DanielVarga

• DanielVarga 4 Apr 2011 21:06 UTC

  81 points

  on: Ra­tion­al­ity Quotes: April 2011

  It is not really a quote, but a good quip from an otherwise lame recent internet discussion:

  Matt: Ok, for all of the people responding above who admit to not having a soul, I think this means that it is morally ok for me to do anything I want to you, just as it is morally ok for me to turn off my computer at the end of the day. Some of us do have souls, though.

  Igor: Matt—I agree that people who need a belief in souls to understand the difference between killing a person and turning off a computer should just continue to believe in souls.

Best of Ra­tion­al­ity Quotes, 2012 Edition

Best of Ra­tion­al­ity Quotes, 2013 Edition

Best of Ra­tion­al­ity Quotes, 2011 Edition

Best of Ra­tion­al­ity Quotes 2009/​2010

[link] Scott Aaron­son on free will

[LINK] The P + ep­silon At­tack (Precom­mit­ment in cryp­toe­co­nomics)

[Link] Scott Aaron­son on Why Philoso­phers Should Care About Com­pu­ta­tional Complexity

• DanielVarga 31 Jan 2014 20:44 UTC

  30 points

  on: Best of Ra­tion­al­ity Quotes, 2013 Edition

  Top short quotes (2009-2013) by karma per character:

  • 55 A Bet is a Tax on Bullshit Alex Tabarrok

  • 45 Luck is statistics taken personally. Penn Jellete

  • 42 I’ve got to start listening to those quiet, nagging doubts.Calvin

  • 33 Comic Quote Minus 37 -- Ryan Armand Also a favourite.

  • 34 Nobody is smart enough to be wrong all the time.Ken Wilber

  • 32 A problem well stated is a problem half solved.Charles Kettering

  • 48 I will not procrastinate regarding any ritual granting immortality. --Evil Overlord List #230

  • 29 The greatest weariness comes from work not done.-Eric Hoffer

  • 26 “Most haystacks do not even have a needle.” -- Lorenzo

  • 24 “I accidentally changed my mind.” my four-year-old

  • 40 Shipping is a feature. A really important feature. Your product must have it.-Joel Spolsky

  • 31 Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd. Voltaire

  • 39 People say “think outside the box,” as if the box wasn’t a fucking great idea.Sean Thomason

  • 38 The Noah principle: predicting rain doesn’t count, building arks does. -Warren E. Buffett

  • 37 It’s easy to lie with statistics, but it’s easier to lie without them. -Fred Mosteller

  • 30 If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.-Seneca

  • 34 It is the mark of a truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics.George Bernard Shaw

  • 15 Focusing is about saying no.-- Steve Jobs

  • 34 “Working in mysterious ways” is the greatest euphemism for failure ever devised.TheTweetOfGod

  • 18 “A problem well put, is half solved.”—John Dewey

  • 34 Market exchange is a pathetically inadequate substitute for love, but it scales better.S. T. Rev

  • 12 Death is the gods’ crime.Unsounded

  • 24 The most practical thing in the world is a good theory. Helmholtz

  • 29 When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir? John Maynard Keynes

  • 30 “Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.”—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

  • 28 Writing program code is a good way of debugging your thinking. -- Bill Venables

  • 28 It is easy to be certain....One has only to be sufficiently vague.Charles S. Peirce

  • 30 Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations. — John Von Neumann

  • 31 There is one rule that’s very simple, but not easy: observe reality and adjust. Ran Prieur

  • 31 It’s a horrible feeling when you don’t understand why you did something.-- Dennis Monokroussos

  • 26 Shouldn’t “it works like a charm” be said about things that don’t work?Jason Roy

  • 21 Things are only impossible until they’re not. -- Jean-Luc Picard

  • 30 Now, now, perfectly symmetrical violence never solved anything.--Professor Farnsworth, Futurama.

