Best of Rationality Quotes
One thing I have advocated, without much success, is that children be taught social rules (when they are ready) in exactly the same way they are taught and teach each other games. The point is not whether the rules are right or wrong. Are the rules of 5-card stud poker or hopscotch right or wrong? It's that we're playing a certain game here, and there are rules to this game just as in any other game. If you want to be in the game, then you have to learn how to play it. Different groups of people play different games (different rules = different game), so if you want to play in different groups, you have to learn the games they play. When you develop the levels of understanding above the rule level, you'll be able to understand all games, and be able to join in anywhere. You won't be stuck knowing how to play only one game.
My problem with selling this idea is that people tend to think that their game is the only right one. In fact, being told that they are playing a game with arbitrary rules is insulting or frightening. They want to believe that the rules they know are the ones that everyone ought to play by; they even set up systems of punishment and reward to make sure that nobody tries to play a different game. They turn the game into something that is deadly serious, and so my idea simply seems frivolous instead of liberating.
William T. Powers
"Intuition only works in situations where neurology and evolution has pre-equipped us with a good set of basic-level categories. That works for dealing with other humans, and for throwing things, and for a bunch of other things that do not, unfortunately, include constructing viable philosophies."
-- Eric S. Raymond
"What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is the exact opposite."
Bertrand Russell, Free Thought and Official Propaganda, in "Sceptical Essays".
"Experiment and theory often show remarkable agreement when performed in the same laboratory."
-- Daniel Bershader
The fact that I have no remedy for all the sorrows of the world is no reason for my accepting yours. It simply supports the strong probability that yours is a fake.
H.L. Mencken, Minority Report.
Good sense is, of all things among men, the most equally distributed; for every one thinks himself so abundantly provided with it, that those even who are the most difficult to satisfy in everything else, do not usually desire a larger measure of this quality than they already possess.
Rene Descartes.
"There is a superstition in avoiding superstition, when men think to do best if they go furthest from the superstition formerly received."
-- Francis Bacon
When I look around and think that everything's completely and utterly fucked up and hopeless, my first thought is "Am I wearing completely and utterly fucked up and hopeless-colored glasses?"
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
Oscar Wilde, De Profundis
On the same theme as the previous one:
I've begun worshipping the sun for a number of reasons. First of all, unlike some other gods I could mention, I can see the sun. It's there for me every day. And the things it brings me are quite apparent all the time: heat, light, food, a lovely day. There is no mystery, no one asks for money, I don't have to dress up, and there is no boring pageantry. And interestingly enough, I have found that the prayers I offer to the sun and the prayers I formerly offered to "God" are all answered at about the same 50-percent rate.
George Carlin
"Everything is open to questioning. That does not mean all answers are equally valid."
-- Kelvin Throop
"Your superior intellects are no match for our puny weapons!"
(Variously attributed. TV Tropes says the Simpsons.)
Also variously interpreted. I take it as a caution against forgetting to actually win with one's towering genius.
"The seeker after the truth is not one who studies the writings of the ancients and, following his natural disposition, puts his trust in them, but rather the one who suspects his faith in them and questions what he gathers from them, the one who submits to argument and demonstration, and not to the sayings of a human being whose nature is fraught with all kinds of imperfection and deficiency. Thus the duty of the man who investigates the writings of scientists, if learning the truth is his goal, is to make himself an enemy of all that he reads, and, applying his mind to the core and margins of its content, attack it from every side. He should also suspect himself as he performs his critical examination of it, so that he may avoid falling into either prejudice or leniency."
"There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you."
-- J.K. Rowling, Harvard commencement address.
"We can get very confused, because we think that words must have some secret meaning that we have to figure out. They don't. They are just noises or marks, and they mean whatever experience you have learned to mean by them. People tend to use similar words in similar situations, but unless you have specifically agreed on what the words will mean, in terms of underlying experiences, there's no way to know what another person understands when you use them. The experience you attach to a word when you say it isn't automatically the same as the experience another person attaches to the same word when hearing it."
William T. Powers
It is always advisable to perceive clearly our ignorance.
