordination problems are hard." Yes, I agree. I don't understand the surprise, though.
0wedrifid
If you are familiar with and agree with the obvious answer then I don't understand why you asked the question.
4IlyaShpitser
I don't understand why you don't understand. Here's the conversation: EY: "I don't understand why we don't do X." me: "If it was so easy, people could make $$$." EY: "Well, it's not easy for individuals." me: "Well, I agree, so why are you wondering why we don't do X?"
1wedrifid
That does make more sense to me, reading the context with a slightly different emphasis here and there. Retracted.
6Izeinwinter
No patents on nuclear physics - If someone proves that LFTR is commercially viable, every reactor vendor will have a model out the year after. Heck players that are currently not in the reactor game at all would likely pile in. This would be a very good thing for the economy and the environment, but it means the incentives are ass-backwards for actually doing this for any actors other than national governments. .. No, lets be honest here: "France, China, India". With a dark horse bet on the Czechs. Those are the only four players likely to cast steel and pour concrete. If you want it done quickly, sell François Hollande on the idea as a way out of the economic mess.
2ChristianKl
Why shouldn't there be anything patentable? If Apple can patent the edges of the iPad why shouldn't there be anything patentable in a LFTR?
2Izeinwinter
The technology is 50 + years old, and all the materials engineering and chemistry work since is in the public literature, because almost all of it has been done on the dime of various publics. If someone implements a MSR and it proves cheap to build and a reliable machine in practice, that is going to involve good engineering and design practice, but absolutely nothing any patent board that is not utterly corrupt would class as a breakthrough. Not to mention that putting up legal barriers to implementation would violate both common practice, and at a minimum the spirit of the NPT.
0ChristianKl
If that's true, what's the core of the uncertainity about whether it's cheap to build and a reliable machine? If all the leg work is done, why do the Chinese think they need 20 years of work to build one?
3Izeinwinter
Noone has built one since the initial prototype - or at least, no one outside black initiatives. That's it. It really should /not/ take 20 years. 20 months, is more like it, if you set sensible design goals. IE: I want an electricity making machine. Anyone who utters the words "High temperature" "Hydrogen Production" or "enhanced proliferation resistance" will be summarily fired. "Reliability" "Safety" and "Simplicity" are our watchwords. . Most research on advanced reactor types turn into exercises in extremely advanced materials science due to goals creep - Trying to make a reactor that can safely operate at a temperature of over 900 degrees celcius genuinely is a 20 year project. It is also fracking pointless - the supply of fuel for a thorium breeder is effectively infinite, maximizing thermodynamic efficiency at the cost of engineering difficulty and complexity is the kind of very special stupid that only ever infests smart people.
0Eugine_Nier
Now that would make a great quote.
2A1987dM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:RaptorHunter/FunFacts#Thorium_reactor

It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.

-- Thomas Sowell

Interesting to contrast the connotation with:

It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who gain nothing from being right.

Or:

It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who have no strong reason to prefer the world in which their decisions are right, over the world in which they are wrong.

7Alejandro1
I think the "pay no price for being wrong" formulation is stronger than the "gain nothing from being right" one because of loss aversion (which makes penalties a stronger incentive), and either is stronger than your second suggestion because of pithiness.

Good points.

My take on it: I'd noticed that "people who pay no price for being wrong" primed ideas of punishment in my mind, not just loss. "People who gain nothing from being right" primed ideas of commerce or professionalism — an engineer gains by being right, as does a military commander, a bettor, a venture capitalist, or the better sort of journalist.

And the third formulation doesn't prime anything but "this sounds like Less Wrong".

1Tuna-Fish
The biggest problem with your first alternative is that in it, not having an opinion is equivalent to being wrong. A lot of the problems with the financial collapse was that various entities and people got to play with the money of other people, with good payouts if they get it right, but no commensurate hit if they got it wrong. While the best outcome is still being right, this kind of situation is bad because it incentivizes taking risk over not taking it. So, a lot of people making those decisions loaded up on as much risk as they could take, ignoring the downsides.

It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way...

I can imagine one easily. Where they have an active incentive to be wrong.

5A1987dM
I dunno -- Yvain here seems to have a good point: [emphasis as in the original]
[-]philh420

"Luck" is useless as a strategy and "Hard work" is mostly useless. Prefer "Discover rules then systematically exploit them."

- patio11

-1itaibn0
I don't think the last one is that useful either. Really, anything that can fit in a twitter is unlikely to be useful. And if someone wants to make useful advice that does, they shouldn't be giving generalised messages that can be applied anywhere, but rather highly specific advice with a narrow target audience.

