Quotes About Logic

We in science are spoiled by the success of mathematics. Mathematics is the study of problems so simple that they have good solutions.

Q is like a stupid Internet Troll; he makes some strawman accusation against Picard, Picard refutes his argument with logic and reason, and Q just changes the terms of the argument, all the while enjoying the attention he's getting. But does anyone create alt.q.die.die.die? No, of course not. Life is so fucking unfair.

The bad debater never knows that one explanation is better than five.

If an animal does something, we call it instinct. If we do the same thing for the same reason, we call it intelligence.

The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes, rather than their minds.

The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds.

Whenever we can replace human judgment by a formula, we should at least consider it.

our mind is strongly biased toward causal explanations and does not deal well with "mere statistics.

Even statisticians were not good intuitive statisticians.

The technical definition of heuristic is a simple procedure that helps find adequate, though often imperfect, answers to difficult questions. The

The technical definition of heuristic is a simple procedure that helps find adequate, though often imperfect, answers to difficult questions. The word comes from the same root as eureka.

Rationality is logical coherence—reasonable or not.

Uncertainty and doubt are the domain of System 2.

System 1 is gullible and biased to believe, System 2 is in charge of doubting and unbelieving, but System 2 is sometimes busy, and often lazy.

Nisbett and Borgida summarize the results in a memorable sentence: Subjects' unwillingness to deduce the particular from the general was matched only by their willingness to infer the general from the particular.

people believe a conclusion is true, they are also very likely to believe arguments that appear to support it, even when these arguments are unsound.

but statistics requires thinking about many things at once, which is something that System 1 is not designed to do.

The word fallacy is used, in general, when people fail to apply a logical rule that is obviously relevant.

your beliefs should be constrained by the logic of probability.

Narrative fallacies arise inevitably from our continuous attempt to make sense of the world.

The implication is clear: as the psychologist Jonathan Haidt said in another context, "The emotional tail wags the rational dog

representativeness can block the application of an obvious logical rule is also of some interest.

For one thing, it helps us see the logical consistency of Human preferences for what it is—a hopeless mirage

If a satisfactory answer to a hard question is not found quickly, System 1 will find a related question that is easier and will answer it. I