Quotations and Aphorisms

It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.

Robert A. Heinlein, science-fiction author (1907-1988)

once again, thanks to Anu Garg with A-Word-A-Day.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.

Richard P. Feynman, Nobel laureate physicist, 1918-1988

Heard on this episode of econtalk concerning global warming.  See more Feynman quotes here.

"Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand."

- Kurt Vonnegut, US novelist (1922 - 2007)

 Heuristics and biases are widespread in human reasoning. Familiarity with heuristics and biases can enable us to detect a wide variety of logical flaws that might otherwise evade our inspection. But, as with any ability to detect flaws in reasoning, this inspection must be applied evenhandedly: both to our own ideas and the ideas of others; to ideas which discomfort us and to ideas which comfort us.  Awareness of human fallibility is a dangerous knowledge, if you remind yourself of the fallibility of those who disagree with you. If I am selective about which arguments I inspect for errors, or even how hard I inspect for errors, then every new rule of rationality I learn, every new logical flaw I know how to detect, makes me that much stupider. Intelligence, to be useful, must be used for something other than defeating itself.

- Eliezer Yudkowsky, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, from "Cognitive Biases Potentially Affecting Judgment of Global Risks"