Rationality Quotes July 2011

The tautological emptiness of a Master's Wisdom is exemplified in the inherent stupidity of proverbs. Let us engage in a mental experiment by way of trying to construct proverbial wisdom out of the relationship between terrestrial life, its pleasures, and its Beyond. If ones says, "Forget about the afterlife, about the Elsewhere, seize the day, enjoy life fully here and now, it's the only life you've got!" it sounds deep. If one says exactly the opposite ("Do not get trapped in the illusory and vain pleasures of earthly life; money, power, and passions are all destined to vanish into thin air - think about eternity!"), it also sounds deep. If one combines the two sides ("Bring Eternity into your everyday life, live your life on this earth as if it is already permeated by Eternity!"), we get another profound thought. Needless to add, the same goes for it's inversion: "Do not try in vain to bring together Eternity and your terrestrial life, accept humbly that you are forever split between Heaven and Earth!" If, finally, one simply gets perplexed by all these reversals and claims: "Life is an enigma, do not try to penetrate its secrets, accept the beauty of its unfathomable mystery!" the result is, again, no less profound than its reversal: "Do not allow yourself to be distracted by false mysteries that just dissimulate the fact that, ultimately, life is very simple - it is what it is, it is simply here without reason and rhyme!" Needless to add that, by uniting mystery and simplicity, one again obtains a wisdom: "The ultimate, unfathomable mystery of life resides in its very simplicity, in the simple fact that there is life."

• Slavoj Zizek

Suppose I think, after doing my accounts, that I have a large balance at the bank. And suppose you want to find out whether this belief of mine is "wishful thinking." You can never come to any conclusion by examining my psychological condition. Your only chance of finding out is to sit down and work through the sum yourself. When you have checked my figures, then, and then only, will you know whether I have that balance or not. If you find my arithmetic correct, then no amount of vapouring about my psychological condition can be anything but a waste of time. If you find my arithmetic wrong, then it may be relevant to explain psychologically how I came to be so bad at my arithmetic, and the doctrine of the concealed wish will become relevant — but only after you have yourself done the sum and discovered me to be wrong on purely arithmetical grounds. It is the same with all thinking and all systems of thought. If you try to find out which are tainted by speculating about the wishes of the thinkers, you are merely making a fool of yourself. You must first find out on purely logical grounds which of them do, in fact, break down as arguments. Afterwards, if you like, go on and discover the psychological causes of the error.

C.S. Lewis, "Bulverism"

(It's not exactly correct- evidence of bias is some evidence against a belief- but not always as strong of evidence as it's assumed to be.)

It was a good answer that was made by one who when they showed him hanging in a temple a picture of those who had paid their vows as having escaped shipwreck, and would have him say whether he did not now acknowledge the power of the gods,—‘Aye,' asked he again, ‘but where are they painted that were drowned after their vows?' And such is the way of all superstition, whether in astrology, dreams, omens, divine judgments, or the like; wherein men, having a delight in such vanities, mark the events where they are fulfilled, but where they fail, though this happens much oftener, neglect and pass them by.

Francis Bacon

Sometimes, apparently rational self-interested strategies turn out (as in the prisoners' dilemma) to be self-defeating. This may look like a defeat for rationality, but it is not. Rationality is saved by its own open-endedness. If a strategy of following accepted rules of rationality is sometimes self-defeating, this is not the end. We revise the rules to take account of this, so producing a higher-order rationality strategy. This in turn may fail, but again we go up a level. At whatever level we fail, there is always the process of standing back and going up a further level.

Quoted in The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker

I had a scheme, which I still use today when somebody is explaining something that I'm trying to understand: I keep making up examples. For instance, the mathematicians would come in with a terrific theorem, and they're all excited. As they're telling me the conditions of the theorem, I construct something which fits all the conditions. You know, you have a set (one ball) – disjoint (two balls). Then the balls turn colors, grow hairs, or whatever, in my head as they put more conditions on. Finally they state the theorem, which is some dumb thing about the ball which isn't true for my hairy green ball thing, so I say, 'False!'

-Richard Feynman

When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?

John Maynard Keynes

We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it.

Mark Twain

A scholar is just a library’s way of making another library.

Daniel Dennett

One of the most serious problems with modern "management" is that the incentives are all wrong. Imagine that I hire a programmer and pay him by the line of code. This idea has been so thoroughly debunked that it is nearly impossible to write out the consequences without sounding cliché. Yet it happens all the time: Companies promote "Architects" who are evaluated by the weight of their "architecture." The result is stultifying and demoralizing. The architect does not work to facilitate the programmer's work, he works to produce evidence of his contribution in the form of frameworks, standards, and software process.

So, how are most managers evaluated? By the amount of "managing" they do, as measured by the amount of process they impose on their team. Evaluating a manager by the amount of managing they do is exactly the same thing as evaluating a programmer by the amount of code they write. And it produces results like you describe, where the manager works to produce evidence of their management in the form of processes and decisions from the top down, rather than facilitating the work actually being done.

-raganwald, HN, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2423236

"Aaron, you always criticize religious people for adhering to their beliefs... but the beliefs you have about evolution, global warming, or the lack of god are just as passionate as any fundamentalist. How are you any better?"

"There's one big difference. I know what it would take for me to change my mind."

