Rationality Quotes: May 2011

If you think something's supposed to hurt, you're less likely to notice if you're doing it wrong.

Paul Graham

The more labels you have for yourself, the dumber they make you.

-Paul Graham, Keep Your Identity Small

"War, Nobby. Huh! What is it good for?" he said.
"Dunno, sarge. Freeing slaves, maybe?"
"Absol--Well, okay."
"Defending yourself from a totalitarian aggressor?"
"All right, I'll grant you that, but--"
"Saving civilization against a horde of--"
"It doesn't do any good in the long run is what I'm saying, Nobby, if you'd listen for five seconds together," said Fred Colon sharply.
"Yeah, but in the long run what does, sarge?"

-- Terry Pratchett, Thud!

A very popular error: having the courage of one's convictions; rather it is a matter of having the courage for an attack on one's convictions.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

I never trust anyone who's more excited about success than about doing the thing they want to be successful at.

XKCD (the mouseover text)

For "success" and "successful" one might substitute "rationality" and "rational".

.

Nature is fucked up, and anyone who argues otherwise has not actually seen nature in action.

Michael Anissimov

Too large a proportion of recent "mathematical" economics are mere concoctions, as imprecise as the initial assumptions they rest on, which allow the author to lose sight of the complexities and interdependencies of the real world in a maze of pretentious and unhelpful symbols.

John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money (1935), Book 5, Chapter 21, Section 3, pg. 298

It is quite easy to show, decision-theoretically, that the greatest chance of survival generally belongs to those who have most of their beliefs about things which affect our survival ability true. Philosophy, however, is totally irrelevant to survival from an evolutionary point of view. Natural selection has no way of weeding out veridical intuitions about the basic constitution of matter, for instance, from false ones, because humans have not generally been killed before they can procreate due to having erroneous metaphysical intuitions. Or bluntly put: having a true metaphysical theory does not help you getting laid.

– Staffan Angere, Theory and Reality: Metaphysics as Second Science, p. 17

Put up in a place

where it's easy to see

the cryptic admonishment

 T. T. T.

When you feel how depressingly

slowly you climb,

it's well to remember that

 Things Take Time.

--Piet Hein

When I was eight or so I first picked up a copy of Piet Hein's book of poems. They came with his original doodles, and, having been brought up among academics, I thought 'He doodles just like a physicist!' Many years later I wiki'd him and found out that he was, indeed, a physicist.

If a guy tells me the probability of failure is 1 in 10E5, I know he's full of crap.

Richard P. Feynmann, "What Do You Care What Other People Think?"

Judging from polls and personal interviews, half the public seems to believe that there is some sort of "common sense" solution, involving no major cuts or tax hikes, which is eluding politicians only because they're a bunch of partisan jerks. The other half is busily encouraging their politicians to engage in as much partisan jerkitude as possible. Neither is conducive to actually achieving a solution. So we have to cut our politicians a little slack; they're acting insane because we're acting insane. -- Megan McArdle, "Debt and Taxes"

You don't become great by trying to be great. You become great by wanting to do something, and then doing it so hard that you become great in the process.

— Randall Munroe in today's xkcd, Marie Curie.

Sokka: Can your fortune telling explain that?! (points to volcano eruption)

Villager: Can your science explain why it rains?

Sokka: Yes! Yes it can!

-- Avatar: The Last Airbender

If a statement is false, that's the worst thing you can say about it.

-- Paul Graham

Until the third morning, when Wim finally declared, "Everything's a trick, if'n you can see behind it, just like with them witches in the hills. Everything's got a–reason. I think there ain't no such thing as magic!"

Jagit fixed him with a long mild look, and the specter of the night in the Grandfather Grove seemed to flicker in the dark eyes. "You think not, eh?"

Wim looked down nervously.

"There’s magic, all right, Wim; all around you here. Only now you’re seeing it with a magician’s eyes. Because there’s a reason behind everything that happens; you may not know what it is, but it’s there. And knowing that doesn’t make the thing less magic, or strange, or terrible—it just makes it easier to deal with. That’s something to keep in mind, wherever you are … . Also keep in mind that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing."

Wim nodded, chastened, felt his ears grow red as the peddler muttered, "So's a little ignorance…"

-- The Peddler's Apprentice by Joan and Vernor Vinge

"And what are the rules? Ask me and I will strike you because you are not looking; I will have decapitated you without your knowing. One can try to formulate obscure theories to avoid playing the game or one can play the game to win."

– Daniel Kolak, Wittgenstein’s Tractatus: Translator’s Preface

(Mind, I love formulating obscure theories. Which is perhaps why I also love this quote - because it's such a necessary reminder to myself at times.)

I have long entertained a suspicion, with regard to the decisions of philosophers upon all subjects, and found in myself a greater inclination to dispute, than assent to their conclusions. There is one mistake, to which they seem liable, almost without exception; they confine too much their principles, and make no account of that vast variety, which nature has so much affected in all her operations. When a philosopher has once laid hold of a favourite principle, which perhaps accounts for many natural effects, he extends the same principle over the whole creation, and reduces to it every phænomenon, though by the most violent and absurd reasoning.