Charles Darwin, "The Expressions of the Emotions in Man and Animals", ch.3.
"You cannot understand what a person is saying unless you understand who they are arguing with."
-- Don Symons, quoted by Tooby and Cosmides.
Silas will like this one:
Menahem sighed. 'How can one explain colours to a blind man?'
'One says', snapped Rek, 'that red is like silk, blue is like cool water, and yellow is like sunshine on the face.'
-- David Gemmell "Legend"
When I was a young man about to go out into the world, my father says to me a very valuable thing. He says to me like this... "Son," the old guy says, "I am sorry that I am not able to bank roll you to a very large start, but not having any potatoes which to give you, I am now going to stake you to some very valuable advice. One of these days in your travels, a guy is going to come to you and show you a nice, brand new deck of cards on which the seal has not yet been broken. This man is going to offer to bet you that he can make the jack of spades jump out of the deck and squirt cider in your ear. Now son, do not bet this man, for as sure as you stand there, you are going to wind up with an earful of cider."
-- Sky Masterson, a character in Guys and Dolls
"When I start to wonder if black swans exist, I put down my copy of Mind and pick up my copy of Nature."
-- Ariadne (former columnist in New Scientist).
The Mathemagician nodded knowingly and stroked his chin several times. "You'll find," he remarked gently, "that the only thing you can do easily is be wrong, and that's hardly worth the effort."
-- Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth
"People are not complicated. People are really very simple. What makes them appear complicated is our continual insistence on interpreting their behavior instead of discovering their goals."
-- Bruce Gregory
"Successful zealots don't argue to win. They argue to move the goalposts and to make it appear sane to do so."
-- Seth Godin
"Death is the most terrible of all things; for it is the end, and nothing is thought to be any longer either good or bad for the dead."
-- Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
The halt can manage a horse,
the handless a flock,
The deaf be a doughty fighter,
To be blind is better than to burn on a pyre:
There is nothing the dead can do.
-- Havamal
I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn’t know.
-- Mark Twain, Old Times on the Mississippi
Man cannot understand the perfection and imperfections of his chosen art if he cannot see the value in other arts. Following rules only permits development up to a point in technique and then the student and artist has to learn more and seek further. It makes sense to study other arts as well as those of strategy. Who has not learned something more about themselves by watching the activities of others? To learn the sword study the guitar. To learn the fist study commerce. To just study the sword will make you narrow-minded and will not permit you to grow outward.
-- Musashi, "A Book of Five Rings"
A certain mother habitually rewards her small son with ice cream after he eats his spinach. What additional information would you need to be able to predict whether the child will: a. Come to love or hate spinach, b. Love or hate ice cream, or c. Love or hate Mother?
-- Gregory Bateson, "Steps to an Ecology of Mind"
Despite the fact that you arrived in this world with nothing but an unborn Buddha-mind, your partiality for yourselves now makes you want to have things move in your own way. You lose your temper, become contentious, and then you think, "I haven't lost my temper. That fellow won't listen to me. By being so unreasonable he has made me lose it." And so you fix belligerently on his words and end up transforming the valuable Buddha-mind into a fighting spirit. By stewing over this unimportant matter, making the thoughts churn over and over in your mind, you may finally get your way, but then you fail in your ignorance to realize that it was meaningless for you to concern yourself over such a matter.
From The Dharma Talks of Zen Master Bankei, translated by Norman Waddell. Quoted by Torkel Franzén as a perfect description of Usenet flamewars.
A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying in other words that he is wiser today than yesterday.
Jonathan Swift (also attributed to Pope)
I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.
Abraham Lincoln
Some people revel in complexity, and what's worse they have the brain power to deal with vast systems of arcane equations. This ability can be a handicap because it leads to overlooking simple solutions.
William T. Powers
"To stay young requires unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods."
-- Robert A. Heinlein (to be precise, his character Lazarus Long, but I don't think there's much difference)
If you state any two propositions abstractly enough, they will appear to be the same because you subsume them under the same generalization. But this does not mean they have anything to do with each other; it means only that you prefer not to see the differences.
William T. Powers
Don't forget, your mind only simulates logic.
