Emotions are the lubricants of reason. —Nicholas Nassim Taleb
ABranco
Karma: 373
A touchstone to determine the actual worth of an “intellectual” — find out how he feels about astrology. —Robert Heinlein
A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions — as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all. —Nietzsche
The limits of my language are the limits of my world. —Ludwig Wittgenstein
The absence of alternatives clarifies your mind marvelously. —Kissinger
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. —Nietzsche
Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living; the world owes you nothing; it was here first. —Mark Twain
Will reason ever outrun faith?
Influenced, yes.
But not ‘because’ of you. It’s not that personal. The other person carries all her dreams, histories, frustrations, hormones, cognitive biases and—which is relevant—a rather inaccurate map of the very territory that you are. Their response is more like an effect of that mix, in which, what concerns you, only a partial map of who you are play a role.
You’re right. It works better if the group interviewed is composed of neither experts nor completely isolated news-averse schizoids.
I haven’t deeply read or studied the whole case itself — but by all means this is a beautiful, detailed, clearly written exposition of your train of thoughts. Thank you.
And yes, the mental suffering of spending two decades in jail + being despised by everyone around when you’re actually innocent shouldn’t be easy to face even with the highest possible dose of stoicism one could inject herself.
I love this last analysis.
After all, this whole discussion on how the lampshading would be perceived turned out to be much more amusing and instructive than the quote itself, which makes me glad that I risked adding it.
Actually, it was more like an act of superego-driven risk-aversion, so I’m twice as glad. More precisely, the lampshading was fruit of spotlight effect of my part, as I quickly fantasized that a great deal of politically correct readers would be outraged by the sexism. But it was more like when you say “Hello, get in, make yourself at home; please don’t notice the mess.”.
Objectivity must be operationally defined as fair treatment of data, not absence of preference. —Stephen Jay Gould
Love consists of overestimating the differences between one woman and another. —George Bernard Shaw
(OK, it’s sexist. I admit it.)
I will repeat this point again until I get hoarse: a mistake is not something to be determined after the fact, but in the light of the information until that point. —Nicholas Nassim Taleb
A pair of the same species:
The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. —Yeats
The trouble with this world is that the ignorant are certain, and the intelligent are full of doubt. —George Bernard Shaw
Well, ok, success might be a personal measure, so by all means only Eliezer could properly say if Eliezer is successful. (Or at least, this is what should matter.)
Having said that, my saying he’s successful was driven (biased?) by my personal standards. A positive (not in the sense of a biased article; in the sense that impact described is positive) Wikipedia article (how many people are in Wikipedia with picture and 10 footnotes? — but nevermind, this is a polemic variable, so let’s not split hairs here) and founding something like SIAI and LessWrong deserve my respect, and quite some awe given his ‘formal education’.
Sharing a less-than-2-minute example of structured procrastination.
I’ll slap myself on the face if it doesn’t sound terrifyingly familiar to at least 75% of LW community...
You’ve achieved a high level of success as a self-learner, without the aid of formal education.
Would this extrapolate as a recommendation of a path every fast-learner autodidact should follow — meaning: is it a better choice?
If not, in which scenarios not going after formal education be more advisable to someone? (Feel free to add as many caveats and ‘ifs’ as necessary.)
In particular, I have realized that trying to visualize the words as you hear them works wonderfully both for:
(a) focusing on what the other person is saying, especially if the theme is difficult to grasp and/or if you tend to get easily distracted; and
(b) associating sounds to words while learning foreign languages.