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Rationality Quotes - April 2009

by Eliezer Yudkowsky1 min read18th Apr 2009144 comments

15

A monthly thread for posting any interesting rationality-related quotes you've seen recently on the Internet, or had stored in your quotesfile for ages.

Please post all quotes separately (so that they can be voted up (or down) separately) unless they are strongly related/ordered.
Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB - if we do this, there should be a separate thread for it.
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.

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[-]Rune13y 34

Sheldon: "More wrong?" Wrong is an absolute state and not subject to gradation.

Stuart: Of course it is. It's a little wrong to call a tomato a vegetable; it's very wrong to say it's a suspension bridge.

-- The Big Bang Theory

[-]Eliezer Yudkowsky13y 33

Correlation doesn't imply causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing 'look over there'.

-- Randall Munroe

3[anonymous]13y

s/Monroe/Munroe/ (Tried valiantly but unsuccessfully to make that link to http://xkcd.com/about/ [http://xkcd.com/about/].)

1[anonymous]13y

Done.

[-]Scott Alexander13y 30

If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world, and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.

-- E. B. White

2sark11y

Ah, the investment-or-consumption conundrum.

[-]gjm13y 27

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

Aristotle

2pangloss13y

That is an interesting contrast with Spinoza's view that all ideas enter the mind as beliefs, and that mere apprehension is achieved by diminishing something about the idea believed.

5gjm13y

I don't think it's a contrast. The point is that it takes practice to do the necessary diminishing. Spinoza was ahead of his time: there's more recent psychological research confirming that when you hear a statement -- even if the context makes it clear that no one is seriously telling you it's true -- the effect is to make you believe it more; and that this effect is stronger if you're having to use more of your brain for some other task at the same time. I forget all the details, but I think there was some discussion of this on Overcoming Bias 6-18 months ago (90% confidence interval).

1pangloss13y

Oh, that's a good point. I was assuming Aristotle was commending people who could hear it without coming to believe it, but it could easily be that he is commending people who diminish their belief rapidly, and acquire a state of mere apprehension.

[-]Eliezer Yudkowsky13y 27

You cannot improve the world just by being right.

-- Confusion, Why functional programming doesn't catch on

[-]Pablo13y 25

I wish to propose for the reader’s favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true.

Bertrand Russell, ‘Introduction’, in Sceptical Essays, London, 1928

[-]gjm13y 23

Most things are, in fact, slippery slopes. And if you start backing off from one thing because it's a slippery slope, who knows where you'll stop?

Sean M Burke

[-]Furcas13y 22

When two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong.

-- Richard Dawkins

[-]Vladimir_Nesov13y 17

One disadvantage of having a little intelligence is that one can invent myths out of his own imagination, and come to believe them. Wild animals, lacking imagination, almost never do disastrously stupid things out of false perceptions of the world about them. But humans create artificial disasters for themselves when their ideology makes them unable to perceive where their own self-interest lies.

-- E.T. Jaynes, Probability Theory as Logic [pdf].

[-]badger13y 16

We're descended from the indignant, passionate tellers of half truths who in order to convince others, simultaneously convinved themselves. Over generations success had winnowed us out, and with success came our defect, carved deep in the genes like ruts in a cart track—when it didn't suit us we couldn't agree on what was in front of us. Believing is seeing. That's why there are divorces, border disputes and wars, and why this statue of the Virgin Mary weeps blood and that one of Ganesh drinks milk. And that was why metaphysics and scince were such courageous enterprises, such startling inventions, bigger than the wheel, bigger than agriculture, human artifacts set right against the grain of human nature.

-- Ian McEwan, Enduring Love (1998, p. 181)

[-]badger13y 15

Reason means truth, and those who are not governed by it take the chance that someday a sunken fact will rip the bottom out of their boat.

-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr

2dlrlw7y

Alas, even those who are governed by reason take the chance that someday a sunken fact will rip the bottom out of their boat. The odds are only somewhat less for this happening to those governed by reason.

[-]badger13y 15

The greatest enemy of truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived, and dishonest -- but the myth -- persistent, pervasive, and unrealistic.