Really, anything that can fit in a twitter is unlikely to be useful.

I'm afraid this isn't the thread for you!

1itaibn0
Just to be clear, twitter-length messages do have uses in ballast, flammable material, English grammar exercises, signalling wit, quining the message's originator, paper mache, etc. However, patio11 referring to using them as strategies, and here my point stands.
6wedrifid
As does my observation. This is not the thread for you. That would stand even if you were correct that such an enormous amount of data somehow couldn't communicate useful strategic insight.
0soreff
Maxwell's equations fit in roughly 40 characters.
9Qiaochu_Yuan
But the context necessary to interpret what all of the symbols mean and match them to real-world phenomena doesn't. That takes up something like a textbook in electrical engineering.
2faul_sname
If Maxwell's equations were sent back to 1850, they would give useful information absent being sent with a textbook in electrical engineering (because there were people who had that knowledge already). Likewise, you don't have to send a description of modern culture with every tweet, because it's common information to the sender and recipient, and only the contents of the tweet provide new information.
3A1987dM
Actually, I think it'd take more than 140 characters to write out Maxell's equations in 1850 notation. Vector notation was developed by Heaviside towards the end of that century, when Maxell's equations were already known.
0A1987dM
If you use the right notation, even fewer than that.
6b1shop
72 characters.
0itaibn0
The idea that there is no simple solution life's problems is already a widespread meme. Most people won't learn anything from seeing a new formulation of it. As for people interested in giving advice, they rarely use twitter as their exclusive or even as their primary means of communication, but rather as an adjunct to some more thorough explanation. Indeed, without my caveat this message could be harmful to both givers and receivers of advice.
2JoachimSchipper
patio11 is something of a "marketing engineer", and his target audience is young software enthusiasts (Hacker News). What makes you think that this isn't pretty specific advice for a fairly narrow audience?

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

-- George Bernard Shaw

6RobinZ
Related: Wiio's laws.
4gwern
And http://lesswrong.com/lw/ki/double_illusion_of_transparency/
3Qiaochu_Yuan
Hmm. I think I know what you meant to convey by linking to that, but... do I really?
5gwern
--Frank Herbert, "The Tactful Saboteur"
[-][anonymous]370

It should be said about things that appear to work because of confirmation bias.

"I once received a letter from an eminent logician, Mrs. Christine Ladd-Franklin, saying that she was a solipsist, and was surprised that there were no others. Coming from a logician and a solipsist, her surprise surprised me.”

Bertrand Russell

I was the only student in my high school graduating class that wasn't unique.

3Kawoomba
Works for a class size of 1, in a way.
8blacktrance
Solipsism is my problem and mine alone.

“Anything left on your bucket list?”

“Not dying...”

-Bill Gates in his AMA on reddit.

[-][anonymous]170

I wrote an email to Bill Gates after reading his answer. I suggested that he should invest in anti-ageing research and/or cryonics. Ageing is a disease that afflicts everybody, and I think it would be a far better use of his money if he pledges financial support for anti-ageing research than if he continues pouring funding into curing malaria.

In addition, he has enough clout to motivate more people to take anti-ageing seriously instead of dismissing it as wishful thinking.

0John_Maxwell
Well, Larry Ellison is also pretty rich.
-1DanielLC
Your bucket list is the things you do before you die. Literally everything you do before you die is not dying.

Yes, but only literally.

0Neotenic
Isn't a Bucket List, literally, the list of things you want to do before dying but were unlikely to do prior to establishing your bucket list? (regardless of whether you became likely to now)
1magfrump
I don't think of it as having the connotation of things on it being unlikely. For example, you could put "go to Hawaii" on your bucket list and then expect to go for your next vacation. A to-do list isn't for things you're unlikely to do, it's for things you don't want to forget.
0Qiaochu_Yuan
The phrase was "unlikely to do prior to establishing your bucket list," e.g. you might have always wanted to go to Hawaii but constantly procrastinated on it and/or constantly told yourself you don't have the money.
0magfrump
Say I want to go to Hawaii, I plan to go to Hawaii over the summer, but if I don't write it down there's a 10% chance I'll forget to get tickets at the right time and it will be too expensive. I'm 90% likely to go to Hawaii, but I would still think it appropriate to put it on a to do list, and raise the probability to 99%. My phrasing above was unclear, though. What I meant was, one could put "go to Hawaii" on one's bucket list even if one already planned to go to Hawaii for one's next vacation.
1Jotto999
I find this to be like saying to someone with cancer "Don't bother with treatment, you aren't dead yet". A bucket list is for plans and actions, not attributes inherent to existing in the first place. Other commenters have said that it is more about things you may not have done without having it on the bucket list for a reminder or incentive. In this case, we can reasonably expect Gates meant putting effort into avoiding death, not "I was immortal, but now feel like trying to win the Hardcore Mode Bucket List challenge.