Used as .sig quote by Glen C. Perkins e.g. here.
The script:
A grad student in humanities has been called before a hearing to justify his existence.
Student: "It's hard to explain monetarily, but how can you put a price tag on the human soul?"
Student: "The humanities help us appreciate beauty and grow as individuals."
Student: "What good are science and technology if we don't ask ourselves the question, what does it mean to be a human being?"
Chair: "So how's the answer coming along?"
Student: "Oh no, we just ask the question, not actually answer it."
"If I were wrong, then one would have been enough."
Einstein's reported response to the pamphlet One Hundred Authors Against Einstein.
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. The inverse proposition also appears to be true: A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system.
John Gall, "Systemantics"
"This is the first test of a gentleman: his respect for those who can be of no possible value to him."
"The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice there is little we can do to change until we notice that failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds."
-- R.D. Laing, Knots
"Experience does not ever err, it is only your judgement that errs in promising itself results which are not caused by your experiments."
Leonardo Da Vinci
No man knows the state of another; it is always to some more or less imaginary man that the wisest and most honest adviser is speaking.
-- Thomas Carlyle, Advice to Young Men
"If a man could understand all the horror of the lives of ordinary people who are turning around in a circle of insignificant interests and insignificant aims, if he could understand what they are losing, he would understand that there can be only one thing that is serious for him---to escape from the general law, to be free. What can be serious for a man in prison who is condemned to death? Only one thing: How to save himself, how to escape: nothing else is serious."
P.D. Ouspensky, "In Search of the Miraculous", ch.17
The value of a sword cannot be judged when the sword stands alone in a corner; only when it is wielded by an expert can one see its true worth.
-- old Chinese saying
You wouldn't believe how much time people spend looking for evidence that something couldn't possibly work for them. If they spent one-tenth the time looking for something that DID work, they'd have their problem solved almost immediately.
-- Eric Pepke
You're never aware of your current point of view, only of previous ones.
-- William T. Powers
Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.
-- St. Paul. (Phillipians 4:8)
(Yes, yes, someone who had a major hand in creating Christianity. I know. As context, I first encountered these words in the 1999 "Doomwatch" pilot, where they are spoken at the funeral of Dr Quist, and then googled it.)
"A theory which cannot be mortally endangered cannot be alive."
W. A. H. Rushton, quoted in J.R. Platt, Strong Inference, Science vol.146, n.3642, 1964.
"With my eyes I can see you. With your eyes I can see myself."
K. Bradford Brown
This one is rather long, but I think makes a point worth considering for anyone writing to instruct the public.
One who hopes to effect any good by his writings, must be so pure in his life, that what he proposes for instruction or imitation must be a transcript of his own heart. But general improvement is so little to be anticipated, that almost any attempt which may be made by an individual in his zeal to do good, seems to be lost labour. Those whose character has attained to the greatest perfectness, are at all times the persons most willing and anxious to avail themselves of any hint or suggestion which might tend to improve them in virtue and knowledge, so that what is intended for universal benefit serves but to instruct a very few, and those few the individuals who require it least. Serious works, meant to reform the careless, are read only by those who already are serious, and disposed to assent to what such works set forth. In that case their object, humanly speaking, is in a great measure defeated. It seems hopeless to attempt to infuse a taste for serious reading into the minds of the thoughtless multitude. Write down to the capacity of the weak and slenderly informed, or write up to the taste of the intellectual portion of them; give it cheap, or give it for nothing, it is all the same--a man will not thus be forced or induced to read what you put in print for his especial benefit.