-- John F. Kennedy

(For those interested, I'm pulling most of these quotes from Rational Choice in an Uncertain World by Robyn Dawes, which I just began)

[-]steven046113y 14

There's nothing I like less than bad arguments for a view that I hold dear.

--Daniel Dennett

[-]caiuscamargarus13y 13

Ludwig Wittgenstein: Why do people say that it was natural to think that the sun went round the earth rather than that the earth turned on its axis?

Elizabeth Anscombe: I suppose, because it looked as if the sun went round the earth.

Ludwig Wittgenstein: Well what would it have looked like if it had looked as if the earth turned on its axis?

2jscn13y

If you don't know about relative motion and inertia, then it does seem like the sun moves around the earth (even when you know, it still looks that way). Prior to the "Copernican" revolution, it was generally thought that our sense experience of everyday life was sufficient to expose the truth to us. Those two things combined make a major roadblock in establishing that the earth rotates. Now we can fully appreciate that it doesn't even make sense to make an absolute statement either way. If earth is taken to be stationary, then the sun does move around it (interestingly, this was Tycho Brahe's solution to the problem of shifting to a helio-centric view.)

0gwern11y

There's a better version of this discussion - Anscombe's reply, for example, is worth quoting: http://lesswrong.com/lw/2p1/a_failure_to_evaluate_returnontime_fallacy/2l29?c=1 [http://lesswrong.com/lw/2p1/a_failure_to_evaluate_returnontime_fallacy/2l29?c=1]

[-]gjm13y 12

Truth emerges much more readily from error than from confusion.

Francis Bacon

[-]dreeves13y 12

"Faced with the choice of changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof." -- John Kenneth Galbraith

2lukeprog10y

Repeat [http://lesswrong.com/lw/mx/rationality_quotes_3/].

[-]AndySimpson13y 12

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

--Aldous Huxley

[-]caiuscamargarus13y 17

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.

Philip K. Dick

[-]dreeves13y 12

"Trying to be happy is like trying to build a machine for which the only specification is that it should run noiselessly." -- (unknown)

4MinibearRex9y

[-]CronoDAS13y 12

"Fifth Law of Decision Making: Decisions are justified by benefits to the organization; they are made by considering benefits to the decision makers." - Archibald Putt

[-]badger13y 12

We consider ourselves distinguished from the ape by the power of thought. We do not remember that it is like the power of walking in the one-year-old. We think, it is true, but we think so badly that I often feel it would be better if we did not.

-- Bertrand Russell in Faith and Mountains

[-]Theist13y 11

When the spiritual teacher and his disciples began their evening meditation, the cat who lived in the monastery made such noise that it distracted them. So the teacher ordered that the cat be tied up during the evening practice. Years later, when the teacher died, the cat continued to be tied up during the meditation session. And when the cat eventually died, another cat was brought to the monastery and tied up. Centuries later, learned descendants of the spiritual teacher wrote scholarly treatises about the religious significance of tying up a cat for meditation practice.

-- Zen Stories to Tell Your Neighbors http://www-usr.rider.edu/~suler/zenstory/ritualcat.html

1thomblake13y

Welcome! Don't forget to post on the welcome thread [http://lesswrong.com/lw/b9/welcome_to_less_wrong/]

[-]gjm13y 11

He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.

John McCarthy

[-]Rune13y 11

"Science is interesting and if you don't agree, you can fuck off."

-- Richard Dawkins quoting a former editor of New Scientist magazine.

2Dojan7y

Funny, yes, but rational? Hardly.

[-]Rune13y 11

"People will then often say, 'But surely it's better to remain an Agnostic just in case?' This, to me, suggests such a level of silliness and muddle that I usually edge out of the conversation rather than get sucked into it. (If it turns out that I've been wrong all along, and there is in fact a god, and if it further turned out that this kind of legalistic, cross-your-fingers-behind-your-back, Clintonian hair-splitting impressed him, then I think I would choose not to worship him anyway.)" -- Douglas Adams

[-]steven046113y 10

Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I say, I ask, if it matters, that you be forgiven for anything you may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness. Conversely, if not forgiveness but something else may be required to insure any possible benefit for which you may be eligible after the destruction of your body, I ask that this, whatever it may be, be granted or withheld, as the case may be, in such a manner as to insure your receiving said benefit. I ask this in my capacity as your elected intermediary between yourself and that which may not be yourself, but which may have an interest in the matter of your receiving as much as it is possible for you to receive of this thing, and which may in some way be influenced by this ceremony. Amen.

