Nick Bostrom

[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 Cameron & Ellen Mitchell (eds.), Nanoscale: Issues and Perspectives for the Nano Century, Hoboken, New Jersey, 2007, pp. 141-142

Eric Ries

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.

Eric Ries, in Beth Kanter, ‘Q&A: Eric Ries on Lean Start Up Principles for Nonprofits’, LinkedIn, December 17, 2013

Miguel de Cervantes

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, pt. 1, ch. 6

Adolfo Bioy Casares

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

Alejandra Pizarnik

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, Diarios, Barcelona, 2003, February 16th, 1956

Bertrand Russell

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, London, 1930, p. 22

Ricardo Piglia

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: años de formación, Barcelona, 2015, p. 48

Adolfo Bioy Casares

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

Thomas Schelling

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.

Thomas Schelling, ‘The Life You Save May Be Your Own’, in Samuel Chase (ed.), Problems in public Expenditure Analysis, Washington, D. C., 1968

Derek Parfit

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, vol. 2, Oxford, 2011, p. 619

James Boswell

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, The Life of Samuel Johnson, London, 1791, vol. 1, p. 109

Samuel Johnson

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, in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, London, 1791, vol. 1, p. 245

Nick Winter

I don’t travel for fun anymore—I think it’s a huge investment in discomfort and time with a small happiness payoff, since you don’t spend much time consuming the memories you got from traveling. Yes, you can learn from travel, but it’s an inefficient way to learn, make friends, or even have fun when you can do all that better at home.

Nick Winter, in Corey Breier (ed.), The Habitual Hustler: Daily Habits of 50 Self-Employed Entrepreneurs, 2016

Theo Redpath

There was a charming scene on Broad’s eightieth birthday, when he had tea with the Senior Bursar of Trinity, Dr Bradfield, Mrs Bradfield, and their son. There was a superb birthday cake, with eighty lighted candles. Broad was proud of his feat in blowing them all out with a single breath. Commenting on his exploit, Broad writes: ‘The practice of emitting hot air, of which philosophy so largely consists, had no doubt been a good training for me.’

Theo Redpath, ‘C. D. Broad’, Philosophy, vol. 7, no. 282 (October, 1999), p. 594

Jon Elster

[W]e have all met persons basking in self-satisfaction that seems both to be justified and not to be justified: justified because they have good reasons for being satisfied with themselves, and not justified because we sense that they would be just as satisfied were the reasons to disappear.

Jon Elster, ‘Belief, Bias, and Ideology’, in Martin Hollis & Steven Lukes (eds.), Rationality and Relativism, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1982, p. 140

Jon Elster

“Any defect or fault in this garment is intentional and part of the design.” This label on a denim jacket I bought in a San Francisco store epitomizes for me some of the morally and intellectually repelling aspects of the society in which I live[.]

Jon Elster, ‘States that Are Essentially By-Products’, Social Science Information, vol. 20, no. 3 (June, 1981), p. 456

Geoffrey Lean

A one-legged man, seeking a State mobility allowance, had to struggle up four flights of stairs to the room where a tribunal was to decide his claim.

When he got there the tribunal ruled that he could not have the allowance because he had managed to make it up the stairs.

Geoffrey Lean, ‘Catch 22 for a Man with One Leg’, The Observer, February 17, 1980, p. 5

Jon Elster

For a writer it is not easy to resist the desire to go down in posterity as a diary writer of unrivalled sincerity, a project as confused as the wish to be well-known as an anonymous donor to charities. The terms of sincerity and authenticity, like those of wisdom and dignity, always have a faintly ridiculous air about them when employed in the first person singular, reflecting the fact that the corresponding states are essentially by-products. And, by contamination, the preceding sentences partake of the same absurdity, for in making fun of the pathetic quest for authenticity one is implicitly affirming one’s own. “To invoke dignity is to forfeit it “: yes, but to say this is not much better. There is a choice to be made, between engaging in romantic irony and advocating it. Naming the unnameable by talking about something else is an ascetic practice and goes badly with self-congratulation.

