Best of Rationality Quotes

My genes done gone and tricked my brain

By making fucking feel so great

That's how the little creeps attain

Their plan to fuckin' replicate

But brain's got tricks itself, you see

To get the bang but not the bite

I got this here vasectomy

My genes can fuck themselves tonight.

—The r-selectors, Trunclade, quoted in Blindsight by Peter Watts

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)

Truth comes out of error more readily than out of confusion.

-- Francis Bacon, Novum Organum (1620)

"The account of perception that’s starting to emerge is what we might call the “brain’s best guess” theory of perception: perception is the brain’s best guess about what is happening in the outside world. The mind integrates scattered, weak, rudimentary signals from a variety of sensory channels, information from past experiences, and hard-wired processes, and produces a sensory experience full of brain-provided color, sound, texture, and meaning. ... Perception is inference."[emphasis added]

- Atul Gawande

It is the mark of an instructed mind to rest assured with that degree of precision that the nature of the subject admits, and not to seek exactness when only an approximation of the truth is possible.

-- Aristotle

Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.

-- Donald E. Knuth

Using language that is appropriate in one linguistic framework in a different linguistic framework is what causes philosophical confusion and pseudo puzzles, also known as the history of philosophy.

-- Thomas Cathcart Daniel Klein, Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar... : Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes

Sometimes, I feel the fear of uncertainty stinging clear

And I can't help but ask myself how much I let the fear

Take the wheel and steer

It's driven me before

And it seems to have a vague, haunting mass appeal

But lately I'm beginning to find that I

Should be the one behind the wheel

- Incubus, Drive

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

We are stardust. We are billion year old carbon.

- Joni Mitchell