Exercise in rationality: popular quotes, revisited
A friend recently shared an image of Lincoln with the quote, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than speak and remove all doubt.”
Correcting that idea, I replied with the following: “Speak! Reveal your foolishness, and open yourself so that others may enlighten you and you can learn. Fear the false mantle of silence-as-wisdom; better to briefly be the vocal fool than forever the silent fool.”
The experience led me to thinking that it might be fun, cathartic, andor a good mental exercise/reminder to translate our culture’s more irrational memes into a more presentable package.
Post your own examples if you like, and if I think of/see more I’ll post here.
reflexively inverting any advice you are given to see if it still sounds wise as a test for falsifiability is something I think Charlie Munger mentions doing.
I think that’s somewhat missing the point of a lot of advice like that though. Often advice in the form of proverbs or popular quotes is not meant to be taken literally. It’s meant to offer you a new angle from which to look at the problem.
Just because two quotes contradict each other, doesn’t mean they can’t both be good advice. If you think someone is being too rash, quoting a proverb like “discretion is the better part of valour” can be good advice. But if you think they are being too cautious, the opposite (“nothing ventured, nothing gained”) can also be good advice.
Most advice is context dependent.
Yes, and people tend to hold proverbs in higher esteem than advice that people formulate in their own words. People expect the latter to be backed up by a lot of good arguments before they take it seriously.
This is a (slight paraphrase of a) quote from a character who is offering a rationalization for cowardice. It wasn’t intended as a positive thing in the original work.
I agree that context changes the effectiveness of the advice.
My disapproval stems from the watering down of advice to blanket generalities. Vague enough that everyone might glean something from it, but the lack of specifics can turn it into a casual, flippant throw-away of words in times where more purposeful advice serves better.
Give an example?
https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-common-sayings-or-proverbs-that-contradict-each-other
time8, really? :-D
Whether or not it makes sense to speak up depends on the value of having a specific discussion at a particular point in time. There are many times where speaking up when one doesn’t have expertise isn’t useful usage of the time of other people.
If other societal memes vanish/degrade/change with time, why not quotes? Why do they carry an intellectual value despite the fact they’re (big number here) years old?
http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/06/09/all-debates-are-bravery-debates/ → Also relevant. Some people might agree with one extreme and disagree with the other. Lincoln’s advice is probably not going to be useful to someone who is not sure about if the thing they say is foolish. Your own idea is a slippery slope—a fool will quite rightly be told eventually to shut the hell up. Nothing to revel in, and probably best not to reveal, unless you live in HPMORverse or some 5th-level thinking universe (or whatever the right description for ’what’s my opponent thinks I think he thinks..” is)
“might rightly be told eventually to shut the hell up”
I don’t think that disproves my version—being told to shut up still serves more than silence, as they learn that the timing of their questions and statements makes a difference. Or at least, ideally they still learn from the experience.
They shouldn’t fear looking foolish, but learn and apply sense for when to speak.
Depends on the question, but sometimes you can find things with a well-done web search. If you’re asking a question that can be answered with a simple web page then people will rightly tell you off. You can try appealing to them and MIGHT get an answer but it could also result in backslash with them treating you as an up-sucker.
It’s similar to but not identical to a catch-22 where you can always ask a question, but you MIGHT be looked upon as an idiot or you can look for the answer on your own and MIGHT find it. Emphasis on MIGHT because in a real catch-22 there’s no escape route.
It’s hard to figure out how to phrase the comeback in favor of status games here, but its important.
Like, looking dumb is bad. Very bad. Better to look surly. (which is mainly bad because folks understand its usually hiding dumb). Once people believe that you are dumb it’s mostly unrecoverable. They’ll stop including you.
I agree that popular quotes can be used irrationally—a shield to hide behind instead of questioning what is actually best. However, sometimes they are simply good advice in some situations and bad advice in others. Can you not think of a class of scenarios in which Lincoln’s advice is good advice?
True, context adds meaning to the quote.
I suppose it helps to add that my distaste stems from the usage of these quotes as blanket life-advice, without recognizing that they are situation-dependent.
I.e. I consider the quote in my original post a factor in the increase of perceived reluctance of people to ask questions, either in class or at work, for fear of seeming the fool.
It was a similiar quote I heard when I first realized there was a difference between being smart and signalling smartness.
I agree that for signalling purposes it is often better to remain quiet than to risk being wrong publicly.