Mapping the trajectory of a spacecraft is a relatively straightforward business, bounded only by the laws of physics. Mapping the trajectory of an idea through a political system, on the other hand, can be a dicey business.

— Robert Zubrin, Case for Mars

We can build up whole networks of beliefs that are connected only to each other—call these “floating” beliefs. It is a uniquely human flaw among animal species, a perversion of Homo sapiens’s ability to build more general and flexible belief networks.

— Eliezer Yudkowsky, Map and Territory

when we do not know, or when we do not know enough, we tend always to substitute emotions for thoughts.

— Alan Jacobs, How to Think

We do not see the minds that we hurt when we publish falsehoods, but that does not mean we do no harm.

— Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny

When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases—bestial, atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder—one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy … A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance toward turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved, as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself …

— Eliezer Yudkowsky, How to Actually Change Your Mind