-- David Hume

Related LessWrong post.

Kind of cheesy, but worthwhile, and ironic since it occurs in the context of a game where Gods and magic are real.

"Remember when we first met in Kvatch? I told you that I didn't want any part of the gods' plan. I still don't know if there is a divine plan. But I've come to realize that it doesn't matter. What matters is that we act. That we do what's right, when confronted with evil. That's what you did at Kvatch. It wasn't the gods that saved us, it was you."

--Emporer-apparent Martin Septim, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's. --William Blake

Best taken in the context of AI.

"You never say anything straight out. It's all I believe this or I've found that. You never say, The sun rises in the morning. It's always, I think the sun rises in the morning. It's like you're trying not to promise anything."

[...]

"I'm surprised you noticed that," he said, then smiled at having done it again. "I have a talent for being believed, and I've found it to be problematic. I suppose I've adopted habits to soften the effect, and so I try not to assert things unless I'm certain of them. Absolutely certain, I mean. I'm often surprised by how little I'm absolutely certain of."

-- The Dragon's Path by Daniel Abraham

You are an intelligent human being. Your life is valuable for its own sake. You are not second-class in the universe, deriving meaning and purpose from some other mind. You are not inherently evil — you are inherently human, possessing the positive rational potential to help make this a world of morality, peace, and joy. Trust yourself.

-- Dan Barker

Many people believe that they are able to be fully objective in evaluating claims - even those which run counter to their deeply-held beliefs. They further believe that by claiming themselves to be objective, this is reason for others to accept that they are objective. Not only is this false, but in fact the reverse is often true. People who delude themselves into thinking that they are objective are even more likely to fool themselves in other areas. The first step in overcoming bias is acknowledging its existence.

• Natan Slifkin, The Seven Principles of Bias. (All seven are actually pretty short and make good points, although I'd be inclined to disagree with point 2.)

Where does a ball alight,
Falling through the bright midair?
Hit it with your snout!

-- unnamed neo-dolphin poet, Uplift War by David Brin

From my fortune cookie yesterday:

Be curious always! For knowledge will not acquire you: you must acquire it.

A brief search said it is attributed to Sudie Back .

The few exceptional men who really sought peace and true brotherly love reached this condition by perfecting their awareness, not by suppressing their passions.

-- Moshe Feldenkreis, "Awareness Through Movement" p.172.

Agitating for a specific policy is like complaining about a price — and forgetting that it’s set by supply and demand.

Patri Friedman, source

It's snowing on the goddamn map, not the territory[!]

-Michael Pemulis, Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

It is easier to say new things than to reconcile those which have already been said.

Vauvenargues, Reflections and Maxims, 1746

And I think that’s actually an interesting thing about my brain. If there’s a God and he/she/they made me this way, they chose a real fun way to go about it. They gave me utter domination and brilliance over certain things and then they just stopped.

--Mark Oshiro

“We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.” -Walt Disney

"The sky calls to us. If we do not destroy ourselves, we will one day venture to the stars."

-- Carl Sagan

We have always had a great deal of difficulty
understanding the world view
that quantum mechanics represents.
At least I do,
because I’m an old enough man
that I haven't got to the point
that this stuff is obvious to me.
Okay, I still get nervous with it…
You know how it always is,
every new idea,
it takes a generation or two
until it becomes obvious
that there’s no real problem.
I cannot define the real problem,
therefore I suspect there’s no real problem,
but I’m not sure
there’s no real problem.

-Richard Feynman, set in verse by David Mermin

"No pupil should be an exact copy of his master, otherwise the art would make little progress."

Frederick Grinke, quoted by Donald Brook in "Violinists of Today" (1948).

"I think that it is a relatively good approximation to truth - which is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations-that mathematical ideas originate in empirics, although the genealogy is sometimes long and obscure. But, once they are so conceived, the subject begins to live a peculiar life of its own and is better compared to a creative one, governed by almost entirely aesthetical motivations, than to anything else and, in particular, to an empirical science. There is, however, a further point which, I believe, needs stressing. As a mathematical discipline travels far from its empirical source, or still more, if it is a second and third generation only indirectly inspired by ideas coming from "reality" it is beset with very grave dangers. It becomes more and more purely aestheticizing, more and more purely I'art pour I'art. This need not be bad, if the field is surrounded by correlated subjects, which still have closer empirical connections, or if the discipline is under the influence of men with an exceptionally well-developed taste. But there is a grave danger that the subject will develop along the line of least resistance, that the stream, so far from its source, will separate into a multitude of insignificant branches, and that the discipline will become a disorganized mass of details and complexities. In other words, at a great distance from its empirical source, or after much "abstract" inbreeding, a mathematical subject is in danger of degeneration. At the inception the style is usually classical; when it shows signs of becoming baroque, then the danger signal is up."

