Quotes
Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.
David Friedman, The machinery of freedom: guide to a radical capitalism, Chicago, 1989, p. ix
The facts of human progress strike me as having been as unkind to right-wing libertarianism as to right-wing conservatism and left-wing Marxism. The totalitarian governments of the 20th century did not emerge from democratic welfare states sliding down a slippery slope, but were imposed by fanatical ideologues and gangs of thugs. And countries that combine free markets with more taxation, social spending, and regulation than the United States (such as Canada, New Zealand, and Western Europe) turn out to be not grim dystopias but rather pleasant places to live, and they trounce the United States in every measure of human flourishing, including crime, life expectancy, infant mortality, education, and happiness. As we saw, no developed country runs on right-wing libertarian principles, nor has any realistic vision of such a country ever been laid out. It should not be surprising that the facts of human progress confound the major -isms. The ideologies are more than two centuries old and are based on mile-high visions such as whether humans are tragically flawed or infinitely malleable, and whether society is an organic whole or a collection of individuals. A real society comprises hundreds of millions of social beings, each with a trillion-synapse brain, who pursue their well-being while affecting the well-being of others in complex networks with massive positive and negative externalities, many of them historically unprecedented. It is bound to defy any simple narrative of what will happen under a given set of rules. A more rational approach to politics is to treat societies as ongoing experiments and open-mindedly learn the best practices, whichever part of the spectrum they come from.
Steven Pinker, Enlightenment now: the case for reason, science, humanism, and progress, New York, 2018, p. 365
This version of historical pessimism may be called root-causism: the pseudo-profound idea that every social ill is a symptom of some deep moral sickness and can never be mitigated by simplistic treatments which fail to cure the gangrene at the core. The problem with root-causism is not that real-world problems are simple but the opposite: they are more complex than a typical root-cause theory allows, especially when the theory is based on moralizing rather than data. So complex, in fact, that treating the symptoms may be the best way of dealing with the problem, because it does not require omniscience about the intricate tissue of actual causes. Indeed, by seeing what really does reduce the symptoms, one can test hypotheses about the causes, rather than just assuming them to be true.
Steven Pinker, Enlightenment now: the case for reason, science, humanism, and progress, New York, 2018, pp. 170-171
Chaos is deadlier than tyranny. More […] multicides result from the breakdown of authority rather than the exercise of authority.
Matthew White, Atrocities: The 100 Deadliest Episodes in Human History, New York, 2013, p. xvii
Because of his many different engagements, von Neumann had to be especially concerned with secrecy, but he took this with good humor. As he was traveling a lot, he was accompanied by two “gorillas.” He met with Stanislaw Ulam on the Chicago railway station and recruited him for the work at Los Alamos. However, von Neumann could not reveal the exact nature of work, nor the location. He could only tell Ulam that it was in the southwest. Ulam told him: “I know you can’t tell me, but you say you are going southwest in order that I should think that you are going northeast. But I know you are going southwest, so why do you lie?”
István Hargittai, The martians of science: Five physicists who changed the twentieth century, Oxford, 2006, p. 123
To any one who should insist upon its being stated in terms what Pain is, it would, I hold, be a sufficient answer to say, that he knew himself perfectly well what it was already, and that he could not know it the better for any words in which it could be defined. Things which all men know infallibly by their own perceptive experience, cannot be made plainer by words. Therefore, let Pain be spoken of simply as Pain.
P. M. Latham, General remarks on the practice of medicine, BMJ, vol. 1, no. 78, 1862, pp. 677–680, p. 677
The main reason that clubs don’t let their analysts talk in detail about using player-tracking data isn’t because they are worried their secrets will be revealed. Instead, they are worried that the opposition will find out that they don’t have any secrets to reveal.
David Sumpter, Soccermatics: Mathematical Adventures in the Beautiful Game, London, 2016, p. 314
It was on the day, or rather night, of the 27th of June 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page, in a summer-house in my garden. After laying down my pen, I took several turns in a berceau, or covered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect of the country, the lake, and the mountains. The air was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters, and all nature was silent. I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on recovery of my freedom, and, perhaps, the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind, by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that, whatsoever might be the future date of my History, the life of the historian must be short and precarious.