  • 24 Part of the potential of things is how they break. Vi Hart, How To Snakes

  • 26 The dream is damned and dreamer too if dreaming’s all that dreamers do.--Rory Miller

  • 25 A scholar is just a library’s way of making another library. Daniel Dennett

  • 29 We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it. Mark Twain

  • 29 The Company that needs a new machine tool is already paying for it. -old Warner Swasey ad

  • 25 “Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from SCIENCE!” ~Girl Genius

  • 26 Complex problems have simple, easy to understand wrong answers. — Grossman’s Law

  • 22 Most people would rather die than think; many do. – Bertrand Russell

  • 18 A sharp knife is nothing without a sharp eye.Klingon proverb.

  • 22 The only road to doing good shows, is doing bad shows.Louis C.K., on Reddit

  • 28 My brain technically-not-a-lies to me far more than it actually lies to me.-- Aristosophy (again)

  • 23 The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off. Gloria Steinem

  • 27 Nature draws no line between living and nonliving. -- K. Eric Drexler, Engines of Creation

  • 26 “Anything left on your bucket list?”“Not dying...”-Bill Gates in his AMA on reddit.

  • 22 It is better to destroy one’s own errors than those of others. Democritus

  • 12 Reality is not optional. Thomas Sowell

  • 27 If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance we can solve them.-- Isaac Asimov

  • 17 Statistics is applied philosophy of science. A. P. Dawid

  • 26 A man who says he is willing to meet you halfway is usually a poor judge of distance.Unknown

  • 22 Forget Jesus. The stars died so that you could be here today. Lawrence Krauss

  • 26 Truth would quickly cease to be stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it.H.L. Mencken

  • 27 The first rule of human club is you don’t explicitly discuss the rules of human club.Silas Dogood

  • 23 Go down deep enough into anything and you will find mathematics. Dean Schlicter

  • 18 Good things come to those who steal them.-- Magnificent Sasquatch

  • 24 We are built to be effective animals, not happy ones. -Robert Wright, The Moral Animal

  • 19 Being right too soon is socially unacceptable. Robert A. Heinlein

  • 14 “Anything you can do, I can do meta” -Rudolf Carnap

  • 17 Mind is a machine for jumping to conclusions—Daniel Kahneman

  • 26 If Tetris has taught me anything it’s that errors pile up and accomplishments disappear.-Unknown

  • 26 A faith which cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets.Arthur C. Clarke

  • 26 Nobody panics when things go “according to plan”… even if the plan is horrifying. The Joker

  • 23 “Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.” --Friedrich Nietzsche

  • 14 I intend to live forever or die trying—Groucho Marx

  • 26 We shall not grow wiser before we learn that much that we have done was very foolish.-- F. A. Hayek

  • 20 I honestly don’t know. Let’s see what happens. -- Hans. The Troll Hunter

  • 16 Luck is opportunity plus preparation plus luck.--Jane Espenson

  • 20 The singularity is my retirement plan. -- tocomment, in a Hacker News post

  • 19 Better our hypotheses die for our errors than ourselves. -- Karl Popper

  • 11 Whenever you can, count.--Sir Francis Galton

  • 22 Errors using inadequate data are much less than those using no data at all.-Charles Babbage

  • 19 In general, we are least aware of what our minds do best. — Marvin Minsky

  • 20 It is easier to love humanity than to love one’s neighbor.--Eric Hoffer, on Near/​Far

  • 15 Keep your solutions close, and your problems closer.afoolswisdom

  • 18 “If God gives you lemons, you find a new God.”—Powerthirst 2: Re-Domination

  • 17 Truth comes out of error more easily than out of confusion.-Francis Bacon

  • 23 Opening your eyes doesn’t make a bad picture worse. http://​​onefte.com/​​2011/​​07/​​17/​​bully-for-you/​​

  • 19 Know the hair you have to get the hair you want. -Pantene Pro-V hair care bottle

  • 16 The best way to escape from a problem is to solve it. -Alan Saporta

  • 16 Not to know is bad; not to wish to know is worse. — Wolof proverb

  • 20 Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. -- Voltaire

  • 18 Use only that which works, and take it from any place you can find it.--Bruce Lee

  • 9 AI makes philosophy honest -- Dan Dennet

  • 18 God created the Earth, but the Dutch created the Netherlands. -- Dutch proverb

  • 20 “Just because you no longer believe a lie, does not mean you now know the truth.”Mark Atwood

  • 14 History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. -Mark Twain

  • 17 The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled. -- Plutarch

  • 18 The person you are most afraid to contradict is yourself. -Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  • 16 Like all dreamers, I confused disenchantment with truth. (Jean-Paul Sartre)

  • 20 Man, I’m amazing! I’m a machine that turns FOOD into IDEAS! -- T-Rex, Dinosaur Comics #539

  • 17 What good fortune for those in power that people do not think. Adolph Hitler

  • 14 We see things not as they are but as we are, …- G. T. W. Patrick

  • 19 You don’t have to believe everything you think. Seen on bumper sticker, via ^zhurnaly.

