Rationality witticisms suitable for t-shirts or bumper stickers

That looks like one of the Facebook posts by I Fucking Love Science; BTW, how about those?

I did exactly that after looking at this thread, and only spotted your comment when I wanted to post the results.

I skipped some obvious refinements as this was a 5 minute project.

• 55 A Bet is a Tax on Bullshit. Alex Tabarrok
• 45 Luck is statistics taken personally. Penn Jellete
• 33 Comic Quote Minus 37 -- Ryan Armand Also a favourite.
• 34 Nobody is smart enough to be wrong all the time.Ken Wilber
• 32 A problem well stated is a problem half solved.Charles Kettering
• 48 I will not procrastinate regarding any ritual granting immortality. --Evil Overlord List #230
• 29 The greatest weariness comes from work not done.-Eric Hoffer
• 26 "Most haystacks do not even have a needle." -- Lorenzo
• 24 "I accidentally changed my mind." my four-year-old
• 31 Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd. Voltaire
• 39 People say "think outside the box," as if the box wasn't a fucking great idea.Sean Thomason
• 38 The Noah principle: predicting rain doesn’t count, building arks does. -Warren E. Buffett
• 37 It’s easy to lie with statistics, but it’s easier to lie without them. -Fred Mosteller
• 30 If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.-Seneca
• 34 It is the mark of a truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics.George Bernard Shaw
• 34 "Working in mysterious ways" is the greatest euphemism for failure ever devised.TheTweetOfGod
• 12 Death is the gods' crime. Unsounded
• 24 The most practical thing in the world is a good theory. Helmholtz
• 29 When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir? John Maynard Keynes
• 28 Writing program code is a good way of debugging your thinking. -- Bill Venables
• 28 It is easy to be certain....One has only to be sufficiently vague.Charles S. Peirce
• 30 Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations. — John Von Neumann
• 31 There is one rule that's very simple, but not easy: observe reality and adjust. Ran Prieur
• 21 Things are only impossible until they're not. -- Jean-Luc Picard
• 24 Part of the potential of things is how they break. Vi Hart, How To Snakes
• 25 A scholar is just a library’s way of making another library. Daniel Dennett
• 29 We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it. Mark Twain
• 29 The Company that needs a new machine tool is already paying for it. -old Warner Swasey ad
• 25 "Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from SCIENCE!" ~Girl Genius
• 26 Complex problems have simple, easy to understand wrong answers. — Grossman's Law
• 22 Most people would rather die than think; many do. – Bertrand Russell
• 22 The only road to doing good shows, is doing bad shows.Louis C.K., on Reddit
• 28 My brain technically-not-a-lies to me far more than it actually lies to me.-- Aristosophy (again)
• 23 The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off. Gloria Steinem
• 27 Nature draws no line between living and nonliving. -- K. Eric Drexler, Engines of Creation
• 22 It is better to destroy one's own errors than those of others. Democritus
• 12 Reality is not optional. Thomas Sowell
• 17 Statistics is applied philosophy of science. A. P. Dawid
• 22 Forget Jesus. The stars died so that you could be here today. Lawrence Krauss
• 23 Go down deep enough into anything and you will find mathematics. Dean Schlicter
• 24 We are built to be effective animals, not happy ones. -Robert Wright, The Moral Animal
• 19 Being right too soon is socially unacceptable. Robert A. Heinlein
• 14 "Anything you can do, I can do meta" -Rudolf Carnap
• 17 Mind is a machine for jumping to conclusions - Daniel Kahneman
• 26 A faith which cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets.Arthur C. Clarke
• 26 Nobody panics when things go "according to plan"… even if the plan is horrifying. The Joker
• 23 "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies." --Friedrich Nietzsche
• 20 I honestly don't know. Let's see what happens. -- Hans. The Troll Hunter
• 16 Luck is opportunity plus preparation plus luck.--Jane Espenson
• 20 The singularity is my retirement plan. -- tocomment, in a Hacker News post
• 19 Better our hypotheses die for our errors than ourselves. -- Karl Popper
• 22 Errors using inadequate data are much less than those using no data at all.-Charles Babbage
• 19 In general, we are least aware of what our minds do best. — Marvin Minsky
• 20 It is easier to love humanity than to love one's neighbor.--Eric Hoffer, on Near/Far
• 15 Keep your solutions close, and your problems closer.afoolswisdom
• 18 "If God gives you lemons, you find a new God."-- Powerthirst 2: Re-Domination
• 17 Truth comes out of error more easily than out of confusion.-Francis Bacon
• 23 Opening your eyes doesn't make a bad picture worse. http://onefte.com/2011/07/17/bully-for-you/
• 19 Know the hair you have to get the hair you want. -Pantene Pro-V hair care bottle
• 16 The best way to escape from a problem is to solve it. -Alan Saporta
• 16 Not to know is bad; not to wish to know is worse. — Wolof proverb
• 20 Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. -- Voltaire

If we're looking for a short, pithy statement which signals affiliation with the Less Wrong meme cluster, I think the standing all-time top rationality quote is a good place to start.

