Rationality Quotes: July 2010

If anything of the classical supernatural existed, it would be a branch of engineering by now.

-- Steve Gilham

Doubt, n. The philosophical device Descartes so cleverly used to prove everything he previously believed.

-L. A. Rollins, Lucifer's Lexicon

Nature draws no line between living and nonliving.

-- K. Eric Drexler, Engines of Creation

Hunches are not bad, they just need to be allowed to die a natural death when evidence proves them wrong.

-- Steve Moore, former FBI agent

From the Wikipedia article about perverse incentives:

In Hanoi, under French colonial rule, a program paying people a bounty for each rat pelt handed in was intended to exterminate rats. Instead, it led to the farming of rats.

and

19th century palaeontologists traveling to China used to pay peasants for each fragment of dinosaur bone (dinosaur fossils) that they produced. They later discovered that peasants dug up the bones and then smashed them into multiple pieces to maximise their payments.

"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."

--Friedrich Nietzsche

"I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do."

Robert A. Heinlein

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny..."

-- Isaac Asimov

Idealists of all schools, aristocrats and bourgeois, theologians and physicians, politicians and moralists, religionists, philosophers, or poets, not forgetting the liberal economists - unbounded worshippers of the ideal, as we know - are much offended when told that man, with his magnificent intelligence, his sublime ideas, and his boundless aspirations, is, like all else existing in the world, nothing but matter, only a product of vile matter.

We may answer that the matter of which materialists speak, matter spontaneously and eternally mobile, active, productive, matter chemically or organically determined and manifested by the properties or forces, mechanical, physical, animal, and intelligent, which necessarily belong to it - that this matter has nothing in common with the vile matter of the idealists. The latter, a product of their false abstraction, is indeed a stupid, inanimate, immobile thing, incapable of giving birth to the smallest product, a caput mortuum, an ugly fancy in contrast to the beautiful fancy which they call God; as the opposite of this supreme being, matter, their matter, stripped by that constitutes its real nature, necessarily represents supreme nothingness.

--Mikhail Bakunin, God and the State

Reminded me of some posts here by Academician.

The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.

-- Plutarch

A recent one from Linux Weekly News that gives insight into rationality:

Side note: when a respected information source covers something where you have on-the-ground experience, the result is often to make you wonder how much fecal matter you've swallowed in areas outside your own expertise. -- Rusty Russell

I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn’t know.

-- Mark Twain, "Old Times on the Mississippi"

What frightens us most in a madman is his sane conversation.

--Anatole France

A superstition is a premature explanation that overstays its time.

-- George Iles

"Anyone who believes that the theory of evolution implies moral darwinism, and who also believes in the theory of gravity, has a moral duty to go jump off a cliff." -- Ari Rahikkala

When I was 14, my father was stationed in Japan. I went rock climbing with this kid from school. He fell and got injured, and I had to bring him to the hospital. We came in through the wrong entrance, and passed this guy in the hall. He was a janitor. My friend came down with an infection, and the doctors didn't know what to do. So they brought in the janitor. He was a doctor. And a Buraku - one of Japan's untouchables. His ancestors had been slaughterers, gravediggers. And this guy knew that he wasn't accepted by the staff, didn't even try. He didn't dress well. He didn't pretend to be one of them. People around that place didn't think he had anything they wanted, except when they needed him - because he was right, which meant that nothing else mattered. And they had to listen to him.

-- Dr. Greg House

The necessity for marking our classes has brought with it a bias for false and excessive contrast, and we never invent a term but we are at once cramming it with implications beyond its legitimate content. There is no feat of irrelevance that people will not perform quite easily in this way; there is no class, however accidental, to which they will not at once ascribe deeply distinctive qualities. The seventh sons of seventh sons have remarkable powers of insight; people with a certain sort of ear commit crimes of violence; people with red hair have souls of fire; all democratic socialists are trustworthy persons; all people born in Ireland have vivid imaginations and all Englishmen are clods; all Hindoos are cowardly liars; all curly-haired people are good-natured; all hunch-backs are energetic and wicked, and all Frenchmen eat frogs. Such stupid generalisations have been believed with the utmost readiness, and acted upon by great numbers of sane, respectable people. And when the class is one's own class, when it expresses one of the aggregations to which one refers one's own activities, then the disposition to divide all qualities between this class and its converse, and to cram one's own class with every desirable distinction, becomes overwhelming.

