He only employs his passion who can make no use of his reason.
~ Cicero
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Reason and Rationality
Malice
Insolence is not logic; Epithets are the arguments of malice.
~ R.G. Ingerson
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Bondage
The inability to think logically is a form of bondage. The refusal to think logically is proof of already being bound.
~ Kareem Abdul-Jabar
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Cooperation
Our world is an ecosystem in which our only real chance at survival as a species is cooperation, community, and care, but it’s being led by people who believe in an ego system, run on competition, power, and self-interest.
~ Austin Kleon
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Disconnected facts
Cognitive psychology has shown that the mind best understands facts when they are woven into a conceptual fabric, such as a narrative, mental map, or intuitive theory. Disconnected facts in the mind are like unlinked pages on the web: They might as well not exist.
~ Steven Pinker
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Seek the truth
Seek the truth: It always shows us what we should do, what we should not do, and what we should stop doing.
~ Leo Tolstoy
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Opinions everywhere
Secondly, I say something like this: “I’m sure you’ve heard the expression ‘everyone is entitled to their opinion.’ Perhaps you’ve even said it yourself, maybe to head off an argument or bring one to a close. Well, as soon as you walk into this room, it’s no longer true. You are not entitled to your opinion. You are only entitled to what you can argue for.”
~ Patrick Stokes from, No, you’re not entitled to your opinion
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Stokes is a professor, and I rarely find myself in a teaching context. When I hear someone express an opinion, I make an assessment of their argument. Did they actually give a coherent argument? Did they give a sketch of one? Do they seem the sort of person who could give an argument in support of their opinion? To be clear, I’m not judging the person, but rather I’m trying to judge the ideas espoused.
Surprising to me, it’s become clear it’s often not obvious when something is a fact versus an opinion.
On the flip side, I try to signal my level confidence in my opinions. I’m trying to banish the phrase, “I think…” because it carries no meaning. Instead I try to say, “It seems obvious to me that…”, “I read somewhere that…”, “So-and-so told me that…”, or “It happened to me that…”
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Go forward
I’m not trying to sound like Mr. Smiley Positive Guy. That guy ignores the hard truth. That guy thinks a positive attitude will solve problems. It won’t. But neither will dwelling on the problem. No. Accept reality, but focus on the solution. Take that issue, take that setback, take that problem, and turn it into something good. Go forward. And, if you’re part of a team, that attitude will spread throughout.
~ Jocko Willink
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Reason
You can’t reason someone out of something they didn’t reason themselves into.
~ Tim Ferriss
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Criticism
Ours is the age of criticism. Religion and law try to escape from criticism, religion by saying that it is divine and law by showing that it is powerful. But some suspicions arise from this escape, because we can respect only those things which stand up in free and public trial.
~ Immanuel Kant
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Quite nice
[T]oday, let’s seek to be better than the things that disappoint or hurt us. Let’s try to be the example we’d like others to follow. It’s awful to be a cheat, to be selfish, to feel the need to inflict pain on our fellow human beings. Meanwhile, living morally and well is quite nice.
~ Ryan Holiday
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Bravery
You should be brave enough to use your own intellect, in life and in your education.
~ Immanuel Kant
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Endless anxieties
When circumstances scare us, our imagination tends to take over, filling our minds with endless anxieties. You need to gain control of your imagination. A Focused mind has no room for anxiety or for the effects of an overactive imagination.
~ Robert Greene
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Truth
Many statements which are accepted as truth because they have been passed down to us by tradition look like truth only because we have never tested them, never thought about them in a more precise way.
~ Leo Tolstoy
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Whose thoughts
Some people live and act according to their own thoughts, and some according to the thoughts of others; this is a crucial distinction between people.
~ Leo Tolstoy
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Two guides
Two ways exist to guide human activity. One is to force a person to act against his wishes; The other is to guide a person’s wishes, to persuade him with reasoning. One is the way of violence: It is used by ignorant people, and it leads to complete disappointment. The other is supported by experience, and is always successful.
~ Abraham Comb
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Other people’s thoughts
For the most part, false and harmful opinions are distributed and supported by influence. We are too likely to accept the views and thoughts of other people without trying to investigate them deeper and further ourselves. Unimportant people are those who accept other people’s thoughts without developing them themselves.
~ Leo Tolstoy
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Wise consumption
Wise consumption is much more complicated than wise production. What five people will produce, one person can very easily consume, and the question for each individual and for every nation is not how are we to produce, but how our products are to be consumed.
~ John Ruskin
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Reasons and persons
You’ve probably heard this scenario before. It originally comes from Derek Parfit’s 1984 book Reasons and Persons, where he actually answers the question. (Though you may not like the answer.) To answer it, he has to go though a set of even weirder scenarios. Here’s most of them, edited aggressively.
~ “Dynomight” from, Reasons and Persons: The case against the self
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This article turns a number of complicated thought experiments into a disorienting dash through a hall of mirrors. I’ve not read Parfit’s book, but I’ve encountered these sorts of thought experiments before. On one hand I’m drawn to thinking about them because I feel I should be able to have some foundational, (although not necessarily simple,) principles that I can use to answer them. Which is a working definition of, “I want to be rational.” Until I start really digging into the experiments and things get really complicated. Why, it’s as if being a limited-in-resources mind forced to interact with in an intractably complex world, may not be something with a clear, correct, let alone singular, solution.
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Everything has two handles
Everything has two handles, by one of which it may be carried, and by the other not. If your brother wrongs you, do not take it by this handle, that he is wronging you (for this is the handle that it cannot be carried by), but by the other, that he is your brother, that he was brought up with you, and then you will be taking it by the handle by which it ought to be carried.
~ Epictetus
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