Quotes About Judgment

perhaps morally broken and socially stigmatized

much of the opinions and assessments that we have concerning risks may be the simple result of emotions.

notion of alternative accounting: $ 10 million earned through Russian roulette does not have the same value as $ 10 million earned through the diligent and artful practice of dentistry.

had I not known his profession I would have thought

focusing on the rationality of a belief rather than its consequences

best way to detect a sucker is to see if his focus is on the size of the theater rather than that of the door.

Judging people by their beliefs is not scientific. There is no such thing as the "rationality" of a belief, there is rationality of action. The rationality of an action can be judged only in terms of evolutionary considerations.

Accept that being human involves some amount of epistemic arrogance in running your affairs. Do not be ashamed of that. Do not try to always withhold judgment—opinions are the stuff of life. Do not try to avoid predicting—yes, after this diatribe about prediction I am not urging you to stop being a fool. Just be a fool in the right places.*

Know how to rank beliefs not according to their plausibility but by the harm they may cause.

since almost all of their years will seem wasted to someone looking at their life from the outside.

Those who talk about books as commodities are inauthentic, just as those who collect acquaintances can be superficial in their friendships. A novel you like resembles a friend. You read it and reread it, getting to know it better. Like a friend, you accept it the way it is; you do not judge it.

in absence of much additional information it is preferable to reserve one's judgment.

the only effective judge of things is time

Give me a few lines written by any man and I will find enough to get him hung

their intuition getting in the way and blinding them.

One needs to be intelligent in recognizing the favorable outcome and knowing what to discard.

But to do things right, they ought to learn to keep silent in the absence of news of significance.

Compromising is condoning. The only modern dictum I follow is one by George Santayana: A man is morally free when Ã¢â'¬Â¦ he judges the world, and judges other men, with uncompromising sincerity.

it depends on how the choices are presented to you.

We see flaws in others and not in ourselves.

And of course you learn from the errors of others. You may never know what type of person someone is unless they are given opportunities to violate moral or ethical codes.

it did not so much judge the quality of a trader's performance as encourage him to game the system by working for short-term profits at the expense of possible blowups—like

Which of these two statements seems more likely? Joey seemed happily married. He killed his wife. Joey seemed happily married. He killed his wife to get her inheritance.

My biggest problem with the educational system lies precisely in that it forces students to squeeze explanations out of subject matters and shames them for withholding judgment, for uttering the "I don't know.