-- H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia

Silas will like this one:

Menahem sighed. 'How can one explain colours to a blind man?'

'One says', snapped Rek, 'that red is like silk, blue is like cool water, and yellow is like sunshine on the face.'

-- David Gemmell "Legend"

This is what fascinates me most in existence: the peculiar necessity of imagining what is, in fact, real.

-- Philip Gourevitch

Their judgment was based more upon blind wishing than upon any sound prevision; for it is a habit of mankind to entrust to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not fancy.

-- Thucydides, Greek Historian, ca. 5th century BCE (Book IV, 108)

I like Thucydides for the way he tries to explain history in terms of real-politik, people, their drives and especially without including the gods in an explanation, somewhat similar to Hippocrates.

Interestingly, a modern version of this appeared in Neal Stephenson's Anathem:

Never believe a thing simply because you want it to be true

where it's called Diax's Rake.

Anathem is a great book, I'd like to add, and quite well aligned with many of the LW themes.

A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying in other words that he is wiser today than yesterday.

Jonathan Swift (also attributed to Pope)

I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.

Abraham Lincoln

Man, n. An irrational animal whose irrationality is best demonstrated by his irrational belief in his rationality.

-L. A. Rollins, Lucifer's Lexicon

He who knows not and knows not that he knows not is a fool - shun him

He who knows not, and knows that he knows not is a child - teach him

He who knows, and knows not that he knows is asleep - wake him

He who knows, and knows that he knows is wise - follow him

• Persian proverb

Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful.

George Box

Johnny Smith: If you could go back in time to Germany, before Hitler came to power, knowing what you know now, would you kill him?
[...]
Dr. Sam Weizak: I don't like this, John. What are you getting at?
Johnny Smith: What would you do? Would you kill him?
Dr. Sam Weizak: All right. All right. I'll give you an answer. I'm a man of medicine. I'm expected to save lives and ease suffering. I love people. Therefore, I would have no choice but to kill the son of a bitch.

-- The Dead Zone, 1983

New and stirring things are belittled because if they are not belittled, the humiliating question arises, "Why then are you not taking part in them?"

-- H. G. Wells

"Perhaps the excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some obvious and useful truth in a few words.
We frequently fall into error and folly, not because the true principles of action are not known, but because, for a time, they are not remembered; and he may therefore be justly numbered among the benefactors of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may be easily impressed on the memory, and taught by frequent recollection to recur habitually to the mind."

--Samuel Johnson, Rambler #175, November 19, 1751

Human stupidity is formidable but not invincible.

-- Robert C. W. Ettinger, The Prospect of Immortality

...science will save the world. Science is the only thing that can save the world. Science is unstoppable, reason cannot be killed, logic cannot be stopped, there is no force on Earth which can stop a scientist from learning, and turning our backs on science will doom us all. Even the gods are rational and obey laws. The future is not something which happens by just waiting for time to pass. And if you want to be assured of a life after death, you have to build it yourself.

From Fine Structure, by Sam Hughes.

The reason Royal Navy [nuclear missles] can be launched without a code is that when it was suggested failsafes should be introduced the British Admiralty took insult at the implication that Officers of the Royal Navy would ever consider launching nuclear missiles without orders or unless it was the correct thing to do.

-- TV Tropes, A Nuclear Error

One day four boys approached Hodja and gave him a bag of walnuts.
"Hodja, we can't divide these walnuts among us evenly. So would you help us, please?"
Hodja asked, "Do you want God's way of distribution or mortal's way?"
"God's way," the children answered.
Hodja opened the bag and gave two handfuls of walnuts to one child, one handful to the other, only two walnuts to the third child and none to the fourth.
"What kind of distribution is this?" the children asked, baffled.
"Well, this is God's way," he answered. "He gives some people a lot, some people a little and nothing to others. If you had asked for mortal's way I would have given the same amount to everybody."

I come in peace. I didn’t bring artillery. But I’m pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you fuck with me, I’ll kill you all.

-- Marine General James Mattis, to Iraqi leaders in every area his men served in, after sending his tanks and artillery home following the invasion of Iraq

Don't bring a knife to a math fight.