The most powerful means, therefore, of promoting what is good, is by example, and this means is what is in every individual's power. One man only in a thousand, perhaps, can write a book to instruct his neighbours, and his neighbours in their perversity will not read it to be instructed. But every man may be a pattern of living excellence to those around him, and it is impossible but that, in his peculiar sphere, it will have its own weight and efficacy; for no man is insignificant who tries to do his duty--and he that successfully performs his duty, holds, by that very circumstance, a station, and possesses an influence in society, superior to that which can be acquired by any other distinction whatever. But it is only those who propose to themselves the very highest standard, that attain to this distinction. There are many different estimates of what a rationalist's duty is, and society is so constituted, that very false notions are formed of that in which true excellence and greatness consists; besides, many men who are theoretically right are practically wrong--all which detracts from the weight of rational influence upon human society. But however much human opinion may vary, and however inconsistent human practice may be, there is but one right rule; and it is only he who has this rule well defined in his own mind, who can exhibit that preeminence in the rational life which is the noblest distinction to which man can attain. It is deeply to be regretted that they who seek for this preeminence are a very small number compared with the mass of the professedly rational world. But small though the number be, the good which might be effected through their means is incalculable, if they were bound as in solemn compact to discountenance all those vices and habits which the usages of society have established into reputable virtues--thus becoming as it were a band of conspirators against the formless lord of this world and his kingdom--transfusing and extending their principles and influence, till they draw men off from their allegiance to that old tyrant by whom they have been so long willingly enslaved.
The italicised words are where I made some systematic substitutions from the original text, and of course the hyperlink is not in the original. Here's the attribution, rot13'd:
Sebz gur 1842 cersnpr ol Tenpr Jrofgre gb Yrjvf Onlyl'f Gur Cenpgvpr bs Cvrgl: Qverpgvat n Puevfgvna Ubj gb Jnyx, gung Ur Znl Cyrnfr Tbq (1611). Jvgu "Puevfgvna" ercynprq ol "engvbany".
Just in case the writer's actual subject would have provoked a reflexive rejection.
Beware of no man more than of yourself; we carry our worst enemies within us.
Charles H. Spurgeon
Nature understands no jesting. She is always true, always serious, always severe. She is always right, and the errors are always those of man.
--Goethe
The tools we use have a profound (and devious!) influence on our thinking habits, and, therefore, on our thinking abilities.
Edsger W. Dijkstra, "Selected Writings on Computing"
At this point I reveal myself in my true colours as a stick-in-the-mud. I hold a number of beliefs that have been repudiated by the liveliest intellects of our time. I believe that order is better than chaos, creation better than destruction. I prefer gentleness to violence, forgiveness to vendetta. On the whole I think that knowledge is preferable to ignorance, and I am sure that human sympathy is more valuable than ideology. I believe that in spite of recent triumphs of science, men haven't changed much in the last two thousand years. And in consequence, we must still try to learn from history. History is ourselves.
Sir Kenneth Clarke, "Civilisation" (Excerpt on YouTube.)
"You pride yourself on freedom of choice. Let me tell you that this very freedom is one of the factors that most confuse and undermine you. It gives you full play for your neuroses, your surface reactions and your aberrations. What you should aim for is freedom from choice! Faced with two possibilities, you spend time and effort to decide which to accept. You review the whole spectrum of political, emotional, social, physical, psychological and physiological conditioning before coming up with the answer which, more often than not, does not even satisfy you then. Do you know, can you comprehend, what freedom it gives you if you have no choice? Do you know what it means to be able to choose so swiftly and surely that to all intents and purposes you have no choice? The choice that you make, your decision, is based on such positive knowledge that the second alternative may as well not exist."
-- Rafael Lefort, "The Teachers of Gurdjieff", ch. XIV
A book is a machine to think with.
I. A. Richards, "Principles of Literary Criticism"
'Tis with our Judgments as our Watches, none
Go just alike, yet each believes his own.
Pope, Essay on Criticism
Nothing greater can happen to men than the perfection of their mental functions.
Leibniz (quoted in Maat, "Philosophical languages in the Seventeenth Century: Dalgarno, Wilkins, Leibniz")
I quoted this in another comment, but I think it deserves to be in here as well. It used to be in the rec.backcountry FAQ.
"You have before you the disassembled parts of a high-powered hunting rifle, and the instructions written in Swahili. In five minutes an angry Bengal tiger will walk into the room."
-- Eugene Miya
"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, hhbk90$hu5$3@reader1.panix.com
A final goal of any scientific theory must be the derivation of numbers. Theories stand or fall, ultimately, upon numbers.
"I don't believe important statements just because someone makes them. Even if I make them."
