[I]t remains true that there will always be a very small chance of some totally unforeseen disaster resulting from your act. But it seems equally true that there will be a corresponding very small chance of your act resulting in something fantastically wonderful, although totally unforeseen. If there is indeed no reason to expect either, then the two possibilities will cancel each other out as we try to decide how to act.
Shelly Kagan, Normative Ethics, Boulder, 1998, p. 65
Ask yourself, “Will this really matter a year from now?” Chances are, the answer is no! Or try to consider your problem in the context of space and time. When my (Sonja Lyubomirsky’s) son went through an astronomy phase, I was surprised how serene and unruffled I felt every time I read him a book about galaxies, stars, or planets. How can I stress over my carpooling situation when the farthest galaxy is thirteen billion light-years away? When the universe is expanding! It seems magical that this knowledge would have such power, but it does.
Sonja Lyubomirsky and Jaime Kurtz, Positively Happy: Routes to Sustainable Happiness, Coventry: CAPP Press, 2008, p. 51
I do not wish to maintain that any strictly social animal, if its intellectual faculties were to become as active and as highly developed as in man, would acquire exactly the same moral sense as ours. In the same manner as various animals have some sense of beauty, though they admire widely-different objects, so they might have a sense of right and wrong, though led by it to follow widely different lines of conduct. If, for instance, to take an extreme case, men were reared under precisely the same conditions as hive-bees, there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would, like the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters; and no one would think of interfering. Nevertheless, the bee, the bee, or any other social animal, would gain in our supposed case, as it appears to me, some feeling of right or wrong, or a conscience.
Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, London, 1871, p. 97
When I ask my expert colleagues whether I can safely accept Eddington’s conclusions in these matters, they always answer in the negative. But this does not satisfy me. For I am quite convinced that their unfavourable answer is not based on a first-hand study of the arguments. It is quite plain that their attitude may be summed up in the sentence: “This kind of thing must be wrong somewhere; but I can’t be expected to waste my valuable time in finding out precisely where the mistake lies.”
C. D. Broad, ‘Sir Arthur Eddington’s The Philosophy of Physical Science’, Philosophy, vol. 15, no. 59 (1940), p. 312
This is how scientists do things. We can’t always claim that our methods are better than what came before, but we can do things differently and see if we come to the same answer. If we come to a different answer, then that raises the issue of why. And then we can address the issue.
Richard Muller, ‘I Stick to the Science’, Scientific American, vol. 304, no. 6 (June, 2011), p. 68
His chosen comrades thought at school
He must grow a famous man;
He thought the same and lived by rule,
All his twenties crammed with toil;
‘What then?’ sang Plato’s ghost. `What then?’Everything he wrote was read,
After certain years he won
Sufficient money for his need,
Friends that have been friends indeed;
‘What then?’ sang Plato’s ghost. `What then?’All his happier dreams came true –
A small old house, wife, daughter, son,
Grounds where plum and cabbage grew,
Poets and Wits about him drew;
‘What then?’ sang Plato’s ghost. `What then?’‘The work is done,’ grown old he thought,
‘According to my boyish plan;
Let the fools rage, I swerved in naught,
Something to perfection brought’;
But louder sang that ghost, `What then?’
William Butler Yeats, ‘What then?’ (1939)
Moral false-positives (failing to recognize an unethical behavior as unethical) are probably more costly than false-negatives (failing to recognize an ethical behavior as ethical). But moral false-negatives are costly, too.
Hugh Ristik, LessWrong (February 8, 2011),
We like people who help us, and we help people we life. However, in terms of favours, it is surprising how little it takes for us to like a person, and how much we give on the basis of so little. It seems that if you want to help yourself, you should help others first.
Richard Wiseman, 59 Seconds: Think a Little, Change a Lot, London, 2009, p. 75
Researchers have spent a great deal of time looking at the link between people’s scores on these types of questionnaires and happiness. The findings are as consistent as they are worrying –high scores tend to be associated with feeling unhappy and unsatisfied with life. Of course, this is not the case with every single materialist and so, if you did get a high score, you might be one of the happy-go-lucky people who buck the trend. (However, before assuming this, do bear in mind that research also suggests that whenever we are confronted with negative results from tests, we are exceptionally good at convincing ourselves that we are an exception to the rule.)
Richard Wiseman, 59 Seconds: Think a Little, Change a Lot, London, 2009, pp. 25-26
If it seems a bit depressing that the most important thing you can do to improve performance is no fun, take consolation in this fact: It must be so. If the activities that lead to greatness were easy and fun, then everyone would do them and they would not distinguish the best from the rest. The reality that deliberate practice is hard can even be seen as good news. It means that most people won’t do it. So your willingness to do it will distinguish you all the more.