-- "Olyander"

If you don't get this elementary, but mildly unnatural, mathematics of elementary probability into your repertoire, then you go through a long life like a one legged man in an ass kicking contest. You're giving a huge advantage to everybody else.

Charlie Munger

It ought to mean acquiring a method — a method that can be used on any problem that one meets — and not simply piling up a lot of facts.

-- George Orwell

Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.

-- Often attributed to Pablo Picasso, but I can't find a reliable source.

I'm quite curious to hear what LW thinks of this one.

"The conformist benefits from the pooled knowledge of it's companions."

-E.O. Wilson in Sociobiology the new synthesis

"The only thing worse than generalizing from one example is generalizing from no examples at all."

— Bob Scheifler and Jim Gettys, 1984

I have met people who exaggerate the differences [between the morality of different cultures], because they have not distinguished between differences of morality and differences of belief about facts. For example, one man said to me, "Three hundred years ago people in England were putting witches to death. Was that what you call the Rule of Human Nature or Right Conduct?" But surely the reason we do not execute witches is that we do not believe there are such things. If we did-if we really thought that there were people going about who had sold themselves to the devil and received supernatural powers from him in return and were using these powers to kill their neighbours or drive them mad or bring bad weather, surely we would all agree that if anyone deserved the death penalty, then these filthy quislings did. There is no difference of moral principle here: the difference is simply about matter of fact. It may be a great advance in knowledge not to believe in witches: there is no moral advance in not executing them when you do not think they are there. You would not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so because he believed there were no mice in the house.

C.S. Lewis

You know the good old days weren't always good
And tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems...

-- Billy Joel, "Keeping the Faith"

And now we see his true face: he wants immortality, all right, but he wants it on a silver platter. It is not life he objects to, but effort and risk. Far from being stoic, or resigned, or well-adjusted, or complacent, or mature, or philosophic, or self effacing, or altruistic, or any of the other dignified things he pretends to be, he is merely myopic and nervous.

Robert Ettinger, The Prospect of Immortality

Wise men told him his simple fancies were inane and childish, and he believed it because he could see that they might easily be so. What he failed to recall was that the deeds of reality are just as inane and childish, and even more absurd because their actors persist in fancying them full of meaning and purpose as the blind cosmos grinds aimlessly on from nothing to something and from something back to nothing again, neither heeding nor knowing the wishes or existence of the minds that flicker for a second now and then in the darkness.

—H.P. Lovecraft, "The Silver Key"

The following dialogue is excerpted from Chapter 16 of "Becoming a Technical Leader", by Jerry Weinberg (warmly recommended). It has been edited out of the post Kaj Sotala and I are working on, but I think it's worth having it somewhere around.

Some background: Jerry is interviewing Edrie, a (presumably somewhat fictionalized) senior woman engineer at a client of his. Edrie has just butted horns with a male peer over his conception of what makes a good technical leader: "we have nothing against competent unmarried women, like you, but...". But upon finding herself alone with Jerry, Edrie acknowledges that her colleague does have a point, taking Jerry somewhat by surprise.

• J: "Why do you think fathers are such good leadership material?" [...]
• E: "That's easy. It's a matter of power conversion".
• J: "Power conversion?"
• E:"Yes, you know. The ability to convert one form of power into another that you value more. Like converting water power from a stream into electric light for your house."
• J: "What does that have to do with married men being better leaders?"
• "Well, in this country, married men have an advantage over single men. They have power over a woman, which they convert into services that support them in their work. Single men have much more work to do just taking care of themselves, so they are at a disadvantage." [...]
• J: "A lot of men would see it differently. They would say that the married woman is converting her sexual power over the man into money power - a guaranteed lifetime of support." [...]
• E:"There's no contradiction in both people using power at the same time and converting it into something they both want more."

Twinkle, twinkle, little star -
I know exactly what you are:
An incandescent ball of gas,
Condensing to a solid mass.

Twinkle, twinkle, giant star -
I need not wonder what you are,
For seen through spectroscopic ken
You're helium and hydrogen.

-- Peter Marshall

(Quoted in Robert Ettinger's "The Prospect of Immortality." Ettinger says that Gene Lund credited it to Peter Marshall. I haven't been able to find a more direct source that confirms this.)

