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Kindle Notes & Highlights
The philosopher Alfred Korzybski once wrote: “A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.” And what can be said of maps here, as Korzybski noted, can also be said of beliefs, and assertions, and words.
If you want to be an effective altruist, you have to think it through with the part of your brain that processes those unexciting inky zeroes on paper, not just the part that gets real worked up about that poor struggling oil-soaked bird.
In the martial art of mind, we need to acquire the realtime procedural skill of pulling the right levers at the right time on a large, pre-existing thinking machine whose innards are not end-user-modifiable.
absurdity bias; events that have never happened are not recalled, and hence deemed to have probability zero.
A society well-protected against minor hazards takes no action against major risks,
2 By adding extra details, you can make an outcome seem more characteristic of the process that generates it.
Adding detail can make a scenario sound more plausible, even though the event necessarily becomes less probable.
There is no straw that lacks the power to break your back.
The point of attaching sequences of letters to particular concepts is to let two people communicate—to help transport thoughts from one mind to another. You cannot change reality, or prove the thought, by manipulating which meanings go with which words.
If you speak overmuch of the Way, you will not attain it.
Since the days of Socrates at least, and probably long before, the way to appear cultured and sophisticated has been to never let anyone see you care strongly about anything. It’s embarrassing to feel—it’s just not done in polite society.
The whole idea of Science is, simply, reflective reasoning about a more reliable process for making the contents of your mind mirror the contents of the world. It is the sort of thing mice would never invent.
To ask which beliefs make you happy is to turn inward, not outward—it tells you something about yourself, but it is not evidence entangled with the environment. I have nothing against happiness, but it should follow from your picture of the world, rather than tampering with the mental paintbrushes.
We’re supposed to constantly ask our beliefs which experiences they predict, make them pay rent in anticipation.