Geoff Colvin, Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else, New York, 2008, p. 72
Two high school seniors sharing a pizza, judging the practicality and morality of anarcho-capitalism—it doesn’t get any better.
Bryan Caplan, ‘An Intellectual Autobiography’, In Walter Block (ed.), I Chose Liberty: Autobiographies of Contemporary Libertarians (Auburn, Alabama, 2010), p. 75
Pérdida de tiempo. Para las mujeres, la duración de un amor que no concluye en matrimonio. “Con Prudencio, perdí siete años.”
Adolfo Bioy Casares, Descanso de caminantes: diarios íntimos, Buenos Aires, 2001, p. 89
The attitude of the sociological school towards the systems of moral belief that they find current in various ages and races is a curiously inconsistent one. On the one hand we are urged to accept an existing code as something analogous to an existing law of nature, something not to be questioned or criticized but to be accepted and conformed to as part of the given scheme of things; and on this side the school is able sincerely to proclaim itself conservative of moral values, and is indeed conservative to the point of advocating the acceptance in full of conventional morality. On the other hand, by showing that any given code is the product partly of bygone superstitions and partly of out-of-date utilities, it is bound to create in the mind of any one who accepts its teaching (as it presupposes in the mind of the teacher) a sceptical attitude towards any and every given code. In fact the analogy which it draws between a moral code and a natural system like the human body (a favourite comparison) is an entirely fallacious one. By analysing the constituents of the human body you do nothing to diminish the reality of the human body as a given fact, and you learn much which will enable you to deal effectively with its diseases. But beliefs have the characteristics which bodies have not, of being true or false, of resting on knowledge or of being the product of wishes, hopes, and fears; and in so far as you can exhibit them as being the product of purely psychological and non-logical causes of this sort, while you leave intact the fact that many people hold such opinions you remove their authority and their claim to be carried out in practice.
W. D. Ross, The Right and the Good, Oxford, 1930, p. 13
To think about reality we must use concepts, and certain truths about concepts may reveal, or reflect, truths about reality.
Derek Parfit, ‘Experiences, Subjects, and Conceptual Schemes’, Philosophical Topics, vol. 26, no. 1/2 (Spring/Fall, 1999), pp. 223-224
For a few years, I attended a meeting called Animal Behavior Lunch where we discussed new animal behavior articles. All of the meetings consisted of graduate students talking at great length about the flaws of that week’s paper. The professors in attendance knew better but somehow we did not manage to teach this. The students seemed to have a strong bias to criticize. Perhaps they had been told that “critical thinking” is good. They may have never been told that appreciation should come first. I suspect failure to teach graduate students to see clearly the virtues of flawed research is the beginning of the problem I discuss here: Mature researchers who don’t do this or that because they have been told not to do it (it has obvious flaws) and as a result do nothing.
Seth Roberts, ‘Something is better than nothing’, Nutrition, vol. 23, no. 11 (November, 2007), p. 912
[W]hen a companion says, “You’re not listening to me,” you can still hear those words, and a few words of the previous sentence, for a brief time after they are spoken. Thus, you can answer (falsely), “I was listening. You said…”—and then you can repeat your annoyed companion’s last few words even though, in truth, you weren’t listening when the words were uttered.
Peter Gray, Psychology, 5th ed., New York, 2006, p. 305
Men and women have different bodies. The differences are the direct result of evolution. Women’s bodies evolved to suit the demands of bearing and rearing children and of gathering plant food. Men’s bodies evolved to suit the demands of rising in a male hierarchy, fighting over women, and providing meat to a family.
Men and women have different minds. The differences are the direct result of evolution. Women’s minds evolved to suit the demands of bearing and rearing children and of gathering plant food. Men’s minds evolved to suit the demands of rising in a male hierarchy, fighting over women, and providing meat to a family.
The first paragraph is banal; the second inflammatory.
Matt Ridley, The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature, New York, 1993, pp. 247-248
Silver hair and furrowed brows allow aging men to look “distinguished.” That is not the case with aging women, who risk marginalization as “unattractive” or ridicule for efforts to pass as young. This double standard leaves women not only perpetually worried about their appearance, but also worried about worrying.