Edit: How do you force a line return so that a poem will read correctly? Thanks, fixed now.

"They never do tests. Not many real deeds either. Oh, conversation with your grandmother's shade in a darkened room, the odd love potion or two, but comes a doubter, why, then it's the wrong day, the planets are not in line, the entrails are not favorable, we don't do tests!" -Tyrian, Dragonslayer

"No, imbeciles! No! Fools and cretins, a book will not make a plate of soup; a novel is not a pair of boots; a sonnet is not a syringe; a drama is not a railway - those forms of civilization which have caused humanity to march on the road to progress.
By all the bowels of all the popes, past, present and future, no! Ten thousand times no!
You cannot make a hat out of a metonymy, and you cannot make a simile in the form of a bedroom slipper, and you cannot use an antithesis as an umbrella [...] An ode is, I have a feeling, too light a garment for the winter."

--Théophile Gautier, Preface (1834) to Gautier, Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835), http://berlin.wolf.ox.ac.uk/lists/quotations/quotations_by_ib.html

We don't need anyone to tell us what to do. Not Savonarola, not the Medici. We are free to follow our own path. There are those who will take that freedom from us, and too many of you gladly give it. But it is our ability to choose- whatever you think is true- that makes us human...There is no book or teacher to give you the answers, to show you the way. Choose your own way! Do not follow me, or anyone else.

(Assassin's Creed II, Ezio Auditore's speech)

Rationalist, n. One who puts Descartes before the horse sense.

-L. A. Rollins, Lucifer's Lexicon

From Give Well:

I think the distinction between “interesting story/hypothesis” and “good case for action” is also chronically underrecognized in the world of giving.

I don't think the problem is limited to the world of giving.

With CJ Cherryh's Foreigner novels, I haven't had that sort of good fortune. However, I think I'm beginning to have a clue to at least one of the aspects of that grammar. What she does, leading up over a number of pages to those sections that in other writers would be identified as infodumps, is carefully build the foundation for a question -- and then, when she writes that section, she answers that question. Which means that by that time the reader is so eager for the information that it doesn't come across as an infodump at all.

Suzzette Haden Elgin

RATIONAL, adj. Devoid of all delusions save those of observation, experience and reflection.

-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

I have a few questions.

1) What's "Bayescraft"? I don't recall seeing this word elsewhere. I haven't seen a definition on LW wiki either.
2) Why do some people capitalize some words here? Like "Traditional Rationality" and whatnot.

Morality is Temporary, Wisdom is Permanent.

-- Hunter S. Thompson

Man's bodily needs are simple, being comprised under three heads: food, clothing, and a dwelling-place; but the bodily desires which were implanted in him with a view to procuring these are apt to rebel against reason, which is of later growth than they.

-- Al Ghazzali, "The Alchemy of Happiness"

If he were speaking to us through the chronophone, we might hear him continue:

Accordingly, as we saw above, they require to be curbed and restrained by the mathematical laws promulgated by the Bayesian Conspiracy.

Once I read about the experiments of a German professor studying the simplest mechanisms of memory formation in primitive creatures. The German did find his simplest mechanisms - generally, Germans always find what they search for. In particular, he put a worm on a narrow board. The worm crawled ahead. Ahead was an electrified wire. Before the wire, according to the German plan, the worm had the option of turning right. After 18464 electric shocks the worm got wise and started to turn. I vividly imagine the confrontation between the worm and the German professor. An hour passes by, two hours, a day, a week. The German is swearing: "Verteufel! Hirnlose Wurm! Ich bin ein Deutsche Professor. I will teach you to follow rules and behave in the proper manner." And shock him, shock him again. Measuring the body impedance before and after food. Eventually the worm breaks down in tears: "You win, German, I can't take it anymore."

-- Dmitry Galkovsky (in my crude translation)

"I too, breaking out of old ways, had discovered solitude and melancholy which is at the basis of religion. Religion turns the melancholy into uplifting fear and hope. But I had rejected the ways and comforts of religion. I couldn't turn to them again, just like that. That melancholy about the world remained something I had to put up with on my own. At some times it was sharp; at some times it wasn't there."

Salim, the narrator of V.S. Naipauls A Bend in the River

An irrational animal whose irrationality is best demonstrated by his irrational believed.