Jon Elster, ‘States that Are Essentially By-Products’, Social Science Information, vol. 20, no. 3 (June, 1981), p. 440

C. D. Broad

I must confess that I am not the kind of person whom I like, but I do not think that that source of prejudice has made me unfair to myself. If there should be others who have roses to strew, they can now do so without feeling the need to make embarrassing qualifications.

C. D. Broad, ‘Autobiography’, in Arthur Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy of C. D. Broad, New York, 1959, p. 68

Brian Grazer

Curiosity is the spark that starts a flirtation—in a bar, at a party, across the lecture hall in Economics 101. And curiosity ultimately nourishes that romance, and all our best human relationships—marriages, friendships, the bond between parents and children. The curiosity to ask a simple question—“How was your day?” or “How are you feeling?—to listen to the answer, and to ask the next question.

Brian Grazer, A Curious Mind: the Secret to a Bigger Life, New York, 2015, p. 7

Thomas De Quincey

No man ever will unfold the capacities of his own intellect who does not at least chequer his life with solitude.

Thomas De Quincey, ‘Suspiria de profundis: Being a Sequel to the Confessions of an English Opium-Eater’, Blackwood’s Magazine, vol. 57, no. 353 (March, 1845), p. 270

Anne Garbett Romilly

A person totally unacquainted with the party would have found some difficulty in following the conversation, and they have used themselves to this sort of language so long that I really believe it never occurs to them that it is not in common use. Can you imagine Mr. Mill saying seriously to me that they were “very desirous Dumont should come and codify for a few weeks at Ford Abbey”? I wanted to find my Husband one day, and Mr. Mill said “I fancy Sir Samuel is gone to vibrate with Mr. Bentham”. If you were asked to take a “post prandial vibration”, it would scarcely occur to you it was walking up and down the Cloisters after dinner. They vibrate too on the Terrace, but when they go to the Pleasure Grounds it is a circumgyration. I cannot tell you half the old expressions that are in common use. Circumbendibus is a favorite one, the “Grandmother Egg sucking principles” another.

Anne Garbett Romilly, letter to Maria Edgeworth, October 6, 1817, in Romilly-Edgeworth Letters, 1813-1818: with an Introduction and Notes by Samuel Henry Romilly, London, 1936, p. 176

Jon Elster

Une seule et même émotion peut avoir deux effects distincts. D’une part, elle suggère à l’acteur des préférences qu’il aurait désavouées avant d’être assailli par l’émotion en question et qu’il va récuser quand elle se calme. D’autre part, par son impact sur la formation des croyances, l’émotion fait entrave à la réalisation rationnelle de ces préférences temporaires. On ne veut pas ce qu’on devrait vouloir; mais, comme on ne peut pas faire efficacement ce que l’on veut, le danger est écarté ou réduit. Cette idée optimiste de deux négations qui s’annulent l’une l’autre ne correspond pourtant pas à une tendance universelle, car elles peuvent également s’ajouter l’une à l’autre. Prenons le cas de la vengeance. Alors que le sang lui bout dans les veines à la suite d’un affront, un agent décide de se venger sur-le-champ, ce qui l’expose à plus de risques que s’il prenait son temps pour chercher le lieu et l’heure qui conviennent. Le risque est minimal s’il ne se venge pas (je fais abstraction des sanctions que d’autres pourraient lui imposer pour le punir de sa ourdisse). Il est plus grand quand il se venge, mais prend son temps pour concocter les détails de cette vengeance. Il est maximal quand il cherche à se venger sans délai. Ainsi l’émotion augmente doublement le risque.

Jon Elster, Agir contre soi: la faiblesse de volonté, Paris, 2007, pp. 58-59

Richard Feynman

In the South Seas there is a Cargo Cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they’ve arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas—he’s the controller—and they wait for the airplanes to land. They’re doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn’t work. No airplanes land. So I call these things Cargo Cult Science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they’re missing something essential, because the planes don’t land.

Richard Feynman, ‘Cargo Cult Science’, Engineering and Science, vol. 37, no. 7 (June, 1974), p. 11

Murray Rothbard

The libertarian goals—including immediate abolition of invasions of liberty—are “realistic” in the sense that they could be achieved if enough people agreed on them, and that, if achieved, the resulting libertarian system would be viable. The goal of immediate liberty is not unrealistic or “Utopian” because—in contrast to such goals as the “elimination of poverty”—its achievement is entirely dependent on man’s will. If, for example, everyone suddenly and immediately agreed on the overriding desirability of liberty, then total liberty would be immediately achieved.

