Quotes
It is worth keeping in mind also that the dependability of a sample can be destroyed just as easily by invisible sources of bias as by these visible ones. That is, even if you can’t find a source of demonstrable bias, allow yourself some degree of skepticism about the results as long as there is a possibility of bias somewhere.
Darrell Huff, How to lie with statistics, New York, 1954, p. 19
I used to live above a small pizzeria and I knew the guy who owned the place. He worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week. He was there all the time and worked so hard for his little restaurant. I realized one day that I have to work just as hard for a restaurant as I do it for a multi-billion dollar company. If I have the choice, why not go for the big idea.
Ian Eslick, America's Most Successful Startups: Lessons for Entrepreneurs, Wiesbaden, 1998, pp. 9-10
Cuando concluye el día hago el balance. Si escribí algo no demasiado estúpido, si leí, si fui al cine, si estuve en cama con una mujer, si jugué al tenis, si anduve recorriendo campo a caballo, si inventé una historia o parte de una historia, si reflexioné apropiadamente sobre hechos o dichos, aun si conseguí un dístico, probablemente sienta justificado el día. Cuando todo eso falta, me parece que el día no justifica mi permanencia en el mundo.
Adolfo Bioy Casares, Descanso de caminantes, Buenos Aires, 2001, p. 273
[S]ome companies have scarcity power and can set prices that are far above their true cost, which is where they would be in a competitive market. This is why economists believe there’s an important difference between being in favour of markets and being in favour of business, especially particular businesses. A politician who is in favour of markets believes in the importance of competition and wants to prevent businesses from getting too much scarcity power. A politician who’s too influenced by corporate lobbyists will do exactly the opposite.
Tim Harford, The undercover economist: exposing why the rich are rich, the poor are poor—and why you can never buy a decent used car!, Oxford, 2006, p. 78
[A] dollar redistributed from a rich man to a poor man detracts less utility than it adds, and therefore increases the sum total of utility.
Paul Streeten, Why Development Aid?, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro Quarterly Review, vol. 47, 1983, pp. 380, p. 380
Although G. W. F. Leibniz’s question, Why is there (tenselessly) something rather than nothing, should still rightly be asked, there would be no reason to look for a cause of the universe’s beginning to exist, since on tenseless theories of time the universe did not begin to exist in virtue of its having a first event anymore than a meter stick begins to exist in virtue of having a first centimeter.
William Lane Craig & J. P. Moreland (ed.), kalam, p. 184
For most people, the goal of any altruistic act is simply to do something helpful. Very few of us choose where to donate, where to volunteer, and how to live our lives based on the answer to the question, “How can I do the most possible good in the world?” And yet it is that calculating attitude that is crucial to helping as many animals (or people) as possible.
Nick Cooney, Veganomics: The Surprising Science on Vegetarians, from the Breakfast Table to the Bedroom, New York, 2013, p. 1
The death at the age of 26 of Frank Ramsey, Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge, sometime scholar of Winchester and of Trinity, son of the President of Magdalene, is a heavy loss—though his primary interests were in Philosophy and Mathematical Logic—to the pure theory of Economics. From a very early age, about 16 I think, his precocious mind was intensely interested in economic problems. Economists living in Cambridge have been accustomed from his undergraduate days to try their theories on the keen edge of his critical and logical faculties. If he had followed the easier path of mere inclination, I am not sure that he would not have exchanged the tormenting exercises of the foundations of thought and of psychology, where the mind tries to catch its own tail, for the delightful paths of our own most agreeable branch of the moral sciences, in which theory and fact, intuitive imagination and practical judgment, are blended in a manner comfortable to the human intellect.
When he did descend from his accustomed stony heights, he still lived without effort in a rarer atmosphere than most economists care to breathe, and handled the technical apparatus of our science with the easy grace of one accustomed to something far more difficult.