The world of the manager is one of problems and opportunities. Problems are to be managed; one must understand the nature of the problem, amass resources adequate to deal with it, and "work the problem" on an ongoing basis.[...] But what if the problem can be fixed? This is not the domain of the manager.

An engineer believes most problems have solutions. The engineer isn't interested in building an organisation to cope with the problem. [...] And yet the engineer's faith in fixes often blinds him to the fact that many problems, especially those involving people, don't have the kind of complete permanent solutions he seeks.

-- John Walker, The Hacker's Diet (~loc 250 on an e-reader)

I remember asking a wise man, once,

'Why do men fear the dark?'

'Because darkness' he told me, 'is ignorance made visible.'

'And do men despise ignorance?', I asked.

'No!', he said, 'they prize it above all things - all things! - but only so long as it remains invisible.'

– R. Scott Bakker: The Judging Eye

0Neotenic
When Lennon remarked that "Ignorance is bliss", should he have said "Unknown unknowns, except for knightian uncertainty, are bliss"?

...these things are possible. And because they're possible we have to think of them so they don't surprise us later. We have to think of them so that if the worst does come, we'll already know how to live in that universe.

-- Miro, in Xenocide by Orson Scott Card

8Viliam_Bur
I assume "possible" in this context means "with probability higher than epsilon". Otherwise, there are too many possible things not worth thinking about.
2Alicorn
Right.
1Neotenic
Socially a higher threshold should play a role than the above epsilon. There are things that are so low in probability (though much higher than epsilon) that establishing a contract/agreement on what should both of you do if they happen is deleterious for the relationship. Such as when a couple who thinks they disagree about abortion asks: What should we do if the condom and pill don't work? The probability is not so low. But the fight is too costly.
2Eugine_Nier
It'll be even more costly to have the fight after the wife gets pregnant.
[-][anonymous]230

"If you don't know what you want," the doorman said, "you end up with a lot you don't."

― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

[-]TimS220

Any positive social quality -- looks, smarts, cash, power, whatever -- makes people want to compete for your attention. Some of these people are going to be assholes operating under the mistaken impression that you are a vending machine, and that if they feed you enough suck-up coins, you will dispense whatever it is they want. If you have no idea that you have Quality X that they want from you, then you have no chance of figuring out that the reason they're getting so overbearing is that you're not giving them all the X they think they deserve. People can get remarkably angry when you don't give them the thing you have no idea they're asking for. And then they get angrier if you try to tell them you're confused.

Arabella Flynn

On consciousness:

"Forget about minds," he told her. "Say you've got a device designed to monitor—oh, cosmic rays, say. What happens when you turn its sensor around so it's not pointing at the sky anymore, but at its own guts?"

He answered himself before she could: "It does what it's built to. It measures cosmic rays, even though it's not looking at them any more. It parses its own circuitry in terms of cosmic-ray metaphors, because those feel right, because they feel natural, because it can't look at things any other way. But it's the wrong metaphor. So the system misunderstands everything about itself. Maybe that's not a grand and glorious evolutionary leap after all. Maybe it's just a design flaw."

-- Blindsight, by Peter Watts

9MugaSofer
If it treats everything it sees as a cosmic-ray, it's a pretty terrible cosmic-ray sensor.
4Endovior
Not necessarily. Cosmic rays are just electromagnetic energy on particular (high) frequencies. So if it interprets everything along those lines, it's just seeing everything purely in terms of the EM spectrum... in other words 'normal, uninteresting background case, free of cosmic rays'. So things that don't trigger high enough to be cosmic rays, like itself, parse as meaningless random fluctuations... presumably, if it was 'intelligent', it would think that it existed for no reason, as a matter of random chance, like any other case of background radiation below the threshold of cosmic rays, without losing any ability to perceive or understand cosmic rays.
-2MugaSofer
Scanning itself and saying "nope, nothing to see here", that's one thing. Scanning itself and saying "well, this is basically cosmic rays, only at a lower frequency ..." is closer to what the quote describes.

