LW/OB Rationality Quotes - August 2009

The best time to plant a tree is thirty years ago; the second best time is now.

-- Eliezer Yudkowsky

"There is a courage that goes beyond even an atheist sacrificing their life and their hope of immortality. It is the courage of a theist who goes against what they believe to be the Will of God, choosing eternal damnation and defying even morality in order to rescue a slave, or speak out against hell, or kill a murderer... You don't get a chance to reveal that virtue without making fundamental mistakes about how the universe works, so it is not something to which a rationalist should aspire. But it warms my heart that humans are capable of it."

-- Eliezer Yudkowsky

It is a more inspiring battle cry to scream, "Die, vicious scum!" instead of "Die, people who could have been just like me but grew up in a different environment!"

-- Eliezer Yudkowsky

"I don't think making narratives is a bug. The bug is discarding the rest of the probability distribution."

-ArthurB on the post "Why You're Stuck in a Narrative"

"The strength of a theory is not what it allows, but what it prohibits; if you can invent an equally persuasive explanation for any outcome, you have zero knowledge."

-- Eliezer Yudkowsky

One possible way out [of the Taiwan issue] would be to put a time limit on our defense of Taiwan. Say, 75 years. Then we could say that everyone born in Taiwan today could expect to live out their lives under US protection - but after that, they would have to look out for themselves. This might suit both nations' time horizons. To the Chinese, 75 years might seem like a long wait. To Americans, 50 years is actually longer than "never". You can verify this experimentally: Ask Americans whether something (fusion power, artificial intelligence, a cure for aging, a Best Picture for an animated movie) will ever happen, or whether it will happen in 50 years. More will say that it will happen in 50 years than that it will ever happen.

-- Phil Goetz

"To worship a phenomenon because it seems so wonderfully mysterious, is to worship your own ignorance."

-- Eliezer Yudkowsky

Two quotes, but posted together as they're so closely related.

"In the Way of Bayes, the prior probability equals the expected posterior probability: If you know your destination, you are already there."

-- Eliezer Yudkowsky

"If you know your desired moral destination, you are already there."

-- Eliezer Yudkowsky

Most healthy intellectual blogs/forums participate in conversations among larger communities of blogs and forums. Rather than just "preaching to a choir" of readers, such blogs often quote and respond to posts on other blogs. Such responses sometimes support, and sometimes criticize, but either way can contribute to a healthy conversation. [...] In contrast, an insular group defined by something other than its rationality would be internally focused, rarely participating in such larger conversations.

--- Robin Hanson

(hint hint this thread is insanely incestuous)

WARNING: Beware of things that are fun to argue

-- Eliezer Yudkowsky

"Ignorance exists in the map, not in the territory. If I am ignorant about a phenomenon, that is a fact about my own state of mind, not a fact about the phenomenon itself."

-- Eliezer Yudkowsky

I know of no law limiting economic value per atom.

—Robin Hanson

"God ha' mercy! What cannot be racked from words in five centuries? One could wring, methinks, a flood from a damp clout!"

Shakespeare in the 20th century, as imagined by Isaac Asimov in "The Immortal Bard".

"If you don't see where this is going, then you haven't read Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, which makes you incomplete as a human being."

-- Eliezer Yudkowsky

if the democrats can't find bigfoot, how can they run health care!?