— Raymond and Aaron, Calamities of Nature

"When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action. When you desire a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it."

--Lois McMaster Bujold

"Death is the termination of life, not a creature with a scythe who has a just claim to the lives he takes. (Death hates to be anthropomorphized.)" -- Ben Best, Cryonics − Frequently Asked Questions

"When someone pulls a gun on you, what are your options?"

"Do what they say or get shot."

Wrong. You take their gun, or pull out a bigger gun, or call their bluff, or do any one of 146 other things."

-Suits (TV show)

In an article in a women’s magazine many years ago we advised the readers to buy their stocks as they bought their groceries, not as they bought their perfume.

-- Benjamin Graham The Intelligent Investor, 1949.

(I really like Graham's rational, down-to-earth approach to investing, and this quote is a good example of the kind of thinking he wants to convey)

Bill James was asked about the Holmes saying "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth". He responded:

That Sherlock Holmes line is very, very interesting. It's false, and extremely arrogant, and very dangerous. That's not a real way to think about the world. This concept of eliminating the impossible -- we could never do that. The whole idea of Sherlock Holmes is dangerous because it encourages people to think that -- if they're intelligent enough -- they could put all the pieces together in absolute terms. But the human mind is not sophisticated enough to do that. People are not that smart. It's not that Sherlock Holmes would need to be twice as smart as the average person; he'd have to be a billion times as smart as the average person.

"I would not give a farthing for the simplicity on this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity."

-- Oliver Wendell Holmes (quoted by Venkatesh Rao; thanks to InquilineKea)

"There are two types of people: those who try to win and those who try to win arguments. They are never the same." -- Nassim Nicholas Taleb (HT: Fugitive Knowledge)

Don't you believe in flying saucers, they ask me? Don't you believe in telepathy? — in ancient astronauts? — in the Bermuda triangle? — in life after death? No, I reply. No, no, no, no, and again no. One person recently, goaded into desperation by the litany of unrelieved negation, burst out "Don't you believe in anything?" "Yes", I said. "I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be."

Isaac Asimov

Eternal life
Is super fun!

• "Hello!", The Book of Mormon Musical

In my experience, nothing is ever what it seems to be, but everything is exactly what it is.

Buckaroo Banzai

No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish.

• David Hume

One perennial problem is the overwhelming incentive for analysts to issue “Buy” recommendations. The universe of stocks not owned by a customer is always much larger than the list of those currently owned. Consequently, it’s much easier to generate commissions from new “Buy” recommendations than from recommendations to sell.

-Joel Greenblatt

"I find it deeply unimpressive that the bible can be said to predict the big bang. There are only two possibilities: either the universe began or it's been here forever. Just two possibilities. To get one of them is really not that impressive."

~ Richard Dawkins, in response to John Lennox's claim that the bible predicted that the universe had a beginning.

Our brains are like lawyers, not scientists.

-- Michael Shermer (one minute into the clip)

Between 1880 and 1887, Heaviside developed the operational calculus (involving the D notation for the differential operator, which he is credited with creating), a method of solving differential equations by transforming them into ordinary algebraic equations which caused a great deal of controversy when first introduced, owing to the lack of rigour in his derivation of it. He famously said, “Mathematics is an experimental science, and definitions do not come first, but later on.” He was replying to criticism over his use of operators that were not clearly defined. On another occasion he stated somewhat more defensively, “I do not refuse my dinner simply because I do not understand the process of digestion.”

Oliver Heaviside

"When you are stubbornly making an argument, there is a possibility that you are uninformed, ignorant, in denial, and/or being a jerk. Of course, you might be right."

• Dante

"What we wish, we readily believe, and what we ourselves think, we imagine others think also."

--Julius Caesar; cf. 'Bayesian truth serum'

Without evidence, innovation is just another word for 'fad,' -Bill Gates

The world is not an inherently kind nor fair place. It is up to us to make it so.

• E.A. Manuel, Jr.

The Analytical Engine weaves Algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves.

• Ada Augusta, Countess of Lovelace

Check yourself before you wreck yourself.

-Ice Cube

This quote is probably well known, but I heard it for the first time this week: "Luck is probability taken personally." (I don't know who to attribute this to.)

It's your mind that guides you / In the world around you / Where veracity replies / To creations in your mind

-Dignity, from "Project Destiny"

(Edit - missed seeing a rule)

"Please don't disillusion me. I haven't had breakfast yet." -Orson Scott Card, _Children of the Mind

When you believe in things that you don't understand

Then you suffer

Superstition ain't the way

-Stevie Wonder, Superstition

I'll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you're using here: it didn't require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility... for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could and before you even knew what you had you patented it and packaged it and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now - you're selling it.

Dr. Ian Malcolm, "Jurassic Park"

Bad scientist! No poems for you, gnomekiller!

Yes there are.

(proxy)

"He was going to suck my blood!" -Richard

"Which is what we do to anyone when we tell them we'll be hurt if they don't live our way." -Don

-from Illusions, Richard Bach

My point of this as a rationality quote: it is a reminder that we have to stay our course regardless of how much others may not agree with the logic with which we rule our lives.

Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.

-- Yeshua ben-Yosef (attributed), on the importance of seeing the winds of evidence instead of waiting for absolute proof.