Eliezer Yudkowsky Quotes

Argument is not always truth.

To give a reason for anything is to breed a doubt of it.

Rationalization may be defined as self-deception by reasoning.

Man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort truth intentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to justify his logic.

An ideology is a complex of ideas or notions which represents itself to the thinker as an absolute truth for the interpretation of the world and his situation within it; it leads the thinker to accomplish an act of self-deception for the purpose of justification, obfuscation and evasion in some sense or other

In intelligence you can justify almost anything you want to if you go about it with enough zeal and effort which is what happened.

Men can reason themselves into almost any sort of opinion if they are so inclined.

When a thing is said to be not worth refuting you may be sure that either it is flagrantly stupid—in which case all comment is superfluous—or it is something formidable, the very crux of the problem.

Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons - that's philosophy.

Reason adapts impulses and beliefs into the real world; rationalization, on the other hand, adapts the concept of reality to the impulses and beliefs of the individual. Reasoning discovers the true cause of our acts, rationalization finds good reasons for justifying our acts.

Men first make up their minds (and the smaller the mind the sooner made up), and then seek for the reasons; and if they chance to stumble upon a good reason, of course they do not reject it. But though they are right, they are only right by chance.

The same principles which at first view lead to skepticism, pursued to a certain point, bring men back to common sense.

Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.

To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one's thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one's mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality.

When blithe to argument I come, Though armed with facts, and merry, May Providence protect me from The fool as adversary, Whose mind to him a kingdom is Where reason lacks dominion, Who calls conviction prejudice And prejudice opinion.

A sane mind should not be guilty of a logical fallacy, yet there are very fine minds incapable of following mathematical demonstrations.

It's more fun to arrive a conclusion than to justify it.

Wise men argue causes; fools decide them.

Logic is neither an art nor a science but a dodge.

You don't need a digital David Petraeus or a President Bush avatar to distract you from the truth. You don't need to wait decades to have disinformation beamed into your head. You just need a constant stream of misleading information, half truths, and fictions to be promoted, pushed, and peddled until they are accepted as fact.

Whoever does not philosophize for the sake of philosophy, but rather uses philosophy as a means, is a sophist.

Logic has made me hated in the world.

It is true the orator may make a myriad replica of his own passion out of those who listen to him. But that does not prove he is right or they are not fools.

If you can't convince them, confuse them.

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