Quotes About Rationality

Here's the thing," Riley said. "I'm not really into diabolical possibilities. I'm more into logical explanations.

I am very much aware of my own double self. The well-known one is very under control; everything is planned and very secure. The unknown one can be very unpleasant. I think this side is responsible for all the creative work - he is in touch with the child. He is not rational; he is impulsive and extremely emotional.

Homo sapiens, the only creature endowed with reason, is also the only creature to pin its existence on things unreasonable.

The amygdala is like a point guard in the emotional part of your middle brain. When it is overwhelmed, it hijacks you away from being able to access your upper rational brain and think and assess what to do. It essentially disables your ability to think.

In truth, there is no rational argument for guns in this society. This is no longer a frontier nation in which people hunt their own food. It is a crowded, overwhelmingly urban country in which letting people have access to guns is a continuing disaster.

I do not take things to the heart. I calculate and I do what needs to be done. If I were to start acting emotionally, it would destroy my work.

Human rationality depends critically on sophisticated emotionality. It is only because our emotional brain works so well that our reasoning can work at all.

If something is irrational, that means it won't work. It's usually unrealistic.

Science and technology has tried to offer an alternative to religion by making a god out of human reason, but that didn't work out too well.

To the rationally minded the mental processes of the intuitive appear to work backwards

Faith in reason was the foundation stone of the United States.

I think that there's a strain in journalism that believes that anyone who surrenders him- or herself to faith and to belief necessarily checks reason and rationality at the door.

There are strange flowers of reason to match each error of the senses.

There is nothing funny about a well-adjusted, intelligent person making the right choices.

in our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence. A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence.' – David Hume, Scottish philosopher

Ordinarily he was insane, but he had lucid moments when he was merely stupid. —HEINRICH HEINE, German critic and poet

These two books are actually parts one and two of a six-part collection called Rationality: From AI to Zombies, sourced from Yudkowsky's blog posts from the site LessWrong.com over the last decade.

Sharpening your logical and practical mental toolbox is not being an atheist or unspiritual.

Julia is the co-founder of the Center for Applied Rationality, a nonprofit that runs workshops on improving reasoning and decision-making.

Ä°nsan olmak, pek çok psikoloÄŸa göre dürüst bir biçimde mant?ks?z olmakt?r.

The world is too much for us. Rationality as we have come to know it works by ignoring most of experience: laws are arrived at by selective abstraction.

Science requires a rational audience.

Men often act knowingly against their interest.

If one listens one may be convinced; and a man who allows himself to be convinced by an argument is a thoroughly unreasonable person