Quotes

[P]eople who rely heavily on sequence thinking often seem to have inferior understanding of subjects they aren’t familiar with, and to ask naive questions, but as their familiarity increases they eventually reach greater depth of understanding; by contrast, cluster-thinking-reliant people often have reasonable beliefs even when knowing little about a topic, but don’t improve nearly as much with more study.

Holden Karnofsky, Sequence thinking vs. cluster thinking, The GiveWell Blog, June 10, 2014

[C]onsider the convention against the use of ad hominem arguments in science and many other arenas of disciplined discussion. The nominal justification for this rule is that the validity of a scientific claim is independent of the personal attributes of the person or the group who puts it forward. Construed as a narrow point about logic, this comment about ad hominem arguments is obviously correct. But it overlooks the epistemic significance of heuristics that rely on information about how something was said and by whom in order to evaluate the credibility of a statement. In reality, no scientist adopts or rejects scientific assertions solely on the basis of an independent examination of the primary evidence. Cumulative scientific progress is possible only because scientists take on trust statements made by other scientists—statements encountered in textbooks, journal articles, and informal conversations around the coffee machine. In deciding whether to trust such statements, an assessment has to be made of the reliability of the source. Clues about source reliability come in many forms—including information about factors, such as funding sources, peer esteem, academic affiliation, career incentives, and personal attributes, such as honesty, expertise, cognitive ability, and possible ideological biases. Taking that kind of information into account when evaluating the plausibility of a scientific hypothesis need involve no error of logic. Why is it, then, that restrictions on the use of the ad hominem command such wide support? Why should arguments that highlight potentially relevant information be singled out for suspicion? I would suggest that this is because experience has demonstrated the potential for abuse. For reasons that may have to do with human psychology, discourses that tolerate the unrestricted use of ad hominem arguments manifest an enhanced tendency to degenerate into personal feuds in which the spirit of collaborative, reasoned inquiry is quickly extinguished. Ad hominem arguments bring out our inner Neanderthal.

Nick Bostrom, Technological revolutions: Ethics and policy in the dark, in Nigel M. de S. Cameron and M. Ellen Mitchell (eds.) Nanoscale: Issues and perspectives for the nano century, Hoboken, New Jersey, 2007, pp. 129–152, pp. 141-142

In each case where X is commonly said to be about Y, but is really X is more about Z, many are well aware of this but say we are better off pretending X is about Y. You may be called a cynic to say so, but if honesty is important to you, join me in calling a spade a spade.

Robin Hanson, Politics isn, 2008

At twenty men think that life will be over at thirty. I, at the age of fifty-eight, can no longer take that view.

Bertrand Russell, The conquest of happiness, New York, 2013, p. 61

Pero ¿qué libro es ese que está junto a él?

—/La Galatea/ de Miguel de Cervantes—dijo el barbero.

—Muchos años ha que es grande amigo mío ese Cervantes, y sé que es más versado en desdichas que en versos. Su libro tiene algo de buena invención; propone algo, y no concluye nada: es menester esperar la segunda parte que promete; quizá con la emienda alcanzará del todo la misericordia que ahora se le niega; y entretanto que esto se ve, tenedle recluso en vuestra posada, señor compadre.

Miguel de Cervantes, El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, Madrid, 1605, ch. 6

The key to being more innovative as a nonprofit, is to think of everything you do as an experiment – whether or not you wanted it to be an experiment. It’s very liberating. Focus on learning the most you can. Get the most learning to run the next experiment. I found that is a relief compared to the burden of perfect.

Borges me llama desde su casa y me refiere: «Madre y yo nos volvimos en taxi. Apenas subimos al automóvil, fue como andar en una montaña rusa. El hombre estaba borracho. La última vez que estuvo a punto de chocar fue en la puerta de casa, donde felizmente quedó en llanta. Madre y yo estábamos jadeantes. Entonces el destino nos deparó uno de los momentos más felices de la Historia argentina. Protestando contra todos los que pudo atropellar, el chofer, con voz aguardentera, crapulosa, recitó: “Hijos de Espejo, de Astorgano, de Perón, de Eva Perón, de Alsogaray y de todos los ladrones hijos de una tal por cual”. ¿Te das cuenta? ¡Si un hombre así está con nosotros hay esperanzas para la Patria!»