  • 19 The truth is out there, but so are the lies.-Dana Scully, The X-Files, Season 1, Episode 17

  • 13 Would anybody tell me if I was getting stupider? Mike Patton

  • 13 We’re even wrong about which mistakes we’re making.-Carl Winfeld

  • 13 If I close my mind in fear, please pry it open. -- Metallica

  What links here?

  • Best of Ra­tion­al­ity Quotes, 2013 Edition by DanielVarga (31 Jan 2014 21:35 UTC; 43 points)

Isn’t this siteme­ter log­ging a bit too ex­ces­sive?

• DanielVarga 10 Oct 2012 22:49 UTC

  25 points

  on: Ra­tion­al­ity Quotes Oc­to­ber 2012

  I love uncertainty. In many situations I’d rather try something just to see what happens. I’m the character that gets killed first in every horror movie, but that’s fine with me, since life is not generally like a horror movie.

  Noah Smith

• DanielVarga 30 May 2010 8:58 UTC

  25 points

  in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: Harry Pot­ter and the Meth­ods of Ra­tion­al­ity dis­cus­sion thread

  I think I know a place on the internet where you can post books on rationality chapter-by-chapter, and get much instant feedback.

• DanielVarga 28 Jan 2011 20:58 UTC

  23 points

  in reply to: JGWeissman’s comment on: A sealed prediction

  Maybe they are all someone else’s sockpuppets. At a given date, they will coordinatedly change some whitespace in their comments (but not the hash itself), thus framing Quirrell. Fortunately, now that I unmasked the plan, it is not really viable anymore.

• DanielVarga 12 Jun 2010 17:13 UTC

  23 points

  on: Open Thread June 2010, Part 2

  Less Wrong Rationality Quotes since April 2009, sorted by points.

  This version copies the visual style and preserves the formatting of the original comments.

  Here is the source code.

  I already wrote a top-level comment about the original raw text version of this, but my access logs suggested that EDITs of older comments only reach a very few people. See that comment for a bit more detail.

  What links here?

  • Refer­ences & Re­sources for LessWrong by XiXiDu (10 Oct 2010 14:54 UTC; 162 points)
  • Best of Ra­tion­al­ity Quotes 2009/​2010 by DanielVarga (18 Dec 2010 21:36 UTC; 34 points)
  • DanielVarga's comment on Open Thread June 2010, Part 2 by komponisto (7 Jun 2010 23:38 UTC; 23 points)
  • Rain's comment on Ra­tion­al­ity quotes: Au­gust 2010 by Cyan (16 Aug 2010 13:58 UTC; 4 points)
  • Kazuo_Thow's comment on Less Wrong: Open Thread, Septem­ber 2010 by matt (4 Sep 2010 7:01 UTC; 1 point)

• DanielVarga 7 Jun 2010 23:38 UTC

  23 points

  on: Open Thread June 2010, Part 2

  Less Wrong Rationality Quotes since April 2009, sorted by points.

  Pre-alpha, one hour of work. I plan to improve it.

  EDIT: Here is the source code. 80 lines of python. It makes raw text output, links and formatting are lost. It would be quite trivial to do nice and spiffy html output.

  EDIT2: I can do html output now. It is nice and spiffy, but it has some CSS bug. After the fifth quote it falls apart. This is my first time with CSS, and I hope it is also the last. Could somebody help me with this? Thanks.

  EDIT3: Bug resolved. I wrote another top-level comment. about the final version, because my access logs suggested that the EDITs have reached only a very few people. Of course, an alternative explanation is that everybody who would have been interested in the html version already checked out the txt version. We will soon find out which explanation is the correct one.