John Maynard Keynes, F. P. Ramsey, The Economic Journal, vol. 40, no. 157, 1930, pp. 153–154, p. 153
[U]nless you’re extremely organized, a house full of stuff can be very depressing. A cluttered room saps one’s spirits. One reason, obviously, is that there’s less room for people in a room full of stuff. But there’s more going on than that. I think humans constantly scan their environment to build a mental model of what’s around them. And the harder a scene is to parse, the less energy you have left for conscious thoughts. A cluttered room is literally exhausting.
Stacey Graham, Haunted stuff: demonic dolls, screaming skulls & other creepy collectibles, Woodbury, Minnesota, 2007
Altruistic behavior often leads to desirable social outcomes. We can thus assume that more altruism is better than less, other things being equal. But altruism tends to be already widely encouraged, so efforts to promote it even further may produce little noticeable change. Instead, it might be easier to do more good by improving efficiency of the altruistic behaviors already in place.
Ewa Szymanska, The Science of Giving: Experimental Approaches to the Study of Charity, New York, 2011, p. 215
If you want outsiders to believe you, then you don’t get to choose their rationality standard. The question is what should rational outsiders believe, given the evidence available to them, and their limited attention. Ask yourself carefully: if most contrarians are wrong, why should they believe your cause is different?
Overcoming Bias, 2009
[L]et there be granted to the science of pleasure what is granted to the science of energy ; to imagine an ideally perfect instrument, a psychophysical machine, continually registering the height of pleasure experienced by an individual, exactly according to the verdict of consciousness, or rather diverging therefrom according to a law of errors. From moment to moment the hedonimeter varies; the delicate index now flickering with the flutter of the passions, now steadied by intellectual activity, low sunk whole hours in the neighbourhood of zero, or momentarily springing up towards infinity. The continually indicated height is registered by photographic or other frictionless apparatus upon a uniformly moving vertical plane. Then the quantity of happiness between two epochs is represented by the area contained between the zero-line, perpendiculars thereto at the points corresponding to the epochs, and the curve traced by the index; or, if the correction suggested in the last paragraph be admitted, another dimension will be required for the representation.
F. Y. Edgeworth, Mathematical psychics: An essay on the application of mathematics to the moral sciences, London, 1881, p. 101
“I could’ve got more out… I could’ve got more… if I’d just… I don’t know, if I’d just… I could’ve got more… If I’d made more money… I threw away so much money, you have no idea. If I’d just… I didn’t do enough.
“This car. Goeth would’ve bought this car. Why did I keep the car? Ten people, right there, ten more I could’ve got.
“This pin –Two people. This is gold. Two more people. He would’ve given me two for it. At least one. He would’ve given me one. One more. One more person. A person, Stern. For this. One more. I could’ve gotten one more person I didn’t.”
Steven Zaillian, Schindler's List
All conduct which we class as wrong or criminal is, or we suppose it to be, an attack upon some vital interest of ourselves or of those we care for (a category which may include the public, or the whole of human race): conduct which, if allowed to be repeated, would destroy or impair the security and comfort of our lives. We are prompted to defend these paramount interests by repelling the attack, and guarding against its renewal; and our earliest experience gives us a feeling, which acts with the rapidity of an instinct, that the most direct and efficacious protection is retaliation. We are therefore prompted to retaliate by inflicting pain on the person who has inflicted or tried to inflict it upon ourselves. We endeavour, as far as possible, that our social institutions shall render us this service. We are gratified when, by that or other means, the pain is inflicted, and dissatisfied if from any cause it is not. This strong association of the idea of punishment, and the desire for its infliction, with the idea of the act which has hurt us, is not in itself a moral sentiment; but it appears to me to be the element which is present when we have the feelings of obligation and of injury, and which mainly distinguishes them from simple distaste or dislike for any thing in the conduct of another that is disagreeable to us; that distinguishes, for instance, our feelings towards the person who steals our goods, from our feeling towards him who offends our senses by smoking tobacco. This impulse to self-defence by the retaliatory infliction of pain, only becomes a moral sentiment, when it is united with a conviction that the infliction of punishment in such a case is conformable to the general good, and when the impulse is not allowed to carry us beyond the point at which that conviction ends.
James Mill, Analysis of the phenomena of the human mind, London, 1829, p. 23
Remember, motions are the precursors of emotions. You can’t control the latter directly but only through your choice of motions or actions.