Murray Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty, Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, 1982

Peter Unger

A certain artist, whom we may call “Art Garfinkel”, often visits so-called junkyards, in search of such scraps of metal as will not just catch his eye, but, more than that, which will hold his attention quite enjoyably. On one of these visits, as it happens, he finds most appealing a certain junky piece of copper, shaped just like a lump, and nothing like, say, a disk. Purchasing the piece for just a pittance, and naming his acquisition “Peter Copperfield,” Art has it in mind to use this newly named Peter in a certain moderately complex artistic endeavor, a brief description of which I now provide.

Covering Copperfield with a suitable sort of wax, Garfinkel first uses the purchased piece to make a suitably shaped mold, the mold being made not of copper, of course, but of some quite different material, very well suited for making a mold of just the sort Art knowledgeably aims to produce. What the mold will be used for, once completed, is to make a sculpture, from molten copper. For Garfinkel, the point of that is this: After that copper hardens, he will have produced, in that way, a sculpture that, at least in all intrinsic regards and respects, is very like Peter Copperfield, the purchased piece of coppery junk. Using this mold, Art pours into it (at least very nearly) exactly as much (molten) copper—at least down to the nearest one thousandth of a milligram—as is contained in Copperfield. That copper hardens so as to form a piece of copper, one that’s always spatially distant from, and that’s ever so separate from, the purchased Copperfield. This newly hard piece of copper, it may be noted, contains no matter that ever served to compose the piece bought in the junkyard, Peter Copperfield. Amusingly, Garfinkel names the piece of copper he intentionally produced “Peter Copyfield”.

Having studied philosophy when in college, AG was quite uncertain that any piece of copper could ever be a copper sculpture; indeed, he was inclined to think not. In any case, he gave another name, “Untitled #42”, to the sculpture he produced exactly when and where he produced Peter Copyfield. So it was that, entirely made of copper, there came to be Untitled #42, an artwork that, fairly rocking even the coolest of the cognoscenti, brought AG a cool $6,000,000, with an equal amount going, of course, to his very fashionable dealer.

With that said, we’re almost done with our little story. The rest is just this: After resting in a billionaire’s penthouse for a while, perhaps about a month, the matter composing Untitled #42—matter also composing Peter Copyfield—is annihilated. In a moderately realistic case of that, the matter may be nuked. Perhaps better for our consideration, though not a great deal better, is a case where the matter is converted to energy. In this latter case, even the matter itself suddenly ceases to be.

In the story just told, a certain piece of copper and a certain copper sculpture are, from the first moment of their existence until their very last, always spatially perfectly coincident. And, throughout their history, each is composed of the same (copper) matter as the other. Still and all, it may well be that there are, indeed, those two distinct things I mentioned, Peter Copyfield being one of them, and Untitled #42 being the other notable thing. Just so, there will be only some quite confused thinking on the part of anyone who may think that, in our little story, we mentioned just one most salient cuprous thing, mentioning twice over just a single salient cuprous thing—with our sometimes using one of its names, “Peter Copyfield” and, with our using, at other times, another of its names, “Untitled #42”. As the chapter progresses, how confused that is will become very clear.

Toward beginning to make that clearer, we may ask about what could have been done to Untitled #42 with the result that it should then continue to exist, and also what could have been done to it with the opposite result, with the result that it should then cease to exist. Additionally, we may ask parallel questions concerning Peter Copyfield. In philosophically favored terminology, when asking those questions, what we’re asking is this: What are the persistence conditions of Untitled #42, the expensive copper sculpture? And, of about equal interest, what are the persistence conditions of Peter Copyfield, the piece of copper composed of just the very same copper that, throughout all the very same period of time, also serves to compose the pricey copper sculpture, Untitled #42?”

Peter Unger, Empty Ideas: A Critique of Analytic Philosophy, New York, 2014, pp. 110-112

William Easterly

MIT Press encouraged me to mention a couple of important updates in this preface for the paperback edition. First, my mother now has email.

William Easterly, The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists’ Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2002, p. x