  What links here?

  • DanielVarga's comment on Open Thread June 2010, Part 2 by komponisto (12 Jun 2010 17:13 UTC; 23 points)
  • RobinZ's comment on Ra­tion­al­ity quotes: June 2010 by Morendil (8 Jun 2010 16:51 UTC; 1 point)

• DanielVarga 28 May 2012 11:01 UTC

  22 points

  in reply to: vi21maobk9vp’s comment on: The ra­tio­nal ra­tio­nal­ist’s guide to ra­tio­nally us­ing “ra­tio­nal” in ra­tio­nal post titles

  It would lose a perfectly good alliteration.

• DanielVarga 3 Nov 2011 18:15 UTC

  22 points

  on: 2011 Less Wrong Cen­sus /​ Survey

  Thanks, Yvain! For the next survey, please consider country of residence and first language as questions.

Best of Ra­tion­al­ity Quotes, 2014 Edition

• DanielVarga 21 Jan 2011 18:43 UTC

  19 points

  in reply to: sketerpot’s comment on: Statis­ti­cal Pre­dic­tion Rules Out-Perform Ex­pert Hu­man Judgments

  I second the advice.

  Let me brag a bit. Once in a friendly discussion the following question came up: How to predict for an unknown first name whether it is a male or female name. This was in a context of Hungarian names, as all of us were Hungarians. I had a list of Hungarian first names in digital format. The discussion turned into a bet: I said I can write a program in half an hour that tells with at least 70% precision the sex of a first name it never saw before. I am quite fast with writing small scripts. It wasn’t even close: It took me 9 minutes to

  • split my sets of 1000 male and 1000 female names into a random 1000-1000 train-test split,

  • split each name into character 1,2- and 3-grams. E.g.: Luca was turned into ^L u c a$ ^Lu uc ca$ ^Luc uca$.

  • feed the training data into a command line tool to train a maxent model,

  • test the accuracy of the model on the unseen test data.

  The model reached an accuracy of 90%. In retrospect, this is not surprising at all. Looking into the linear model, the most important feature it identified was whether the name ends with an ‘a’. This trivial model alone reaches some 80% precision for Hungarian names, so if I knew this in advance, I could have won the bet in 30 seconds instead of 9 minutes, with the sed command s/​a$/​a FEMALE/​.

• DanielVarga 6 Jan 2012 19:02 UTC

  18 points

  on: Ex­plained: Gödel’s the­o­rem and the Banach-Tarski Paradox

  This Banach-Tarski explanation is nice at a very beginner level, but worse than useless above that. Here is a very important related fact: The Banach-Tarski paradox is simply NOT TRUE on the line and the plane. You can not do such a rearrangement with a circle to get two circles of the same size.

  The difference between 2D and 3D that causes this change is very interesting. The isomorphism group has a much more complex structure in 3D. In particular, the group of 3D rotations contains a free group. This means that there exist 3D rotations a and b and their respective inverses A and B such that a list of successively applied such rotations is the identity if and only if it is the identity for formal reasons. (For example, aaBbAA is the identity for formal reasons.) How does this lead to the paradox? There are two main ideas involved:

  1. This free subgroup has a paradoxical behavior. (We now treat it as a subset of the unit sphere.) The elements of this set are defined by rotations such as AbAbABaAABBaBbb. This set can be divided into four disjoint subsets depending on their first letter. These four subsets are isomorphic to each other, but each is also isomorphic to their union.

  2. We can use the axiom of choice to pick representative elements from the cosets of our free group. (Basically, to get a maximal subset of the sphere such that the above free rotations never move one element into another.) Such a set will behave very similarly to a single element of the free group, but it has the advantage that its rotated versions together give the whole sphere, not just a sparse subset of it.

  3. These were the main ideas. EDIT: One minor idea that I originally forgot is nicely explained by earthwormchuck163 in a reply to this comment. The complication is that rotations have fixed points, and the relief is that there are only countably many of them.

  4. One very minor idea is that if you have a paradox for the sphere using rotations, you can get a paradox for the ball. This is a nice exercise.