Rationality Quotes April 2016

When one person doesn't understand economics, we call it ignorance. When millions don't, we call it a political movement.

Scott Adams

A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.

-- John le Carre

Reason is poor propaganda when opposed by the yammering, unceasing lies of shrewd and evil and self-serving men. The little man has no way to judge and the shoddy lies are packaged more attractively. There is no way to offer color to a colorblind man, nor is there any way for us to give the man of imperfect brain the canny skill to distinguish a lie from a truth.

-- Robert A Heinlein. Assignment in Eternity, Loc 939 (Kindle edition)

"He who builds his cart behind closed gates will find it not suited to the tracks outside the gates."

-Unattributed (Chinese) proverb, quoted by Chen Duxiu in "Call to Youth" 1915.

What science gets wrong, more science sets right. (What religion gets wrong, by way of contrast, more religion rarely sets right.)

-- Dan Savage, American Savage, p. 152

But the thought is one thing, the deed is another, and another yet is the image of the deed. The wheel of causality does not roll between them.

Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra.

Martin Seligman’s view that authentic happiness comes from using your character strengths makes sense to me. For example, it seems reasonable to expect that activities that would bring lasting happiness to a person whose strengths are curiosity, love of learning and zest would differ from those that would bring lasting happiness to one whose strengths are kindness, fairness and a forgiving nature, or to one whose strengths are judgement, perseverance and leadership. (In his book ‘Authentic Happiness’, Seligman identifies 24 strengths under the general headings: wisdom and knowledge, courage, humanity and love, justice, temperance and transcendence.)

-Rejection sensitivity: http://www.psychologyineverydaylife.net/2013/03/17/rejection-sensitivity-three-ways-to-toughen-up/

The Hidden Emotion Model is based on the idea that niceness is the cause of all anxiety. People who are prone to anxiety are nearly always people-pleasers who fear conflict and negative feelings like anger. When you feel upset, you sweep your problems under the rug because you don’t want to upset anyone. You do this so quickly and automatically that you’re not even aware you’re doing it. Then your negative feelings resurface in disguised form, as anxiety, worries, fears, or feelings of panic. When you expose the hidden feelings and solve the problem that’s bugging you, often your anxiety will disappear

David D. Burns in "When Panic Attacks: The New, Drug-Free Anxiety Therapy That Can Change Your Life-Broadway"

If there is going to be a government role in getting innovation started, people have to believe philosophically that it’s possible to plan.

Peter Thiel

Nature is full of wonders, but the wonders of the reporter's imagination so far outstrip the wonders of nature, that as a people, we still prefer the reporter's version. The best selling popular science is that in which animals think, act and often talk, exactly like human beings, and in which plants are endowed with instincts that properly belong to animals alone. Instances are so abundant in the lay press that scientific publications no longer take notice of them, but when a publication devoted to science publishes such stories for the truth, it is time someone pointed out their falsity.

Some Plant Myths, The American Botanist, v 9 #1, 1905

What reaches your attention when you see is not ‘reality’ but a mix of light measurements with cryptotheories that were useful for making snap judgments in the environment of ancestral adaptation.

Eric S. Raymond here: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=7076

‘High neuroticism scorers will always be vulnerable to negative thoughts and feelings. That they cannot change. However, there are techniques in which they can train themselves that seem to have quite a marked effect on how they deal with this vulnerability, which can make a great deal of difference to their being in the world'

-‘Happiness’, 2005: 113

I don’t know about you, but if I’m going to face a zombie, especially one that ate me last time I played, I’m going to want more than one bullet, and I’m going to want to fire them from range instead of waiting until he’s within brain-smelling distance. I’m going to hack motivation way more than I expect I’ll need to, and I’m going to do it up front when I’m feeling most excited about my goal. I’ll precommit, I’ll burn ships, I’ll create a motivation-only environment, I’ll start self-tracking to keep myself honest, I’ll find ways to make it more fun, and I’ll precommit some more.

Nick Winter in The Motivation Hacker

"Knotty theological questions are the least worrying of problems to me."

"Why?"

"Because they will be resolved in the hereafter, and meanwhile they can be safely shelved."

-- Ken Follet. Pillars of the Earth, pg 696 (Kindle edition)

In the second half of the therapy work moves into the Revision phase, where patient and therapist identify and practice "exits" from the procedural diagram established in the previous phase. For example, a problematic procedure might move a patient from feeling angry to taking an overdose. An exit might involve expressing the anger in some way as an alternative to self-injuring behaviour.

• Wikipedia: Cognitive Analytic Therapy

Persuaded that we are not to be deterred from the investigation of truth by any authority, however great, and that every opinion must stand or fall by its own merits, I venture with diffidence to offer mine to the world, willing to relinquish it, as soon as a more rational appears.

--Elizabeth Fulhame

It was time to stop being stupid.

Phyllis Eisenstein, "The Sunstone"

The story isn't especially about rationality, but it's a good story in Old Venus, a good anthology.

People used to try to act more sophisticated by demonstrating their greater knowledge. Today, people try for higher status by offering sophistry about why Knowledge Can’t Exist.

Steve Sailer