-- the Agnostic's Prayer, by Roger Zelazny

6infotropism13y

"I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth." God (presumably), Revelation 3:16

1byrnema13y

Yes, this is a reasonable rationality quote. However, can we discuss the idea behind it because it's not entirely clear to me. If the person maintains that there is any possibility -- as indicated by his "just in case", then is he not, necessarily an agnostic? What is so wrong about choosing the correct word? He doesn't believe in God but believes he could be wrong: he's an agnostic atheist. Q: Am I being down-voted because I'm wrong? Am I beyond help??

[-]Furcas13y 16

To say that you're agnostic about something can mean two things: That you're not 100% certain, or that you're (approximately) 50% certain. If you're using the first meaning, nothing you've said is wrong... but it is extremely pedantic. It's true we can't be 100% certain that there is no God, but it's also true that we can't be 100% certain about any of our beliefs except perhaps mathematical truths. Would you go around saying you're agnostic about the possibility that Obama is Satan in disguise, or the possibility that the keyboard in front of you is actually a specimen of an as-of-yet undiscovered species of animals with keyboard-mimicry capabilities? Of course you wouldn't. So why would you bother mentioning your agnosticism about God?

Of course, there are some people who really are agnostic about God, in the second sense of 'agnostic'. They're wrong, but at least they're not being pedantic.

What annoys atheists like me is those who take advantage of the dual meaning of 'agnostic' to make us look like overconfident fools: They'll say that no one can know "with absolute certainty" that God doesn't exist and that it is therefore arrogant to believe that he doesn't exist. To someone who hasn't come to terms with the inherently probabilistic nature of knowledge, this can sound like a convincing argument, but to the rest of us it can be rather infuriating.

1byrnema13y

Thank you. In the future (LW will get this question again) I think a link to this comment [http://lesswrong.com/lw/bs/rationality_quotes_april_2009/8b4] would be most helpful.

2Psychohistorian13y

"Agnostic," as used here and as criticized by Adams, is most often a weasel word used by atheists who believe atheism necessarily requires a god-hating, Hitchens-esque attitude towards religion and do not identify with that, or who are afraid to admit to their atheism for social reasons, or out of fear that they are wrong and god will punish them (and that calling themselves "agnostics" instead of "atheists" will somehow prevent god from punishing them, the absurdity of which is Adam's point, obviously. Interestingly, this is not the original meaning of agnostic. A "gnostic" believes that the question "Is there a god?" is discoverable or knowable. An "agnostic" believes that it is unknowable or undiscoverable. Thus, an agnostic atheist is one who does not believe there is a god and believes we can never (fundamentally, not just practically) know if there is one or not. The person you would describe is just an atheist, and probably a gnostic one. I think the vast majority of the atheists in this community believe they could be wrong, they just assign a very, very low probability to it, particularly with respect to certain specifications of god.

1Vladimir_Nesov13y

See "The Fallacy of Gray [http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/01/gray-fallacy.html]".

0[anonymous]13y

[-]Scott Alexander13y 11

Nothing defines humans better than their willingness to do irrational things in the pursuit of phenomenally unlikely payoffs. This is the principle behind lotteries, dating, and religion.

-- Scott Adams

[-]Eliezer Yudkowsky13y 11

We learn about who someone is by the choices they make when the choice isn't obvious.

-- Ben Casnocha

[-]Autodidact13y 10

Information wants to be anthropomorphized. ~ Anonymous

[-]Paul Crowley13y 14

Don't anthropomorphize computers. They hate that.

[-]AlanCrowe13y 10

Over on Hacker News mechanical_fish explains science

I don't believe anything which hasn't been replicated by a skeptic, because people are too trusting and hopeful and are blind to their own mistakes. Frankly, your equipment is probably broken and your students are probably ignorant; I only trust myself. And, come to think of it, I don't even trust me very much -- I should convince my skeptics to replicate my results so that I can believe me.

