…the world is more flexible than it seems, for the established views have frequently emerged not through a process of faultless reasoning, but through centuries of intellectual muddle. There may be no good reason for things to be the way they are.

— Alain De Botton, The Consolations of Philosophy

I call this the three-axes model of political communication. A progressive will communicate along the oppressor-oppressed axis, framing issues in terms of the (P) dichotomy. A conservative will communicate along the civilization-barbarism axis, framing issues in terms of the (C) dichotomy. A libertarian will communicate along the liberty-coercion axis, framing issues in terms of the (L) dichotomy.

— Arnold Kling, The Three Languages of Politics

Thanks to hindsight bias, it’s also not enough to check how well your theory “predicts” facts you already know. You’ve got to predict for tomorrow, not yesterday. It’s the only way a messy human mind can be guaranteed of sending a pure forward message.

— Eliezer Yudkowsky, Map and Territory

…one obviously can do a lot of work in programming, software and hardware development, and so on, without having to worry much about the theorems. The theorems and related results are, however, very important in the theory of computability.

— Richard Tieszen, Simply Gödel

The modern concept of identity unites three different perspectives. The first is thymos , a universal aspect of human personality that craves recognition. The second is the distinction between the inner and outer self, and the raising of the moral valuation of the inner self over outer society. This emerged only in early modern Europe [with Luther’s Reformation of Christianity]. The third is an evolving concept of dignity, in which recognition is due not just to a narrow class of people, but to everyone

— Francis Fukuyama, Identity