Deborah Rhode, The Beauty Bias: The Injustice of Appearance in Life and Law, New York, 2010, p. xv
[N]o moral conclusions of any kind can be drawn from evolution. The asymmetry in prenatal sexual investment between the genders is a fact of life, not a moral outrage. It is “natural.” It is terribly tempting, as human beings, to embrace such an evolutionary scenario because it “justifies” a prejudice in favor of male philandering, or to reject it because it “undermines” the pressure for sexual equality. But it does neither. It says absolutely nothing about what is right and wrong. I am trying to describe the nature of humans, not prescribe their morality. That something is natural does not make it right. […] Evolution does not lead to Utopia. It leads to a land in which what is best for one man may be the worst for another man, or what is the best for a woman may be the worst for a man. One or the other will be condemned to an “unnatural” fate.
Matt Ridley, The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature, New York, 1993, pp. 180-181
[T]his puzzle is, in the present state of evolutionary and sociological thinking, insoluble. Fashion is change and obsolescence imposed on a pattern of tyrannical conformity. Fashion is about status, and yet the sex that is obsessed with fashion is trying to impress the sex that cares least about status.
Matt Ridley, The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature, New York, 1993, pp. 103-104
The standard lecture is that sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender role behavior are separate, independent psychological traits; a feminine man is as likely to be straight as gay. But the standard lecture is wrong. It was written with good, but mistaken, intentions: to save gay men from the stigma of femininity. The problem is that most gay men are feminine, or at least they are feminine in certain ways. A better solution is to disagree with those who stigmatize male femininity. It is a false and shallow diversity that allows only differences that cannot be observed.
Michael Bailey, The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism, Washington, 2003, p. xi
It is certainly an unfortunate state of affairs that gay men tend to be feminine, tend to be less attracted to femininity, but tend to be stuck with each other. There are similar ironies in straight relationships. The designer of the universe has a perverse sense of humor.
Michael Bailey, The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism, Washington, 2003, p. 81
[O] animal humano não se contenta con pouco. Assim como a descoberta da lei da gravidade permitiu ao homem deliberadamente manipular os seus efeitos e fazer um avião voar, os avanços da neurociência estão permitindo compreender e controlar cada vez melhor a mecãnica do bem-estar subjetivo. Chegará o dia em que a posteridade se divertirá ao relembrar como eram primitivas e precárias as drogas lícitas e ilícitas que usamos hoje em dia.
Eduardo Giannetti, Felicidade: diálogos sobre o bem-estar na civilização, São Paulo, 2002, p. 157
For Locke and Hume, and British empiricists generally, the way to understand any psychological concept is either to find it among the immediate data of introspection or to show how it is to be analyzed into such data. This approach ultimately stems from the Cartesian insistence that one knows one’s own states of consciousness better than anything else, in particular, better than physical objects and events, since it is possible to doubt the existence of all the latter but not all of the former.
William Alston, ‘Pleasure’, in Donald Borchert (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2nd ed., 2006, Detroit, p. 622
por que é que, para ser feliz, é preciso não sabê-lo?
Fernando Pessoa, Obra poética, Rio de Janeiro, 1976, p. 560
O que Marx antecipara era uma revolução internacional nos países capitalistas avançados. O que vingou, porém, foi um putsch isolado num país agrário e semifeudal. A disuntiva era brilhante, inapelável: se o experimento soviético fosse bem-sucedido, o marxismo estaria ustificado pela força esmagadora dos fatos; mas se ele naufragasse, se a revolução fosse traída ou descambasse num mero despotismo asiático, bem, aí era preciso frisar que Marx nunca teria acreditado que o verdadeiro counismo pudesse se tornar realidade ou mostrar a que veio num país tão atrasado como a Rússia czarista.
Eduardo Giannetti, Felicidade: diálogos sobre o bem-estar na civilização, São Paulo, 2002, p. 44
But what had he said about risks? Risks were what made the whole thing fun.
Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Mr. Ripley, New York, 1955, p. 179
[T]al vez por no provocar colisiones ideológicas, la observación a través del microscopio fue aceptada más rápidamente que la observación a través del telescopio (Leeuwenhöck no tuvo que hacer ante la Real Sociedad de Londres el mismo tipo de labor epistemologica persuasiva que Galileo tuvo que hacer por su lado: las visiones macrocósmicas son más importantes que las del microcosmos).
Gregorio Klimovsky, ‘Tipos de base empírica’, Análisis filosófico, vol. 1, no. 1 (May, 1981), p. 65
Some writers indeed are so much impressed with the amount of suffering in the world, that they doubt, if we look to all sentient beings, whether there is more of misery or of happiness; whether the world as a whole is a good or bad one. According to my judgment happiness decidedly prevails, though this would be very difficult to prove. If the truth of this conclusion be granted, it harmonizes well with the effects which we might expect from natural selection. If all the individuals of any species were habitually to suffer to an extreme degree, they would neglect to propagate their kind; but we have no reason to believe that this has ever, or at least often occurred. Some other considerations, moreover, lead to the belief that all sentient beings have been formed so as to enjoy, as a general rule, happiness.
