I also need to point out that I am pretty sure the Sequences decry Appeals To Authority. What are the constant references to the Sequences, except Appeals To Authority? I have always been a little unclear on that point.
The main reason those happen is to establish a shared language and background concepts. If I want to defuse an argument about whether vanilla or chocolate is the best flavor for ice cream, then I can link to 2-Place and 1-Place Words, not in order to swing the day for my chosen side, but in order to either get people to drop the argument as mistaken or argue about the real issue (perhaps whether we should stock the fridge with one or the other). This is way cleaner than trying to recreate from scratch the argument for seeing adjectives as describing observer-observed relationships, rather than being attributes of the observed.
The function of Viliam’s quotes seems to have been to provide examples of human thinking behaving in an RL-like fashion, drawn from the sequences rather than other places mostly because of availability.
The main reason those happen is to establish a shared language and background concepts. If I want to defuse an argument about whether vanilla or chocolate is the best flavor for ice cream, then I can link to 2-Place and 1-Place Words, not in order to swing the day for my chosen side, but in order to either get people to drop the argument as mistaken or argue about the real issue (perhaps whether we should stock the fridge with one or the other). This is way cleaner than trying to recreate from scratch the argument for seeing adjectives as describing observer-observed relationships, rather than being attributes of the observed.
The function of Viliam’s quotes seems to have been to provide examples of human thinking behaving in an RL-like fashion, drawn from the sequences rather than other places mostly because of availability.