Adolfo Bioy Casares, Borges, Barcelona, 2006, p. 868

Estuve pensando que nadie me piensa. Que estoy absolutamente sola. Que nadie, nadie siente mi rostro dentro de sí ni mi nombre correr por su sangre. Nadie actúa invocándome, nadie construye su vida incluyéndome. He pensado tanto en estas cosas. He pensado que puedo morir en cualquier instante y nadie amenazará a la muerte, nadie la injuriará por haberme arrastrado, nadie velará por mi nombre. He pensado en mi soledad absoluta, en mi destierro de toda conciencia que no sea la mía. He pensado que estoy sola y que me sustento sólo en mí para sobrellevar mi vida y mi muerte. Pensar que ningún ser me necesita, que ninguno me requiere para completar su vida.

Alejandra Pizarnik and Ana Becciú, Diarios, Barcelona, 1956

No creo que yo sea un cara pálida ni un piel roja, pero las chicas igual se interesan por mí. Las seduzco con la palabra. Un amigo en Adrogué, Ribero, que jugaba muy bien al billar, era un soltero empedernido, siempre decía que la mayor hazaña de su vida había sido llevarse una mujer a la cama sin haberla tocado nunca. “Sólo con la voz y las palabras, la seduje”, decía.

Ricardo Piglia, Los diarios de Emilio Renzi, Barcelona, 2017, p. 48

A narcissist […], inspired by the homage paid to great painters, may become an art student; but, as painting is for him a mere means to an end, the technique never becomes interesting, and no subject can be seen except in relation to self. The result is failure and disappointment, with ridicule instead of the expected adulation. The same thing applies to those novelists whose novels always have themselves idealized as heroines. All serious success in work depends upon some genuine interest in the material with which the work is concerned. […] The man who is only interested in himself is not admirable, and is not felt to be so. Consequently the man whose sole concern with the world is that it shall admire him is not likely to achieve his object.

Bertrand Russell, The conquest of happiness, New York, 2013, p. 22

Come en casa Borges. De una alumna dice: «Como no es linda, ni es fea, esa chica no es nada, logra no existir, logra la ausencia».

Adolfo Bioy Casares, Borges, Barcelona, 2006, p. 495

Qué importa que queden mis libros. Sobrevivir espiritualmente en la obra. Qué tontería. Voy a estar muerto, me dicen, pero seguiré viviendo. Mentira. No soy tan vanidoso como para dejarme engañar.

Adolfo Bioy Casares, quoted in Silvia Renée Arias, Bioygrafía: vida y obra de Adolfo Bioy Casares, Buenos Aires, 2016, p. 21

Let a six-year-old girl with brown hair need thousands of dollars for an operation that will prolong her life until Christmas, and the post office will be swamped with nickels and dimes to save her. But let it be reported that without a sales tax the hospital facilities of Massachusetts will deteriorate and cause a barely perceptible increase in preventable deaths—not many will drop a tear or reach for their checkbooks.

Samuel Chase (ed.), Problems in public Expenditure Analysis, 1968

If we believe that there are some irreducibly normative truths, we might be believing what we ought to believe. If there are such truths, one of these truths would be that we ought to believe that there are such truths. If instead we believe that there are no such truths, we could not be believing what we ought to believe. If there were no such truths, there would be nothing that we ought to believe.

Derek Parfit, On what matters, Oxford, 2011, p. 619

There is no reason to fear nihilism. What we should fear is mistaken belief in nihilism.

Guy Kahane, If nothing matters, Noûs, vol. 51, no. 2, 2017, pp. 327–353

Derek Parfit tells me that, if the amount of evil in the world outweighed any actual or forthcoming good, as Hardy and Schopenhauer held, then he would prefer it to be the case that nothing matters. I have to admit that I don’t understand this preference.

Guy Kahane, If nothing matters, Noûs, vol. 51, no. 2, 2017, pp. 327–353

Sir Joshua Reynolds once asked him by what means he had attained his extraordinary accuracy and flow of language. He told him, that he had early laid it down as a fixed rule to do his best on every occasion, and in every company: to impart whatever he knew in the most forcible language he could put it in; and that by constant practice, and never suffering any careless expressions to escape him, or attempting to deliver his thoughts without arranging them in the clearest manner, it became habitual to him.

James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson, London, 1791, p. 109

[A]ny company, any employment whatever, he preferred to being alone. The great business of his life (he said) was to escape from himself.

James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson, London, 1791, pp. 167-168

Any death prior to the heat death of the universe is premature if your life is good.

Curt Butz, The World I Dream Of, Ropley, Hampshire, 2010, p. 26

Sir, it is no matter what you teach [children] first, any more than what leg you shall put into your breeches first. Sir, you may stand disputing which is best to put in first, but in the mean time, your breech is bare. Sir, while you are considering which of two things you should teach your children, another boy has learnt them both.

Samuel Johnson, Life of Mr Richard Savage, London, 1744, p. 245