From a BBC interview with a retiring Oxford Don:

Don: "Up until the age of 25, I believed that 'invective' was a synonym for 'urine'."

BBC: "Why ever would you have thought that?"

Don: "During my childhood, I read many of the Edgar Rice Burroughs 'Tarzan' stories, and in those books, whenever a lion wandered into a clearing, the monkeys would leap into the trees and 'cast streams of invective upon the lion's head.'"

BBC: "But, surely sir, you now know the meaning of the word."

Don: "Yes, but I do wonder under what other misapprehensions I continue to labour."

"Intuition only works in situations where neurology and evolution has pre-equipped us with a good set of basic-level categories. That works for dealing with other humans, and for throwing things, and for a bunch of other things that do not, unfortunately, include constructing viable philosophies."

-- Eric S. Raymond

"You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right." --Randall Munroe, in the alt-text of xkcd 701

"In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it." GK Chesterton

Thinking is skilled work. It is not true that we are naturally endowed with the ability to think clearly and logically--without learning how, or without practicing.... People with untrained minds should no more expect to think clearly and logically than people who have never learned and never practiced can expect to find themselves good carpenters, golfers, bridge-players, or pianists.

Alfred Mander -- Logic for the Millions

On parsimony:

If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.

--John von Neumann, at the first national meeting of the Association for Computing Machinery

"If the tool you have is a hammer, make the problem look like a nail."

Steven W. Smith, The Scientist and Engineer's Guide to Digital Signal Processing

If [Ayn] Rand really wanted to build an individualist sub-culture, she would have done so in an evolutionarily informed way. If people naturally care about the opinions of others, jumping on people is a good way to get dishonest conformity, but a bad way to get an honest exchange of ideas. Instead, an individualist sub-culture must be built upon tolerance and honesty. I'd suggest three key norms:

1. Don't think less of people who sincerely disagree.
2. Do think less of people who insincerely agree.
3. Do think less of people who think less of people who sincerely disagree.

--Bryan Caplan

Reference: Guardians of Ayn Rand

In our public medical personas, we often act as though morality consisted only in following society's conventions: we do this not so much out of laziness but because we recognize that it is better that the public think of doctors as old-fashioned or stupid, than that they should think us evil.

-- The Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine

Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.

-- Isaac Asimov via Salvor Hardin, Foundation

The introduction of suitable abstractions is our only mental aid to organize and master complexity.

-- Edsger W. Dijkstra

I much prefer the sharpest criticism of a single intelligent man to the thoughtless approval of the masses.

Johannes Kepler

So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable Creature, since it enables one to find or make a Reason for every thing one has a mind to do.

-- Benjamin Franklin

"People are not complicated. People are really very simple. What makes them appear complicated is our continual insistence on interpreting their behavior instead of discovering their goals."

-- Bruce Gregory

'Nash equilibrium strategy' is not necessarily synonymous to 'optimal play'. A Nash equilibrium can define an optimum, but only as a defensive strategy against stiff competition. More specifically: Nash equilibria are hardly ever maximally exploitive. A Nash equilibrium strategy guards against any possible competition including the fiercest, and thereby tends to fail taking advantage of sub-optimum strategies followed by competitors. Achieving maximally exploitive play generally requires deviating from the Nash strategy, and allowing for defensive leaks in ones own strategy. -- Johannes Koelman

If you think of losing as “not winning,” then when you try to work out why you’ve lost, or (God forbid) why you’re a loser, you’ll tend to focus on the things you didn’t do and the qualities you don’t have. So it goes with any “negative” concept, one that is defined by what it isn’t (think of how “background” = “everything but the foreground” or how valleys are made by the mountains around them).

I think it’s worthwhile to occasionally invert the picture, to see “being a winner” as “not being a loser.” That way you attend to those habits of mind that are h

"Seeing is believing, but seeing isn't knowing." -- AronRa

The secret of what anything means to us depends on how we've connected it to all the other things we know. That's why it's almost always wrong to seek the "real meaning" of anything. A thing with just one meaning has scarcely any meaning at all.

Marvin Minsky -- The Society of Mind

What is it about us, the public, and what is it about conformity itself that causes us all to require it of our neighbors and of our artists and then, with consummate fickleness, to forget those who fall into line and eternally celebrate those who do not?