[-]RichardKennaway13y 10

You're never aware of your current point of view, only of previous ones.

-- William T. Powers

[-]dreeves13y 10

"They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." -- Carl Sagan

0Eliezer Yudkowsky13y

You're posting more than five items here. (But it also looks to me like someone is creating multiple accounts, coming through, and downvoting all recent comments. Other users, please look over recent comments and repair if this is the case.)

3dreeves13y

Mea culpa! Apparently I'm blind. I deleted all but the 5 highest voted quotes I had added.

0AndySimpson13y

I get the same sense.

[-]AndySimpson13y 10

...natural selection built the brain to survive in the world and only incidentally to understand it at a depth greater than is needed to survive. The proper task of scientists is to diagnose and correct the misalignment.

-E. O. Wilson

[-]CronoDAS13y 10

"[T]he purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning, and inhibit clarity." - Calvin, Bill Watterson's "Calvin and Hobbes"

[-]Rune13y 10

"Anyone who denies the law of non-contradiction should be beaten and burned until he admits that to be beaten is not the same as not to be beaten, and to be burned is not the same as not to be burned." -- Avicenna, Medieval Philosopher

5thomblake13y

This quote is amusing, but it has always made me wonder... if this is a good translation, then did Avicenna really not understand the law of non-contradiction? Because one who denies that p^~p is a contradiction does not necessarily assert that p and ~p are the same.

2Rune13y

What does one mean when one denies the truth of ~(p^~p)? I would guess the person means that this statement is not always true, and thus there exists a p for which this statement is false. Which would mean that there is a p for which p and ~p are simultaneously true. Of course this doesn't mean that the person believes that "to be beaten is the same as not to be beaten", but it's an amusing quote.

[-]badger13y 9

The fundamental insight triggered by memetic studies is that a belief may spread without necessarily being true or helping the human being holding the belief in any way.

-- Keith Stanovich, The Robot's Rebellion (p. xii)

[-]MichaelGR13y 9

Protein engineering is often approached as if it were part of biology. Imagine approaching aerospace engineering as if it were part of ornithology: Although the pioneers of human flight learned a lot about wings from birds, if they had waited for success in making artificial feathers and artificial muscle, we’d still be on the ground.

--K. Eric Drexler

[-]infotropism13y 9

Philosophy easily triumphs over past and future evils. But present ones, prevail over it.

Maxim 22 François de La Rochefoucauld

[-]Eliezer Yudkowsky13y 9

I worry far more about the "promising" stock market, particularly the "safe" blue chip stocks, than I do about speculative ventures -- the former present invisible risks, the latter offer no surprises since you know how volatile they are and can limit your downside by investing smaller amounts... I am very aggressive when I can gain exposure to positive Black Swans -- when a failure would be of small moment -- and very conservative when I am under threat from a negative Black Swan. I am very aggressive when an error in a model can benefit me, and paranoid when an error can hurt.

-- Nassim Taleb, The Black Swan

[-]pangloss13y 8

"Even in the games of children there are things to interest the greatest mathematician." G.W. Leibniz

[-]Mulciber13y 8

"Dear is Plato, dearer still is truth."

-Aristotle

[-]infotropism13y 8

There will always be a large difference between those who'd ask themselves "why won't things work as they are meant to" and those asking themselves "how could I get them to work". For the moment being, the human world belongs to those who would ask "why". But the future belongs, necessarily, to those who'd ask themselves "how".

Bernard Werber

1infotropism13y

And a few interesting reversed proverbs and quotes that ring truer than the original ones there (for those who can read French). [http://www.bernardwerber.com/interactif/antiproverbes.php] Like : In doubt, abstain ! In doubt, search further !

[-]dreeves13y 8

"This isn't right. This isn't even wrong." -- Wolfgang Pauli, on a paper submitted by a physicist colleague

[-]infotropism13y 21

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."