Charles Darwin, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809-1882: with the Original Omissions Restored, London, 1958, p. 88
Mêmê en matière d’amour et de séduction, il faut observer, tester, experimenter.
Nicolas Guéguen, Psychologie de la séduction: pour mieux comprendre nos comportements amoureux, Paris, 2009, p. 227
Indian men’s condoms malfunction more than 15 percent of the time. Why such a high fail rate? According to the Indian Council of Medical Research, some 60 percent of Indian men have penises too small for the condoms manufactured to fit World Health Organization specs. That was the conclusion of a two-year study in which more than 1,000 Indian men had their penises measured and photographed by scientists. “The condom,” declared one of the researchers, “is not optimized for India.”
Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner, SuperFreakonomics, New York, 2009, p. 5
Un poco más tarde, cuando el trago de café que quedaba en el fondo de la taza estaba ya frío, Leto alzó la vista de las hojas mecanografiadas, y apoyando la nuca en el respaldo del sillón y contemplando el cielorraso, se puso a pensar en el hombre que tenía que matar. Esa atención al objeto que era el blanco de todos sus actos desde hacía varios meses duró poco, porque sus asociaciones lo fueron llevando, lentamente, a pensar en la muerte en general. El primer pensamiento fue que, por más que acribillara a balazos a ese hombre, como pensaba hacerlo, nunca lograría sacarlo por completo del mundo. El hombre merecía la muerte: era un dirigente sindical que había traicionado a su clase y al que el grupo al que Leto pertenecía hacía responsable de varios asesinatos. Pero, pensaba Leto como si hubiese ido sacando sus ideas del vacío grisáceo que se extendía entre la lámpara y el cielorraso, matarlo era sacarlo de la acción inmediata, no de la realidad.
Juan José Saer, ‘Amigos’ in La mayor, Buenos Aires, 1976
[La] perspectiva según la cual la política de derechos humanos de Alfonsín consiste no en una iniciativa definida a partir de su visión del problema y de la democratización, sino en un freno a opciones más audaces (cuyos supuestos impulsores no se identifican con claridad) […] ignora que, hasta que avanzaron las iniciativas del propio Alfonsín, la opinión mayoritaria dentro y fuera del Congreso era más bien escéptica respecto a la posibilidad de lograr algún grado de justicia. El presidente no respondió a una presión social preexistente, más bien ayudó a crearla (sin calcular lo mucho que le costaría controlarla).
Marcos Novaro, Argentina en el fin de siglo: democracia, mercado y nación (1983-2001), Buenos Aires, 2009, p. 39, n. 19
[E]ntre los veinte elementos constitutivos del temperamento y del carácter, hay uno que domina a los demás y corresponde al motor central de la conducta. ¿Qué facultad so verana aparece en Sarmiento que haga de las otras simples satélites y nos dé la clave de su extraordinario destino? No hay duda posible: es la voluntad. Y en estos países de inconstancia y apatía, es altamente significativo, y acaso presagioso, que la admiración del pueblo converja hacia un héroe de la voluntad; y que sea esta potencia dictatorial la única que conserve, ante los que no la poseen sino enferma y desmedrada, todo su radiante prestigio de ultratumba.
Paul Groussac, ‘Sarmiento’, in El viaje intelectual (Buenos Aires, 1904)
Reivindicar la diferencia como una exclusividad es caer en una forma de sexismo al revés, del mismo modo que el indigenismo o la negritud constituyen un racismo al revés, lo único que deben reclamar las minorías oprimidas es la igualdad total con las mayorías. La homosexualidad no es una esencia que define a algunos individuos; es, como la heterosexualidad, una cualidad entre otras, o como dice Gore Vidal, no es un sustantivo sino un adjetivo. No puede hablarse por tanto de una comunidad gay. El folclore, los hábitos específicos, no son más que el producto de la marginación y el encierro en el guetto, y desaparecerán en la medida en que desaparezca toda discriminación.