-- Ben Shahn, "The Shape of Content"

"If we were bees, ants, or Lacedaemonian warriors, to whom personal fear does not exist and cowardice is the most shameful thing in the world, warring would go on forever.
But luckily we are only men - and cowards."

--Erwin Schrodinger, Mind and Matter

Karl Marx's writings glorifying communism (though Western capitalists regard it as grim and joyless) may well have reflected merely his alienation from society due to a lifelong series of excruciatingly painful boils, according to a recent British Journal of Dermatology article. In an 1867 letter, Marx wrote, "The bourgeoisie will remember my carbuncles until their dying day." [Reuters, 10-30-07]

-- News of the Weird (relevance)

As the mind learns to understand more complicated combinations of ideas, simpler formulae soon reduce their complexity; so truths that were discovered only by great effort, that could at first only be understood by men capable of profound thought, are soon developed and proved by methods that are not beyond the reach of common intelligence.

Marquis de Condorcet, 1794

"In my experience, the most staunchly held views are based on ignorance or accepted dogma, not carefully considered accumulations of facts. The more you expose the intricacies and realities of the situation, the less clear-cut things become."

Mary Roach - from her book Spook

The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds.

John Maynard Keynes

"I waste many hours each day being efficient."

--Emanuel Derman

If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance: let us ask, "Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number?" No. "Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence?" No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion. --- David Hume

(quoted in Beyond AI by JoSH Hall)

"Most people are more complicated than they seem, but less complicated than they think"

• BS

Who am I to judge myself?

-- Karp

"Love God?" you're in an abusive relationship.

DLC, commenter at Pharyngula.

A bit of a meta-quote:

But in choosing a chair we follow the dictates of our eyes, for better or for worse, more often than those of our "ischial tuberosities," and the hammocklike Hardoy looks comfortable. [Joseph] Rykwert correctly assumes that "the buyers of Hardoy chairs, like many other customers for design goods, are guided in their choice by promptings quite different from the dictates of reason." And he adds a conclusion worth remembering: "The very fact that they do so should be a matter of interest to the designer: nothi

“He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher...or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.”

"In madness all sounds become articulate." -- "Language of the Shadows", Nile

"What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure."

--Dr. Samuel Johnson

Shamisen deserves an honorable mention. Although he only has one speech, he's a good enough philosopher that upon being introduced he manages to sidetrack the brigade members into a debate over the nature of conversation and away from the fact that, you know, _he's a talking cat_. - TV Tropes, "The Philosopher"

[Connections to rationality: Focus, taking action, and conversation style.]

TELFER: At least I have a friend. Don't you ever get lonely down there?
HARREN: In the company of my own thoughts? Never.
TELFER: I don't believe that. Spend some time with us when we get back. You might enjoy yourself.
HARREN: A hypothesis that would require testing. I'm a theoretician, remember?

---Star Trek: Voyager, "Good Shepherd"

"To know something is to make this something that I know myself; but to avail myself of it, to dominate it, it has to remain distinct from myself." -- Miguel de Unamuno

Ladies and gentlemen, it is a Starfleet tradition that at social gatherings disputes are not permitted. I hearby declare therefore all disagreements resolved.

--Jean-Luc Picard

a

b

a b

Praise be to Nero's Neptune

The Titanic sails at dawn

And everybody's shouting,

Which side are you on?

Artificial intelligences with human interests in mind could use their machine minds to solve human challenges in fields like medicine, physics, chemistry, engineering, politics, diplomacy, biology, sociology, and economics. Being native to the world of computers, they could run complex simulations in mere moments that would take human researchers years to build. Complex, detailed, mathematically accurate simulations could be the default thought mode for artificial intelligences—their “thoughts” could be far superior to our best simulations.

-Michael Anissimov

Praise be to Nero's Neptune The Titanic sails at dawn And everybody's shouting, "Which side are you on?" — Bob Dylan, "Desolation Row"

Don't tolerate intolerance. -bumper sticker

Praise be to Nero's Neptune
The Titanic sails at dawn
And everybody's shouting,
"Which side are you on?"

— Bob Dylan, "Desolation Row"