George W. Crane, Psychology applied in education., Psychology applied., Mellott, 1950, pp. 468–503, p. 594
Our human nature includes both the self that wants immediate gratification, and the self with a higher purpose. We are born to be tempted, and born to resist, It is just as human to feel stressed, scared, and out of control as it is to find the strength to be calm and in charge of our choices. Self-control is a matter of understanding these different parts of ourselves, not fundamentally changing who we are. In the quest for self-control, the usual weapons we wield against ourselves—guilt, stress, and shame—don’t work. People who have the greatest self-control aren’t waging self-war. They have learned to accept and integrate these competing selves.
Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct, New York, 2012, p. 10
Even big companies are after your friendship. This is nicely articulated in confidential documents from the recent “My McDonald’s” advertising campaign created by the giant fast-food chain. McDonald’s was facing a number of marketing problems, most notably a flight of customers to competitors like Burger King and Wendy’s that was cutting into its profit margins. “More customers are telling us that McDonald’s is a big company that just wants to sell . . . sell as much as it can,” one executive wrote in a confidential memo. To counter this perception, McDonald’s called for ads directed at making customers feel the company “cares about me” and “knows about me,” to make customers believe McDonald’s is their “trusted friend.” A corporate memo introducing the campaign explained: “[Our goal is to make] customers believe McDonald’s is their ‘Trusted Friend.’ Note: this should bedone without using the words ‘Trusted Friend.’” Theoretically, of course, there’s something admirable about a huge company holding out its hand in fraternal trust. The sincerity of the gesture, however, is compromised by a message in bold red letters on the first page of the memo proclaiming: “ANY UNAUTHORIZED USE OR COPYING OF THIS MATERIAL MAY LEAD TO CIVIL OR CRIMINAL PROSECUTION.”
Robert Levine, The power of persuasion: How we're bought and sold, Hoboken, 2003, pp. 57-58
If we take for granted that consciousness evolved, consciousness would somehow have to promote survival and reproduction in order to be selected for. If consciousness did not promote survival and preproduction, it would not be selected for, and to the extent that it were biologically costly, it would be selected against. The only way consciousness could promote survival and reproduction, moreover, is by virtue of guiding an organism’s actions, prompting it to perform survival and reproduction enhancing actions – and the only way in which consciousness could prompt an organism towards survival and reproduction seems to be by imbuing experiences with a certain valence or a pro/con attitude. Without a valence or a pro/con attitude, it is unclear how an experience would be able to guide an organism’s actions. Evolution, moreover, cares for action, not for experiences as an end in itself. It therefore seems that if consciousness were to ever get going, valence would have to be present from the very start. Otherwise, consciousness would disappear as fast as it occurred. This suggests that hedonic valence phylogentically is as old as consciousness itself, which in turn lends support to the view that hedonic valence lies at the heart of consciousness. This supports dimensionalism, moreover, since according to dimensionalism, pleasure and pain—rather than being two things out of the many things we can experience—imbues all […] our experiences. Indeed, one might, from a dimensionalist approach to consciousness, argue that the first experience any organism ever had was an experience of either pleasure or pain, and that consciousness of the kind our species has today is a more fine-grained version of something that is most fundamentally a pleasure/pain mechanism.
Ole Martin Moen, The unity and commensurability of pleasures and pains, Philosophia, vol. 41, no. 2, 2013, pp. 527–543, pp. 540-541
You should work to reduce your biases, but to say you have none is a sign that you have many.
Nate Silver, The signal and the noise: Why so many predictions Fail–but some don't, New York, New York, 2015, p. 451
It is a characteristic strength of classic style to persuade by default. The classic writer offers no explicit argument at all. Ostensibly, he offers simply a presentation. If the reader fails to recognize that the ostensible presentation is a device of persuasion, then he is persuaded without ever realizing that an argument has occurred. It is always easier to persuade an audience unaware of the rhetorician’s agenda.
Francis-Noël Thomas, Clear and Simple as the Truth: Writing Classic Prose, Princeton, 1994, p. 102