[SEQ RERUN] The Quotation is not the Referent

Today’s post, The Quotation is not the Referent was originally published on 13 March 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

It’s very easy to derive extremely wrong conclusions if you don’t make a clear enough distinction between your beliefs about the world, and the world itself.


Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).

This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we’ll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky’s old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Probability is in the Mind, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.

Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day’s sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.