Popular evopsych, summed up: "Men and women are different. Humans and chimps are the same."

Cliff Pervocracy

This seems to me a form of equivocation: "different" as used in the first sentence and "the same" as used in the second sentence are not opposites. The context is different; the intended meaning (insofar as any evo-psychologists actually make such claims) is something like this:

"Men and women are more different, on average, than men and other men, and certainly more different than (some? most?) people think. The difference is sufficiently large that we cannot indiscriminately apply psychological principles and results across genders."

"Humans and chimps are closer than (some? most?) people think; in fact, sufficiently close that we can apply unexpectedly many psychological principles and results across these two species."

I don't know of anyone (even in "popular" evo-psych) who endorses the view implied in the quote, which I suppose would be something like:

"Humans are chimps are less different from each other than men and women."

In short, I think the quote mocks a strawman.

2MugaSofer
Here's how I parsed it: "You can better extrapolate from a chimp to a human, of the same gender, than from a human to another human of a different gender." To be fair, most pop evopsych is extrapolating from imaginary details of caveman behavior rather than actual chimp behavior.
9wedrifid
Flamboyant straw men do not belong in the Rationality Quotes thread. Cliff is clearly not accurately describing reality. Popular evopsych doesn't say that. It doesn't matter how irrational the opponents who are being criticised are, bullshit is still bullshit.
5MugaSofer
It's worth noting that LWers may have more exposure to real evopsych relative to popular evopsych. I for one had despared of ever finding rational evopsych before discovering this site. Pop evopsych is incredibly bad.
3Nornagest
Pop evopsych may very well be incredibly bad (I wouldn't know myself, as I've been exposed to very little of it). But if a quote doesn't have any instructive value beyond making fun of bad ideas -- as opposed to more general biases, and even there I'm leery of the "making fun" bit -- I'm not sure it belongs here. Particularly if they're also politically sensitive ideas. I wouldn't, for example, consider clever attacks on religion to be shiningly rational.
-2MugaSofer
As a theist, I would have to agree with you there ;) People like wit, though, so witty defense of rational positions garners upvotes regardless of intrinsic rationality.
1Nornagest
I think there's a distinction that could be made between defense of rational positions and attacks on particular irrational ones. Reversed stupidity, etc.
-4MugaSofer
Arguments are soldiers, remember?
0mwengler
The quote is instructive to those of us trying to develop an integrated and rational view of evo psych. In my case, I DO see a lot of compelling material on how women are different from men, and I DO see a lot of compelling material on how humans are like other primates and even mammals. The quote brings me up short: do I have the sex differences within species properly "weighted" in my thinking compared to across-species similarities? Or do I switch between my microscope and my telescope paying attention only to what I am seeing, forgetting which instrument I am using to look?
-6TimS
4TraderJoe
Can you add a NSFW disclaimer?
4TimS
Much more from the same author.
0MugaSofer
Why on earth was this downvoted? Upvoted back to neutral. It's relevant and useful, to the extent the quote is useful.
4wedrifid
I haven't downvoted the grandparent, but I'm reading this as an argument that perhaps I ought to!
2TimS
Ha! That's my interpretation as well.
-2MugaSofer
I must admit, I was rather banking on that quote being representative ;)
3A1987dM
IIRC, a few years ago I was watching the news on TV and they mentioned that a study had found that “females are more [something] than males”. But it turned out that the females in the study were a different species of great apes than the males (neither of which human). (I hope I just dreamt of it, or am misremembering it, or something.)

Wenn der Hahn kräht auf dem Mist, dann ändert sich das Wetter, oder es bleibt wie es ist.

(When the rooster crows on the dungheap, then the weather will change, or stay as it is)

-- German weather lore / farmers' rule

9Alejandro1
Repeat.

I... believe the experimentalists when they say the world works in a completely different way than I thought it did... All I want to know is: What went wrong with my intuition? How should I fix it, to put it more in line with what the experiments found? How could I have reasoned, such that the actual behavior of the world wouldn't have surprised me so much?

Scott Aaronson

0A1987dM
Sometimes, though, the intuition is right and the experiments are wrong (watch from 01:20).

The roulette table pays nobody except him that keeps it. Nevertheless a passion for gaming is common, though a passion for keeping roulette tables is unknown.

--George Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutionists

2Qiaochu_Yuan
I think people would keep roulette tables more, so to speak, in the US if gambling weren't so heavily regulated here.

To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.