La represión de la homosexualidad tiene al fin la misma raíz en el dogma religioso y en las normas del poder autoritario y totalitario que condenan toda relación sexual que tenga por fin la búsqueda del placer y no la procreación, y que igualmente rechazaban hasta ayer el divorcio y hoy el aborto, el control de la natalidad, la relación extramatrimonial, el onanismo, las variantes del goce erótico no genital, la sexualidad femenina clitoriana, y aun la soltería que es discriminada salarialmente. El derecho al placer es una reivindicación que no sólo atañe a los homosexuales sino también a las mujeres, y que aún no ha sido conquistada en vastas regiones del mundo, como el continente africano. El homosexual no debe, por lo tanto, ser respetado como el Otro, la “otredad” como pretende el relativismo cultural de las teorías posmodernas, sino como el igual; no como representante de una especie, como un “tipo” aparte, sino como un individuo. El problema deja el ámbito ontológico en que lo quieren situar los foucaultianos, los posestructuralistas, los posmodernos para bajar al plano más prosaico de la juricidad; se trata de una reivindicación esencial entre las libertades individuales, la de ser dueño del propio cuerpo, y el derecho a la privacidad, a la intimidad, un punto aún no cumplido de los derechos humanos.
Juan José Sebreli, ‘Historia secreta de los homosexuales en Buenos Aires’, in Escritos sobre escritos, ciudades bajo ciudades (Buenos Aires, 1997), pp. 363-364
[S]i es cierto que la guerra [de Malvinas] se desencadena como movimiento irresponsable de unas fuerzas armadas que hace tiempo han dado muestras elocuentes de barbaries y cegueras mayores, no lo es menos que fuimos prácticamente el total de la sociedad argentina el que se sumergió en el vértigo de la aventura, animados por un espíritu triunfalista esencialmente definitorio de la ideología argentina.
Oscar Terán, ‘Malvinas: la derrota, la locura y el mar’, in De utopías, catástrofes y esperanzas: un camino intelectual, Buenos Aires, 2006, p. 105
Punto por punto, el guevarismo fue lo opuesto al pensamiento de Marx y del socialismo clásico: sustituía la autoemancipación por la vanguardia iluminada y el jefe carismático, la movilización de masas por el foco, la democracia social por la dictadura política, el partido por la guerrilla, la lucha de clases por la lucha entre naciones ricas y pobres, la clase trabajadora por el campesinado, las condiciones objetivas por el voluntarismo, el socialismo, sólo possible en las sociedades avanzadas, por el de los pueblos más pobres.
Juan José Sebreli, Comediantes y mártires: ensayo contra los mitos, Buenos Aires, 2008, p. 145
La vida de café ha decaído por el cambio de las costumbres. La igualación de los sexos y el abandono de la mujer del “gineceo” hogareño alentaron, por un lado, a los miembros de la pareja a salir juntos y, por otro, debilitó la amistad entre varones, típica del café de ayer. Lo habitual hoy es ir al restaurante en pareja, y frecuentemente se reúnen dos parejas. Esas salidas se alternan con las comidas en casa, donde aumenta el número de las parejas, y cuando se invita a una persona sola se la suele compensar con otra en la misma situación. El número de invitados –señala Georg Simmel— es decisivo en las reuniones sociales.
Carece el restaurante—o la comida privada—del rasgo esencial de la sociabilidad urbana, tal como se daba en el café: la posibilidad del encuentro imprevisto, del conocimiento de extraños o del fluir incesante de los que se agregan a la mesa. Esta interrelación múltiple con lo desconocido y lo diferente es reemplazada, en el restaurante, por la interrelación limitada y monótona cono lo conocido y lo igual., donde no se permite la novedad ni la sorpresa, una repetición más del living y del comedor doméstico. Con el matrimonio a solas o con visitas, se prolonga la intimidad matrimonial simbiótica que impide la individualidad autónoma.
Juan José Sebreli, Buenos Aires, ciudad en crisis, Buenos Aires, 2003, p. 279
El objetivo de la guerrilla nunca fue la defensa de la democracia sino la instauración de una dictadura de otro signo, pero igualmente sangrienta; su modelo era el castrismo. Quienes habían desdeñado por “formalismos burgueses” los derechos humanos y las garantías constitucionales y sometieron a sus enemigos a cautiverio y muerte deberían haber obrado en consecuencia cuando fueron tomados prisioneros y no ampararse en derechos en los que no creían. Menos aun tenían los antecedentes necesarios para ser, una vez restablecidas las instituciones de la república, funcionarios en los gobiernos democráticos y representantes de las organizaciones de defensa de los derechos humanos.
Juan José Sebreli, Cuadernos, Buenos Aires, pp. 304-305
La pasión por el juego, no menos que por el cine, la música o el coleccionismo de cualquier clase, libera al hombre de la angustia. Un personaje de Balzac, jugador empedernido, estaba deprimido y había decidido suicidarse cuando llegó un amigo y le propuso una partida. El suicida en ciernes abandonó de inmediato su proyecto y corrió entusiasmado a la mesa de juego. Hay pasiones que pierden al hombre, pero el que no tiene ninguna está irremisiblemente perdido.
Juan José Sebreli, Cuadernos, Buenos Aires, p. 61