-- William T. Powers
Fifth and last.
Don't learn tricks, learn juggling.
-- Anon
"Nature cannot be fooled."
--Richard Feynman
"The happiest people are those who think the most interesting thoughts. Those who decide to use leisure as a means of mental development, who love good music, good books, good pictures, good company, good conversation, are the happiest people in the world. And they are not only happy in themselves, they are the cause of happiness in others."
Dear Miss Manners: How is a hat correctly worn?
Gentle Reader: Same as always; on the head.
-- Judith Martin ("Miss Manners")
See also: The Simple Truth.
So it is with minds. Unless you keep them busy with some definite subject that will bridle and control them, they throw themselves in disorder hither and yon in the vague field of imagination... And there is no mad or idle fancy that they do not bring forth in the agitation.
I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.
Mens cujusque is est quisque. ("What a man's mind is, that is what he is.")
Cicero, De Re Publica
"Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house."
-- Robert Heinlein (as Lazarus Long)
ETA: If I could downvote my own postings, I'd downvote this one. I won't delete it, to leave the context for loqi's response.
Dammit, I've read Distress and I know without looking exactly the context of the Egan quote. I was practically cheering for Rourke in that chapter. But there's a big gap between encountering an idea and finding it good, and actually applying it after closing the book.
"One word, Ma'am," he said, coming back from the fire; limping because of the pain. "One word. All you've been saying is quite right, I shouldn't wonder. I'm a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won't deny any of what you said. But there's one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things--trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Supose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play-world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we're leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that's small loss if the world's as dull a place as you say."
Puddleglum the Marshwiggle, in C.S. Lewis "The Silver Chair".
If you get it, it will be in spite of any method you use.
You must have a method.
-- K. Bradford Brown
Sometimes exhausted from toil and endeavour
I wish I could sleep for ever and ever
But then this assertion my thinking allays
I shall be doing that one of these days.
-- Piet Hein
Numerical precision is the very soul of science, and its attainment affords the best, perhaps the only criterion of the truth of theories and the correctness of experiments.
-- D'Arcy Thompson, On Growth and Form (1917)
The key to getting a reputation for being brilliant is actually being brilliant, not just acting like you are.
"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".
When the time comes, there is no moment for reasoning. And if you have not done your inquiring beforehand, there is most often shame. Reading books and listening to people's talk are for the purpose of prior resolution.
Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai
Man's bodily needs are simple, being comprised under three heads: food, clothing, and a dwelling-place; but the bodily desires which were implanted in him with a view to procuring these are apt to rebel against reason, which is of later growth than they.
-- Al Ghazzali, The Alchemy of Happiness
If he were speaking to us through the chronophone, we might hear him continue:
Accordingly, as we saw above, they require to be curbed and restrained by the mathematical laws promulgated by the Bayesian Conspiracy.
Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts.
-- C.S. Peirce
"You can't tell what someone is doing by watching what they're doing."
-- Richard Marken
"Action speaks nothing, without the Motive."
-- anonymous fortune cookie
Mencius said, "Whenever anyone told him that he had made a mistake, Tzu-lu was delighted. Whenever he heard a fine saying, Yü bowed low before the speaker. The Great Shun was even greater. He was ever ready to fall into line with others, giving up his own ways for theirs, and glad to take from others that by which he could do good."
In the words of the ancients, one should make his decisions within the space of seven breaths. Lord Takanobu said, "If discrimination is long, it will spoil." Lord Naoshige said, "When matters are done leisurely, seven out of ten will turn out badly. A warrior is a person who does things quickly."
Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai
From a BBC interview with a retiring Oxford Don:
Don: "Up until the age of 25, I believed that 'invective' was a synonym for 'urine'."
BBC: "Why ever would you have thought that?"
Don: "During my childhood, I read many of the Edgar Rice Burroughs 'Tarzan' stories, and in those books, whenever a lion wandered into a clearing, the monkeys would leap into the trees and 'cast streams of invective upon the lion's head.'"
BBC: long pause "But, surely sir, you now know the meaning of the word."
Don: "Yes, but I do wonder under what other misapprehensions I continue to labour."