Charles Babbage

9SilasBarta12y

I remember someone on slashdot replied to that quote by saying, basically, If you're a mid-19th century member of Parliament, and you're presented with a machine design you don't understand (and don't expect to), by a respectable person asking for money, but you have a basically non-mysterious view of the world, what kinds of questions can you ask to determine whether the idea is scam? The question Babbage complains about is an excellent one. If the designer claims it can get the right answers no matter what you've input into the machine, thus relying on reading your mind, you can know it's just a crude attempt at scamming you.

[-]Blueberry12y 12

I suspect that's giving mid-19th century members of Parliament way too much credit.

2robertskmiles12y

Reminds me of this, can't remember where it's from "That's too confused even to be wrong. Yes, every statement must evaluate to true or false, but that won't even compile."

1Vladimir_Nesov12y

No, it's false.

[-]Kaj_Sotala13y 7

If it were true that every innate predisposition of an organism were the result of some selectional pressure, then I would have to conclude that my dog has been selected for chasing tennis balls.

-- John Searle

3arundelo13y

Voted this up, but of course Searle's dog was selected for chasing things similar enough to tennis balls.

[-]Kaj_Sotala13y 7

Not exactly a quote, but close enough - http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1993-02-07/

[-]RichardKennaway13y 7

Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

-- St. Paul. (Phillipians 4:8)

(Yes, yes, someone who had a major hand in creating Christianity. I know. As context, I first encountered these words in the 1999 "Doomwatch" pilot, where they are spoken at the funeral of Dr Quist, and then googled it.)

[-]AndySimpson13y 7

Life is short, and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth.

--Arthur Schopenhauer

[-]steven046113y 7

Reposting from the Open Thread:

From the Profit by "Kehlog Albran":

What lives longer? A Mayfly or a Cyprus tree?

If you answer a Mayfly then you are very perceptive: you realize that in time and space, time is relative and the short life of the Mayfly could be mysteriously longer than the life of the mighty Cyprus.

If you answered a Cyprus then you are unimaginative, but correct.

[-]RichardKennaway13y 7

Nature understands no jesting. She is always true, always serious, always severe. She is always right, and the errors are always those of man.

--Goethe

[-]Pablo13y 6

In science there are no “depths”; there is surface everywhere[.]

Otto Neurath, ‘The Scientific Conception of the World: the Vienna Circle’, in Marie Neurath and Robert S. Cohen (eds.), Otto Neurath: Empiricism and Sociology, Dordrecht, 1973, p. 306

[-]dreeves13y 6

"I have no need of that hypothesis." -- Laplace to Napoleon

[-]RichardKennaway13y 5

Fifth and last.

Don't learn tricks, learn juggling.

-- Anon

4RichardKennaway13y

As this got voted down, perhaps some commentary is in order. This quote is from a juggling forum a long time ago, and is in fact about juggling. But I also read it as a parallel of the twelfth virtue of rationality [http://yudkowsky.net/rational/virtues]. The juggler's task is to entertain his audience, and if he fails, it is futile for him to protest that he can do many tricks. It is not enough to master many techniques. They must be used to achieve the result that the techniques aim at.

-1[anonymous]11y

[-]Pablo13y 5

The man of science, whatever his hopes may be, must lay them aside while he studies nature; and the philosopher, if he is to achieve truth, must do the same. Ethical considerations can only legitimately appear when the truth has been ascertained: they can and should appear as determining our feeling towards the truth, and our manner of ordering our lives in view of the truth, but not as themselves dictating what the truth is to be.

Bertrand Russell, ‘Mysticism and Logic’, in John G. Slater (ed.), The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, London, 1986, vol. 8, p. 33

[-]AndySimpson13y 5

Before we study Zen, the mountains are mountains and the rivers are rivers. While we are studying Zen, however, the mountains are no longer mountains and the rivers are no longer rivers. But then, when our study of Zen is completed, the mountains are once again mountains and the rivers once again rivers.

-- Buddhist saying

[-]gjm13y 4

Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.

Alan Perlis (concerning computer programs, but I think the same is commonly true elsewhere)

[-]Rain13y 4

I wish I loved the Human Race; I wish I loved its silly face; I wish I liked the way it walks; I wish I liked the way it talks; And when I'm introduced to one, I wish I thought "What Jolly Fun!"

