A monthly thread for posting rationality-related quotes you've seen recently (or had stored in your quotesfile for ages).
In the wake of such suffering, there is no way to adequately explain the tragedy. Yet the seemingly random nature of the mass deaths has made them even harder for the survivors to understand.
"In a situation like this, it's only natural to want to assign blame," said Dr. Frederick MacDougal of the National Center for Infectious Diseases, who recently lost a third cousin to a degenerative nerve disorder. "But the disturbing thing about this case is that no one factor is at fault. People are dying for such a wide range of reasons--gunshot wounds, black-lung disease, falls down elevator shafts--that we have been unable to isolate any single element as the cause."
"No one simple explanation can encompass the enormous scope of this problem," MacDougal added. "And that's very difficult for most people to process psychologically."
[...]
Meanwhile, as the world continues to grapple with this seemingly unstoppable threat, the deaths--and the sorrow, fear and pain they have wrought--continue.
As Margaret Heller, a volunteer at a clinic in Baltimore put it, "We do everything we can. But for most of the people we try to help, the sad truth is it's only a matter of time."
-- The Onion, Millions and Millions Dead
This conception of debate as combat is, in fact, probably the main reason why the Social Text editors fell for my parody. Acting not as intellectuals seeking the truth, but as self-appointed generals in the "Science Wars'', they apparently leapt at the chance to get a "real'' scientist on their "side''. Now, ruing their blunder, they must surely feel a kinship with the Trojans.
But the military metaphor is a mistake; the Social Text editors are not my enemies.
- Alan Sokal (hat tip)
This problem affects a question close to Frances Kamm’s work: what she calls the Problem of Distance in Morality (PDM). Kamm says that her intuition consistently finds that moral obligations attach to things that are close to us, but not to thinks that are far away. According to her, if we see a child drowning in a pond and there’s a machine nearby which, for a dollar, will scoop him out, we’re morally obligated to give the machine a dollar. But if the machine is here but the scoop and child are on the other side of the globe, we don’t have to put a dollar in the machine. --Aaron Swartz
"You cannot understand what a person is saying unless you understand who they are arguing with."
-- Don Symons, quoted by Tooby and Cosmides.
2 + 3 = 5, 3 + 2 = 5, 5 - 2 =3, and 5 - 3 = 2 are not four facts, but four different ways of looking at one fact. Furthermore, that fact is not a fact of arithmetic, to be taken on faith and memorized like nonsense syllables. It is a fact of nature, which children can discover for themselves, and rediscover or verify for themselves as many times as they need or want to.
The fact is this:
***** <--> *** **
If you have before you a group of objects--coins or stones, for example---that looks like the group on the left, then you can make it into two groups that look like the ones on the right. Or--and this is what the two-way arrow means---if you have two groups that look like the ones on the right, you can make them into a group that looks like the one on the left.
This is not a fact of arithmetic, but a fact of nature. It did not become true only when human beings invented arithmetic. It has nothing to do with human beings. It is true all over the universe. One doesn't have to know any arithmetic to discover or verify it. An infant playing with blocks or a dog pawing at sticks might do that operation, though probably neither of them would notice that he had done it; for them, the difference between ***** and *** ** would be a difference that didn't make any difference. Arithmetic began (and begins) when human beings began to notice and think about this and other numerical facts of nature.
----John Holt, Learning All the Time
If you’ve never broken the bed, you’re not experimenting enough.
Nobody wants to die. They just want the pain to stop.
"If I were wrong, then one would have been enough."
Einstein's reported response to the pamphlet "One Hundred Authors Against Einstein."
Mathematical folklore contains a story about how Acta Quandalia published a paper proving that all partially uniform k-quandles had the Cosell property, and then a few months later published another paper proving that no partially uniform k-quandles had the Cosell property. And in fact, goes the story, both theorems were quite true, which put a sudden end to the investigation of partially uniform k-quandles.
People will torture their children with battery acid from time to time anyway -- and who among us hasn't wanted to kill and eat an albino? I sincerely hope that my "new atheist" colleagues are not so naive as to imagine that actual belief in magic might be the issue here. After all, it would be absurd to criticize witchcraft as unscientific, as this would ignore the primordial division between mythos and logos. Let me see if I have this straight: Belief in demons, the evil eye, and the medicinal value of a cannibal feast are perversions of the real witchcraft - -which is drenched with meaning, intrinsically wholesome, integral to our humanity, and here to stay. Do I have that right?
What's wrong with identifying with sports teams
A very funny video comparing identifying with a team to assuming you were there in your favorite movies.
My two worst business experiences have been with ostentatiously 'spiritual' people. It's not that they're insincere in their beliefs, it's just a lot easier for them to deceive themselves that the selfish things they do have justifications in them somewhere.
-- PeteWarden
If you're doing business with a religious son-of-a-bitch, get it in writing. His word isn't worth shit. Not with the good lord telling him how to fuck you on the deal.
You're always in a box. Being aware of the box can help you tremendously. It's when you think that you've left the box that's dangerous, because you're still in the box, but now you don't know it.
-- Nazgulnarsil
"I once spent a whole day in thought, but it was not so valuable as a moment in study. I once stood on my tiptoes to look out into the distance, but it was not so effective as climbing up to a high place for a broader vista. Climbing to a height and waving your arm does not cause the arm's length to increase, but your wave can be seen farther away. Shouting downwind does not increase the tenseness of the sound, but it is heard more distinctly. A man who borrows a horse and carriage does not improve his feet, but he can extend his travels 1,000 li [~500km] A man who borrows a boat and paddles does not gain any new ability in water, but he can cut across rivers and seas. The gentleman by birth is not different from other men; he is just good at "borrowing" the use of external things."
-- Xunzi, An Exhortation to Learning (勸學) 4, translated by John Knoblock in "Xunzi: A Translation and study of the Complete Works"
Matter flows from place to place
And momentarily comes together to be you
Some people find that thought disturbing
I find the reality thrilling
—Richard Dawkins quoted in Our Place in the Cosmos
"I'd rather do what I want to do than what would give me the most happiness, even if I knew for a fact exactly what actions would lead to the latter."
Keith Lynch, rec.arts.sf.fandom, [email protected]