Quotes
This page keeps track of some quotes I’ve especially liked over the years (not all of the quotes speak to me currently, but I won’t remove any of them). It started out as the “favorite quotes” section on my Facebook profile, but I moved it to my website because I’m afraid Facebook will get rid of that section at some point (as it did with religion and political affiliation).
In a useful conversation […] there is a double coincidence of wants. You have to be interested in what I have to say; I have to be interested in what you have to say. This is an important reason why people with conventional interests seem more socially intelligent. Even if they don’t check whether their audience cares, it probably does.
Backups are confronting one’s fallibility & the transience of the world; we should not be surprised so few can do it.
— gwern
Now I want to make it perfectly clear that these papers and all my other works in life belong to the general public. In fact, I also would like to turn myself over to all of you as well. This was actually done several years ago, but in an embarrassingly disorganized manner. I like what you’ve done with the character, but I’d like to step into his tattered suit for the next hundred pages and a day. And after that, I’m yours again. Do what you must do! I always enjoy seeing what happens to me.
“If you consider them in terms of QALYs lost, school is at least as harmful to your health as smoking, and far more expensive.”
“I can safely say that school taught me all my social skills, which is probably why I’m a jerk.”— gwern
[T]he world seems full of pseudo-output. Lots of military, health, and education spending don’t pass muster. Neither does a lot of finance. Or legal services. In fact, it’s arguably easier to name the main categories of “output” that aren’t fake. […] Entertainment. People may be misled by entertainment that falsely purports to be factual. But they’re not mistaken about how entertained they are.
Malthusianism is a more dangerous doctrine than eugenics. If the whiff of eugenics leads you to say, ‘We should be very careful here, because these ideas can easily lead to terrible things,’ the whiff of Malthusianism should inspire even greater trepidation.
人間の真実なんて、その程度のものさ。だからこそ、より深い真実を知りたくなるんだね。
— 加持; HT Ethan
I had ambitious plans for a much longer post, but I don’t feel like writing this one anymore, so I’m going to truncate it here and publish it. The main upshot was probably going to be something about how Wei Dai continues to be and have been the single best contemporary thinker.
— Grognor
I originally thought that if I made something I found interesting myself, everyone else would find it interesting too, but I discovered that often wasn’t the case.
He will spend hundreds of years traveling the world, learning all there is to know. He will learn every language; he will read every book; he will know every land. He will spend thousands of years creating stunning works of art. He will learn to meditate to control all pain. As wars will be fought, and great loves found… and lost… and found. Lost… and found… and found… and found. And memories built upon memories until life runs on an endless loop. He will father hundreds of thousands of children whose own exponential offspring he’ll slowly lose track of through the years, whose millions of beautiful lives will all eventually be swept again from the Earth. And still, Bill will continue. He will learn more about life than any being in history, but death will forever be a stranger to him. People will come and go until names lose all meaning, until people lose all meaning and vanish entirely from the world. And still, Bill will live on. He will befriend the next inhabitants of the Earth, beings of light who revere him as a God, and Bill will outlive them all, for millions and millions of years, exploring, learning, living… until the Earth is swallowed beneath his feet. Until the sun is long since gone. Until time loses all meaning and the moment comes that he knows only the positions of the stars and sees them whether his eyes are closed or open. Until he forgets his name and the place where he’d once come from. He lives and he lives, until all of the lights go out.
— Don Hertzfeldt, It’s Such a Beautiful Day
Most people will put up with virtually anything if they don’t see any choice.
— Lawrence Afrin, Never Bet Against Occam
what i thought was passion was actually just the physical ability to work longer.
External links
- Jonathan Blow quotes on Wikiquote (most of this page was written by me)
- Wei Dai quotes on Wikiquote (most of this page was written by me)