~Sir Walter A Raleigh

[-]CronoDAS13y 4

"The First Law of Innovation Management: Management by objectives is no better than the objectives." - Archibald Putt

[-]RichardKennaway13y 4

"Nature cannot be fooled."

--Richard Feynman

[-]Paul Crowley13y 15

It's worth including the whole sentence:

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled

[-]Lojban13y 4

Information wants to be anonymous.

--Anonymous

[-]Pablo13y 3

Give to any hypothesis which is worth your while to consider just that degree of credence which the evidence warrants.

Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy, New York, 1945, p. 816

[-]gwern13y 10

"The plain consequence is (and it is a general maxim worthy of our attention), 'That no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to establish; and even in that case there is a mutual destruction of arguments, and the superior only gives us an assurance suitable to that degree of force, which remains, after deducting the inferior.' When anyone tells me, that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable, that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact, which he relates, should really have happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other; and according to the superiority, which I discover, I pronounce my decision, and always reject the greater miracle. If the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous, than the event which he relates; then, and not till then, can he pretend to command my belief or opinion."

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, by David Hume

[-]steven046113y 3

[God] lives on pain. And He must be starved to death.

-- http://www.necronomi.com/projects/amor/

[-][anonymous]13y 3

del

[-]Z_M_Davis13y 3

Want to know / How you feel / Want to know / What is real / I want to know / Everything / Everything

--Avril Lavigne

[-]outlawpoet13y 3

In a manner which matches the fortuity, if not the consequence, of Archimedes' bath and Newton's apple, the [3.6 million year old] fossil footprints were eventually noticed one evening in September 1976 by the paleontologist Andrew Hill, who fell while avoiding a ball of elephant dung hurled at him by the ecologist David Western.

~John Reader, Missing Links: The Hunt for Earliest Man

[-]pangloss13y 2

"Never believe a thing simply because you want it to be true." - Diax

[-]aausch13y 2

I am not looking for intelligent disagreement any longer.... What I am looking for is intelligent agreement. ~ Ayn Rand

[-]UnholySmoke13y 2

'The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the Supreme Being in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.'

Thomas Jefferson

I had recourse to use this one recently.

Quoting XKCD for cheap points Eliezer - I'll have to pull one of those out next month!

[-][anonymous]13y 2

We live in a state of uncertainty, not just in Northern Ireland, but by virtue of being human. What I have tried to do over the last decade is to subject my former beliefs to ruthless scrutiny. Instead of searching for ways to confirm my beliefs, I have searched for ways to prove them false. When, after dispassionate examination, you cannot prove your beliefs false, then perhaps you are on the way to discovering some sort of truth.

-- Eamon Collins, terrorist-turned-informer, from his memoir Killing Rage

[-]pangloss13y 2

"Morals excite passions, and produce or prevent actions. Reason of itself is utterly impotent in this particular. The rules of morality, therefore, are not conclusions of our reason." - David Hume

Note about the selection of this quote: While I am not inclined towards the position that reason is (and ought to be) slave to the passions, I considered this a good quote on the topic of rationality because it concisely presents one of the most fundamental challenges for rationalism as such.

[-]anonym13y 2

The rationality of our universe is best suggested by the fact that we can discover more about it from any starting point, as if it were a fabric that will unravel from any thread.

George Zebrowski

[-]anonym13y 2

Trust a witness in all matters in which neither his self-interest, his passions, his prejudices, nor the love of the marvelous is strongly concerned. When they are involved, require corroborative evidence in exact proportion to the contravention of probability by the thing testified.

Thomas Henry Huxley

[-]anonym13y 2

We define the art of conjecture, or stochastic art, as the art of evaluating as exactly as possible the probabilities of things, so that in our judgments and actions we can always base ourselves on what has been found to be the best, the most appropriate, the most certain, the best advised; this is the only object of the wisdom of the philosopher and the prudence of the statesman.

Jacob Bernoulli

[-][anonymous]13y 2

Anthropologist: What's the most important thing to get right when you do a rain dance?

Indian Chief: Timing.