Personally, I've been hearing all my life about the Serious Philosophical Issues posed by life extension, and my attitude has always been that I'm willing to grapple with those issues for as many centuries as it takes.

-- Patrick Nielsen Hayden

I don't think wearing slogans on shirts is much of a way to promote anything. It's a signal of affiliation. Shirt slogans don't change people's minds, but they can help like-minded people recognize each other and view each other favorably.

Plus, as time goes on, the reference class of things which are promoted on shirts gets closer and closer to being all-inclusive.

I didn't really have "promoting rationality" in mind; when I'm shirtmaking and not pressed for time, I aim most for "wearable and accurate self-expression", followed by "maybe eliciting a flash of recognition from a very tiny percentage of people who see the shirt".

For my own purposes, the ideal respondant to this prompt would have to be able to read my mind and see what I overlook, but any luminous aspiring rationalist might also be able to provide insight.

with "hpmor.com" in small print underneath.

WWPQD?

Um.. I feel like I'm in the out-group now. What does this (and the stuff below) mean?

I think this is my favorite so far. Thanks!

I think this depends very much on your social circle and social goals. Wearing clothing with slogans on it is a high variance strategy: high attractiveness to a few people, low or even negative attractiveness to others. Wearing slogan-less clothing is more low variance; probably no one will object, but likely none of your responses will be as positive as the maximum positive response from wearing a T-shirt with a slogan on it. Both strategies can be useful, depending on what you are trying to accomplish.

Personally, I wear shirts with nerdy slogans on them, and anecdotally have had several positive interactions with people who came up to me to say "I like your shirt." (And I doubt I've lost much by turning people off.)

Also, I'm unconvinced that, in a casual context, wearing a shirt with a slogan on it is as negative as you suggest. I see people wearing shirts with slogans I don't get all the time, and I think I just ignore them, or occasionally ask what they mean (which rarely gets me very far conversation-wise, but doesn't cause me to dislike the person).

On the other hand, if you're trying to project an aura of Serious Grownup, it's probably a bad idea.

EDIT: Unless you're talking about shirts with controversial slogans, I suppose. That's even more high-variance, but again, in some contexts could still be a good idea. (I was thinking of things like "Engineering: It's like math, but louder.")

It is difficult to explain why clothes (or vehicles) with slogans printed on them are bad for you.

On many occasions "difficult to explain" turns out to be a hint for "not actually true".

the vast majority of people you see outside are not wearing clothes with witticisms

Indeed. The vast majority are wearing clothes bearing advertisement for various brands. I would think twice before concluding that they have decided that is beneficial.

If you wanted to talk to someone about rationality, what do you think would help more in impressing them: a rationalist wearing normal, stylish clothes, or a rationalist wearing a t shirt with a slogan printed on it?

In impressing them? Probably the former, unless the slogan happens to strike them as clever.

In bringing me to their attention and encouraging them to approach me in a crowd full of people wearing normal stylish clothes and T-shirts with non/anti-rationalist slogans? Undoubtedly the latter.

In encouraging them to approach me in a crowd full of people wearing T-shirts with rationalist slogans? It's very hard to say, I don't expect either to have much effect there..

What do you expect in those scenarios?

I'm not optimizing my clothing for the vast majority of people, and neither should most lesswrongers.

Maybe mugs would work better than t-shirts for some environments.

If I'm going to wear clothing with words, is there any marginal harm to having it be rationalist themed? I frequently find myself in situations where it's the norm, regardless of whether it's a good idea instrumentally. My system one says conforming there is good, but it's possible I'm wrong there.

I disagree. I think it pays to advertise, and loudly.

I think that was one of Harry Browne's principles in How I found Freedom in an Unfree World. Can't say that I've put it to good effect, but if you have low prevalence ideas (if you're here, you do) and you want to meet similarly minded people, you need to enhance your sampling somehow.

It is difficult to explain why clothes (or vehicles) with slogans printed on them are bad for you. If it helps, consider that the vast majority of people you see outside are not wearing clothes with witticisms, they have all decided that it is not beneficial. The exceptions are mainly religious, political, and other extremists.

It's interesting that you mention religion in the same paragraph in which you advocate forming beliefs based on the behaviour of the masses.

What do you think you know, and how do you think you know it?

How do I know that what I mean to say is true, or how do I know what it is that I really mean?

Peace if possible, truth at all costs. -- Martin Luther

The fact that he started some really bloody wars over something that didn't even turn out to be true should maybe give us some pause before we endorse virtues like this.

"I'm not a psychopath, I'm just very creative"

For the love of God, don't put this on a shirt, especially if a male is going to wear it at some point.

I've always favored the quote:

"Ignorance is never better than knowledge." --Enrico Fermi

(This is supposed to be sourced in the book "Atoms in the Family: My life with Enrico Fermi", but I can't find the quote via Google Books, and it's a fair drive to the nearest library that has it.)

Well, I got it :) But you were a bit busy at the point where I was thinking "Hey, that's pretty cool!", and then I didn't remember to say anything later...

So, I thought it was a good choice :)

Next time someone asks what "privilege" means, quote this one.