--Ursula K. Le Guin {Lord Estraven}, The Left Hand of Darkness

[-]gwern160

If someone does not believe in fairies, he does not need to teach his children 'There are no fairies'; he can omit to teach them the word 'fairy'.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Zettel § 413; via "Fable of The Born-Blind-People"

(Gb rkcerff guvf va zber YJl wnetba: vs lbh qvq abg nyernql xabj gur jbeq be pbaprcg snvel, jung bofreingvbaf jbhyq cevivyrtr gur fcrpvsvp ulcbgurfvf bs 'snvevrf' gb gur cbvag jurer vg jbhyq orpbzr n frevbhf cbffvovyvgl? Ubj znal ovgf jbhyq gung gnxr naq jurer jbhyq lbh trg gurz, nfvqr sebz gur zrqvn naq bgure crbcyr'f cebqhpgf?)

As long as others know and believe in such concepts, it is important that your child learns about them from a trustworthy source, before being introduced to such concepts by fairy-believers.

As long as others know and believe in such concepts, it is important that your child learns about them from a trustworthy source, before being introduced to such concepts by fairy-believers.

This is especially the case if the message is generalized. That is, if the well meaning but naive parent tries to keep their children ignorant of all things bullshit. They are deprived key critical thinking skills and the ability to comfortably interact (and reject) nonsense beliefs that will be thrust on them.

5Eliezer Yudkowsky
That's what Santa Claus is for.
0wedrifid
I'm almost certain you didn't intent to imply that Santa Claus does not belong in the category "all things bullshit" yet it seems to be the only meaning that makes the parent fit the context.
4Qiaochu_Yuan
I think Eliezer means that telling children about Santa Claus is a good opportunity for them to practice critical thinking skills etc.
0wedrifid
Yes, obviously. And him doing so indicates that he did not read what he was responding to. Because the elimination that practice due to the enforced deprivation of Santa Claus (and all other bullshit in that class) is precisely the downside that the preceding comment laments. (If the problem is "All things starting with 'a' have disappeared" the solution is not "that is what apples are for". That makes no sense.)

I don't see how you're disagreeing with Eliezer about anything. As far as I can tell, you both think it's a good idea to teach children about nonsense as an exercise in critical thinking. Eliezer thinks Santa Claus is a good example of this. Have I misrepresented your position or your interpretation of Eliezer's position here?

4BlazeOrangeDeer
Down voted for unnecessary rot13
6tgb
More importantly IMO than it being unnecessary is that there is no indication of what is going to be behind the rot31 so I don't know whether it's safe to rot13 or not. The first sentence would be best left in plain-text.
-4gwern
For rationality quotes where the meaning is opaque, I like to include an exegesis; but I don't want to make the exegesis trivial to read because then people won't think about it for themselves. I'm sorry if you don't like that.
-4Jayson_Virissimo
Ab lbh ner abg.
-8gwern
3wedrifid
There are downsides to keeping one's children sheltered. Eventually they are going to encounter the rest of the world.
2Eugine_Nier
The same place the belief in fairies originally came from. Humans' tendency to anthropomorphize.
[-]gwern120

Humans tend to anthropomorphize, but this is filtered through cultural beliefs and forms - you do not get a highly specific concept like 'fairies' out of a general anthropomorphization, any more than people got Dracula out of their fear of the dark pre-Bram Stoker. I've linked studies here on what children believe and anthropomorphize by default, and it tends to look like 'other people and animals continue to exist even after dying'; not 'the Unseelie and Seelie folk live in hills and if you visit them, be sure to not eat any of their food or you will be their prisoner for a century'.

Luck, when it's regular, it's called skill. (Il culo, quando è sistematico, si chiama classe)

Nereo Rocco

(I tried a rough tranlsation, but it sounds way better in Italian)

3wedrifid
I like this translation better than the version where it was translated to 'class'. Good change. (Unless my memory is failing me...)
4Cthulhoo
I modified the post after less than five minutes... are you spying on me? ;) Thank you, preserving the feeling, alongside the literal meaning, while translating in a foreign language can be surprisingly difficult (for me, at least).

You can't possibly get a good technology going without an enormous number of failures. It's a universal rule. If you look at bicycles, there were thousands of weird models built and tried before they found the one that really worked. You could never design a bicycle theoretically. Even now, after we've been building them for 100 years, it's very difficult to understand just why a bicycle works – it's even difficult to formulate it as a mathematical problem. But just by trial and error, we found out how to do it, and the error was essential.

-- Freeman Dyson