Stuart Sutherland > Quotes

“The willingness to change one’s mind in the light of new evidence is a sign of rationality not weakness.”
― Stuart Sutherland, Irrationality

“To establish that a rule is likely to be true, one must try to prove it false.”
― Stuart Sutherland, Irrationality

“...is impossible to specify what [consciousness] is, what it does, or why it evolved. Nothing worth reading has been written on it.”
― Stuart Sutherland

“The effects of conformity on beliefs and attitudes are the more injurious because people tend to associate with others who have similar beliefs to themselves. ... the only way to substantiate a belief is to try to disprove it. But because like mixes with like, people are rarely exposed to counter-arguments to their more deeply held convictions, let alone to counter-evidence. Their beliefs conform to those of their associates: hence, there is little possibility of eliminating persistent errors.”
― Stuart Sutherland, Irrationality

“Everyone is irrational some of the time and in particular everyone is susceptible to the availability error. I give a final striking example ... In 1969, Jerzy Kosinsky's novel Steps won the American National Book Award for fiction. Eight years later some joker had it retyped and sent the manuscript with no title and under a false name to fourteen major publishers and thirteen literary agents in the US, including ... the firm that had originally published it. Of the twenty-seven people to whom it was submitted, not one recognised that it had already been published. Moreover, all twenty-seven rejected it. All it lacked was Jerzy Kosinsky's name to create the halo effect: without the name, it was seen as an indifferent book.”
― Stuart Sutherland, Irrationality

“Man has no need of divine inspiration, his reason is sufficient unto itself.”
― Stuart Sutherland, Irrationality: the enemy within

“Much psychology is like the Bible—it can provide support for almost any conceivable view.”
― Stuart Sutherland, Breakdown: a personal crisis and a medical dilemma

“What constitutes a rational decision depends upon one's knowledge. There is a rider to this. If one has reason to believe one's knowledge is insufficient, then it is rational, particularly in the case of important decisions, to seek out more evidence: unfortunately, as we will see, when people do so, they usually act in a wholly irrational way, since they only seek evidence that will support their existing beliefs.”
― Stuart Sutherland, Irrationality

“İrrasyonelliğe dair bunca neden sunmuşken, "iyi de bunu azaltmanın bir yolu yok mu?" sorusu sorulabilir. Bu konudaki en genel yaklaşım insanları açık fikirli olmaya ve bir sonuca varmadan önce tüm delilleri dikkatlice gözden geçirmeye teşvik etmek ve insanların gerektiğinde fikir değiştirmenin bir zayıflık değil, aksine güçlülük göstergesi olduğunu fark etmelerini sağlamaktır. Ayrıca insanlara inandığı fikirlerin aksi yönündeki kanıtları aramayı ve eğer bulurlarsa da bu kanıtı çarpıtmak ya da görmezden gelmek yerine değerlendirmeyi öğretmek gerekir. Bir insanın kendi değerlendirmesinin kusurlu olup olmadığını düşünmesinden hiçbir zaman zarar gelmez. Esnek düşünemediğimizden aceleyle ya da stres altında karar almak yanılmamıza yol açar. Eğer deliller tek bir noktayı işaret etmiyorsa, yapılması çok zor olanı yapmak, o konuda bir yargıya varmayı ertelemek gerekir. Bertrand Russell'ın dediği gibi, "insanlar saf hayvanlardır ve bir şeylere inanmalıdırlar. İnanç için yeteri kadar iyi zemin yoksa, kötüleriyle idare idare edecektir".”
― Stuart Sutherland

“People have an amazing capacity to remember pictures. After being shown 10,000 photographs just once they can correctly recognize almost all of them a week later. This is in marked contrast to the very poor memory for isolated words.”
― Stuart Sutherland, Irrationality

“The term 'love' was defined in an authoritative dictionary of psychology as 'a form of mental illness not yet recognised in the standard diagnostic manuals'.”
― Stuart Sutherland, Irrationality