-- Terence Kelly

[-][anonymous]13y 2

"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." -- Donald Knuth

[-][anonymous]13y 2

"I don't like spinach and I'm glad I don't because if I liked it I'd eat it, and I just hate it." -- (unknown)

[-]CronoDAS13y 2

"First Law of Advice: The correct advice to give is the advice that is desired." - Archibald Putt

5CronoDAS13y

In context: (The rest of the chapter is not relevant.)

-3Jonnan13y

Don't . . . get any of that on me please. Ick.

2Jonnan13y

Really? -4 for not liking a defense of marketing sophistry? One which literally noted "Advertise the color" as a positive virtue? Sorry, if that's not favoring the darkside, I'm not sure how you're defining 'darkside', and karma around here is way too arbitrary - {G}. I will concede to a bias against marketing as a solution to anything - the marketing textbook I was subjected to in college was the most self-important ego-centric defense of a field I've ever seen - {G}. Jonnan

[-]billswift13y 2

The best intelligence test is what we do with our leisure.

- Dr Laurence J Peter

-1byrnema13y

There are other comments above that are just as bad (Goethe, Adams, Casnocha whose statements I generally like, Feynman who statements I almost always dislike) but I will pick on this one. These quotes aren't really about rationality and the awesome power of an effective tool. They're about the smugness of being right. I'd say leave your superiority out of it, and prefer statements that balance the power of the tool with the humility of being human (Russell, Confusion, Munroe, Maxim 22).

[-]XFrequentist13y 17

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." -- Richard Feynman

[-]Eliezer Yudkowsky13y 2

The difficult thing here is not, to dig down to the ground; no, it is to recognize the ground that lies before us as the ground.

-- Wittgenstein

[-]pangloss13y 1

He that uses his words loosely and unsteadily will either not be minded or not understood. - John Locke

[-]Mulciber13y 1

"To understand the secret laws and relations of those high faculties of thought by which all beyond the merely perceptive knowledge of the world and of ourselves is attained or matures, is an object which does not stand in need of commendation to a rational mind."

-George Boole

[-]Mulciber13y 1

"It is curious how often you humans manage to obtain that which you do not want."

-Spock

[-]J_Grim13y 1

To conquer Chaos one must Learn, To maintain Stability one must Know, The dual struggle can be exhausting. --Donald Kingsbury

[-]anonym13y 1

Explanations come to an end somewhere.

Ludwig Wittgentstein

[-]Z_M_Davis13y 1

"I could beg you to do it in order to save me. I could beg you to do it in order to avert a national disaster. But I won't. These may not be valid reasons. There is only one reason: you must say it, because it is true."

--from Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

[-]robsica13y 1

We never desire passionately what we desire by reason alone.

La Rochefoucauld

0gwern13y

(In Markdown, you need to use an underscore instead of an or ; see http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#em [http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#em] )

[-][anonymous]13y 1

deleted

5Vladimir_Nesov13y

The citation is taken from "Brinkmanship in Business [http://www.bcg.com/publications/files/Eng11Brinkmanship.pdf]"[pdf]. The cited assertion is actually a mistake, as it presupposes that the right thing to do in the Ultimatum game [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game] is to accept any amount offered to you, and never punish the unfair dealer. The whole document is a lesson in Dark Arts.

2[anonymous]13y

del

-1Vladimir_Nesov13y

I like the phrase. The document is written to profess a mistaken position about how to deceive, and as a result it becomes a deceptive lesson in deception, Dark Side Epistemology [http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/10/the-dark-side.html] incarnate.

0[anonymous]13y

del

1Vladimir_Nesov13y

No, he might be right about how people in business react "rationally", and I wouldn't know anything about that.

1[anonymous]13y

del

2Vladimir_Nesov13y

You may give solid advice, accompanying it with ridiculous rationalization [http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/09/rationalization.html]. The bottom line [http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/09/the-bottom-line.html] is correct, but the reasons you put above it are not. So, in this case, I assume that the practical advice he gives might be reasonable, but the description of why it works is not.

[-][anonymous]13y 0

Is it decisive after all that we arrive at that view of God, world, and reconciliation which makes us feel most comfortable? Rather, is not the result of his inquiries something wholly indifferent to the true inquirer? Do we after all seek rest, peace, and pleasure in our inquiries? No, only truth—even if it be most abhorrent and ugly.

Friedrich Nietzsche