Edward Gibbon et al., Memoirs of my life and writings, Keele, 1796
When I was in graduate school, I recall hearing “One starts as a materialist, then one becomes a dualist, then a panpsychist, and one ends up as an idealist”. I don’t know where this comes from, but I think the idea was something like this. First, one is impressed by the successes of science, endorsing materialism about everything and so about the mind. Second, one is moved by problem of consciousness to see a gap between physics and consciousness, thereby endorsing dualism, where both matter and consciousness are fundamental. Third, one is moved by the inscrutability of matter to realize that science reveals at most the structure of matter and not its underlying nature, and to speculate that this nature may involve consciousness, thereby endorsing panpsychism. Fourth, one comes to think that there is little reason to believe in anything beyond consciousness and that the physical world is wholly constituted by consciousness, thereby endorsing idealism.
William Seager (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Panpsychism, 2018
[T]he only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn[.]
Jack Kerouac, On the road, New York, 1957, ch. 1
We are all forecasters. When we think about changing jobs, getting married, buying a home, making an investment, launching a product, or retiring, we decide based on how we expect the future will unfold. These expectations are forecasts.
Philip E. Tetlock and Dan Gardner, Superforecasting: The art and science of prediction, New York, 2015, p. 1
[W]henever we heard an unflattering portrait of our own side our first question to ourselves was not “Is this true?” but “What are they trying to hide about themselves by accusing us of this?” Once this mental defense system had been perfected, few criticisms could hit home.
Markus Wolf, Man Without a Face: The Autobiography of Communism's Greatest Spymaster, New York, 1999, p. 40
The North Wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger, when a traveler came along wrapped in a warm cloak. They agreed that the one who first succeeded in making the traveler take his cloak off should be considered stronger than the other. Then the North Wind blew as hard as he could, but the more he blew the more closely did the traveler fold his cloak around him; and at last the North Wind gave up the attempt. Then the Sun shined out warmly, and immediately the traveler took off his cloak. And so the North Wind was obliged to confess that the Sun was the stronger of the two.
Aesop, The North Wind and the Sun, in International Phonetic Association (ed.) Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: a guide to the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet, Cambridge, U.K. ; New York, NY, 1999
‘Concerning what you write about thoughts of suicide,’ Engelmann added, ‘my thoughts are as follows’:
Behind such thoughts, just as in others, there can probably lie something of a noble motive. But that this motive shows itself in this way, that it takes the form of a contemplation of suicide, is certainly wrong. Suicide is certainly a mistake. So long as a person lives, he is never completely lost. What drives a man to suicide is, however, the fear that he is completely lost. This fear is, in view of what has already been said, ungrounded. In this fear a person does the worst thing he can do, he deprives himself of the time in which it would be possible for him to escape being lost.
Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein: the duty of genius, New York, 1991, pp. 186-187
Although I cannot give affection, I have a great need for it.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, quoted in Norman Malcolm, G. H. von Wright, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, Ludwig Wittgenstein: a memoir, Oxford [Oxfordshire] ; New York, 1958, p. 51
In Eric Ambler’s novel Dirty Story, a character named Arthur Abdel Simpson recalls advice that he received as a child from his father: Although I was only seven when my father was killed, I still remember him very well and some of the things he used to say…. One of the first things he taught me was, “Never tell a lie when you can bullshit your way through.”
Harry G. Frankfurt, On bullshit, Princeton, NJ, 2005, pp. 48-56
Shortly after his 23rd birthday, Kevin was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. For a while he was extremely reluctant to talk about it (except among family and close friends), a reluctance he rationalized by telling himself that he’s simply a “private person” who doesn’t like sharing private medical details with the world. Later he started following a very strict diet to treat his disease—a diet that eliminated processed foods and refined carbohydrates. Eating so healthy quickly became a point of pride, and suddenly Kevin found himself perfectly happy to share his diagnosis, since it also gave him an opportunity to brag about his diet. Being a “private person” about medical details went right out of the window—and now, look, here he is sharing his diagnosis (and diet!) with perfect strangers in this book.
Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson, The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life, Oxford, 2017, p. 104
What difference does it make, if there is not, and never will be, a conscious being to whom it can make a difference?
Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer, Utilitarianism: a very short introduction, Oxford, 2017, p. 57
The line between cynicism and misanthropy—between thinking ill of human motives and thinking ill of /humans/—is often blurry. So we want readers to understand that although we may often be skeptical of human motives, we love human beings. (indeed, many of our best friends are human!)
Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson, The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life, Oxford, 2017, p. 13
The first cruise I went on was about fifteen years ago. I had a crush on a girl and she found an amazing deal for a cruise, just $199 plus tax, for five days in the Caribbean. It could have been twice that expensive and not gone anywhere, and I would have signed up. I just wanted an excuse to spend time with her.
We went on our cruise and I fell in love… with cruising.
Tynan, Forever Nomad: The Ultimate Guide to World Travel, From a Weekend to a Lifetime, 2018, p. 163