Quotes About Reasoning

Mathematics is not just a numbers game, it is a way of thinking.

The error in reasoning is a bit from wishful thinking, because education is considered "good"; I wonder why people don't make the epiphenomenal association between the wealth of a country and something "bad," say, decadence, and infer that decadence, or some other disease of wealth like a high suicide rate, also generates wealth.)

How can we logically go from specific instances to reach general conclusions? How do we know what we know? How do we know that what we have observed from given objects and events suffices to enable us to figure out their other properties? There

do not use this argument to avoid trying to learn from history. All I am saying is that it is not so simple; be suspicious of the "because" and handle it with care—particularly in situations where you suspect silent evidence.

could not understand what made one explanation more likely than the other

focusing on the rationality of a belief rather than its consequences

later legitimized by some type of formalization. The knowledge we get by tinkering, via trial and error, experience, and the workings of time, in other words, contact with the earth, is vastly superior to that obtained through reasoning, something self-serving institutions have been very busy hiding from us.

Mathematics is not just a "numbers game," it is a way of thinking. We will see that probability is a qualitative subject.

mistaking what we don't see for the nonexistent, a sibling to mistaking absence of evidence for evidence of absence.

I propose that if you want a simple step to a higher form of life, as distant from the animal as you can get, then you may have to denarrate, that is, shut down the television set, minimize time spent reading newspapers, ignore the blogs. Train your reasoning abilities to control your decisions; nudge System 1 (the heuristic or experiential system) out of the important ones. Train yourself to spot the difference between the sensational and the empirical.

Mathematics is not just a "numbers game," it is a way of thinking.

which does not require knowledge or intelligence, merely rationality in choice.

This is the same error as mistaking absence of evidence for evidence of absence

Instinct" is a concept intended to bridge the gap between needs and goals, bypassing man's cognitive (i.e., reasoning and learning) faculty.

The Thunderhead has its reasons for everything," the nonplussed colleague said. "The fact that we can't see the logic shows our limitations, not the Thunderhead's.

Hoe al die absurde gedragsregels en al die absurde geloofsovertuigingen ontstaan zijn weten we niet; ...: maar het is opvallend hoe een geloof dat in de vroege levensjaren voortdurend werd ingeprent, als het brein nog ontvankelijk is, welhaast de status van instinct verwerft; en de essentie van een instinct is dat het wordt gevolgd, zelfs tegen de ratio in.

No mistake is more common and more fatuous than appealing to logic in cases which are beyond her jurisdiction.

To the extent that laws are founded on morality and on logic, they can lead men's hearts and minds.

It is a classic example of arguing against a caricature instead of confronting the argument actually made. While

One of the painful signs of years of dumbed-down education is how many people are unable to make a coherent argument. They can vent their emotions, question other people's motives, make bold assertions, repeat slogans – anything except reason.

Before I repeat any statistical claim, I first try to take note of how it makes me feel. It's not a foolproof method against tricking myself, but it's a habit that does little harm and is sometimes a great deal of help. Our emotions are powerful. We can't make them vanish, nor should we want to. But we can, and should, try to notice when they are clouding our judgment.

Psychologists call this "motivated reasoning." Motivated reasoning is thinking through a topic with the aim, conscious or unconscious, of reaching a particular kind of conclusion. In a football game, we see the fouls committed by the other team but overlook the sins of our own side. We are more likely to notice what we want to notice.11

The French satirist Molière once wrote, "A learned fool is more foolish than an ignorant one." Benjamin Franklin commented, "So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables us to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.

If it had been up to Von Neumann's purely intellectual reasoning alone, many of the bombs he helped to create would have exploded on the Soviet Union.Thankfully, there was another thinker on hand whose deeper grasp of human foibles added a new dimension to game theory that, among other things, helped save the world from mutually assured destruction. Enter Thomas Schelling.