John Von Neumann, written in his article The Mathematician

"If this young man expresses himself in terms too deep for me,
Why, what a very singularly deep young man this deep young man must be!"

--W.S.Gilbert, from the opera "Patience"

Grem: I am a goblin prince. I know when to fight. Dies: I AM A COWARD! I KNOW WHEN TO RUN!

Goblins Comic

Not quite sure whether this is a rationality quote - I do not completely understand it, but Charlie Munger said this (in a Bloomberg interview), so at the very least it's food for thought.

I fixed one of the flaw in my life, having tantrums, at four or five, for the rest of the flaws I balanced them with opposite virtues.

It is from our earliest experiences, which are necessarily of the parental type, that follows the attitude we will later have towards the other. We may then, with the help of reason, moderate this imprinting, going even as far as reversing it, and thus switch from being prone to believe that the other is fundamentally good to thinking that he is fundamentally evil, or vice versa, but usually reason will only help to find points supporting of the imprinting. Thus we will end up with points supporting the thesis that man is born good or the opposite one (that he is born evil), while in reality, cut to the bone, every debate about man, and about men, will be nothing but a weighing of such points against the prototype of the results of the earliest experiences.

I suppose it is not hard to guess why, since pretty much forever, the thesis has prevailed that men are "weak, vicious, worthless, and rebellious" (the judgment that Ivan Karamazov has the Grand Inquisitor state), i.e. evil and dangerous: a society built on that judgment will have to renounce freedom in exchange for security, and in exchange for bread and hope it will entrust its fear to an authority, and since every authority tends to perpetuate itself, it will do so by reproducing itself in the parental relationship, which in turn will raise itself as the model for social relationships. The child must be prepared to become a man prone to a convenient distrust towards his kin: being unable to ever completely rely on a pact between kin, he must feel the need for a power that rules him because "so awful it will seem to [him] to be free".

As I write this, it's been less than two or three centuries since we figured out that reason can be put to a better use: for example, challenging the meaning of "good" and "evil"; for example, stopping thinking of freedom as an absolute and learning to pair it with responsibility; for example, abandoning the belief that a society cannot hold without being founded on some transcendental principle. Three examples that let us understand that we will not have a different child, not until we have a different family, not until we have a different society: nothing left but to imagine the possibility of some human progress built on reason's ability to deconstruct that imprinting.

With one implication: the more we understand the society that created Dostoevskij's parents, the more we will be able to do without the Grand Inquisitor.

Malvino, April 4th 2011 blog post (original)

The difference between the strong emperor and the weak is simply this: the former makes the world his arena, while the latter makes it his harem.

-- The Darkness That Comes Before by R. Scott Bakker

What is freedom, after all? It's discerned necessity.

A. and B. Strugatsky, from Escape Attempt, translated by me from Hungarian translation.

Rats are very similar to humans except that they are not stupid enough to purchase lottery tickets.

Dave Barry

To the common soldier, the strategy of a general may seem obscure. But to the general himself, his way is as clear as if he were marching his army down a broad, straight highway.

Source unknown. I'm sure I read this in some ancient military writing, but I've never been able to find it again.

"If you break it down, each of my comic pages is viewed over a million times. If each page is read for about 5 minutes, that translates to about two years of reading time per update. One month's work for two years is pretty good if you ask me."

• Aaron Diaz

Source: http://www.formspring.me/dresdencodak/q/198161294036078826

I visualize a time when we will be to robots what dogs are to humans, and I'm rooting for the machines. Claude E. Shannon

Information is the resolution of uncertainty. Claude Shannon

Information: the negative reciprocal value of probability. Claude Shannon

JUGGLING THEOREM proposed by Claude E. Shannon

(F+D)H=(V+D)N

where F is the time a ball spends in the air, D is the time a ball spends in a hand, V is the time a hand is vacant, N is the number of balls juggled, and H is the number of hands.

Most libertarians would agree that it’s a messed-up state that:

• Creates a massive crime problem in poor minority neighborhoods with a futile, vicious and every more far-reaching attempt to prevent commerce in popular, highly portable intoxicants that leaves absurd numbers of young men with felony records, making them marginally employable.

• Fails to provide adequate policing for such neighborhoods.

• Fails to provide effective education in such neighborhoods after installing itself as the educator of first resort.

• Uses regulatory power to sharply curtail entry into lines of business from hair-care to ride provision, further limiting the employment options of people in such neighborhoods.

• Has in the past actively fostered the oppression of said minority, up to and including spending state money and time in keeping its members in bondage.

• To make up for all of the above, provides a nominal amount of tax-financed welfare for the afflicted.

But it’s a messed-up libertarianism that looks at that situation and says, "Man, first thing we gotta do is get rid of that welfare!"

-- Jim Henley, via Alas A Blog