Matt > Matt's Quotes

“The nation that will insist on drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking done by cowards.”
― William Francis Butler, Charles George Gordon

“A superior sailor is one who uses his superior judgment to stay out of situations that require his superior skill.”
― Nate Johnson, Intrepid

“Humans in the group; computers in the loop”
― Ben Shneiderman, Human-Centered AI

“Making a robot that simulates what a human does has value, but I’m more attracted to making supertools that dramatically amplify human abilities by a hundred- or thousand-fold.”
― Ben Shneiderman, Human-Centered AI

“To understand our civilisation, one must appreciate that the extended order resulted not from human design or intention but spontaneously: it arose from unintentionally conforming to certain traditional and largely moral practices, many of which men tend to dislike, whose significance they usually fail to understand, whose validity they cannot prove, and which have nonetheless fairly rapidly spread by means of an evolutionary selection – the comparative increase of population and wealth – of those groups that happened to follow them.”
― Friedrich A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek Book 1)

“If it were for instance true that central direction of the means of production could effect a collective product of at least the same magnitude as that which we now produce, it would indeed prove a grave moral problem how this could be done justly.”
― Friedrich A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek Book 1)

“there is no known way, other than by the distribution of products in a competitive market, to inform individuals in what direction their several efforts must aim so as to contribute as much as possible to the total product.”
― Friedrich A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek Book 1)

“The main point of my argument is, then, that the conflict between, on one hand, advocates of the spontaneous extended human order created by a competitive market, and on the other hand those who demand a deliberate arrangement of human interaction by central authority based on collective command over available resources is due to a factual error by the latter about how knowledge of these resources is and can be generated and utilised.”
― Friedrich A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek Book 1)

“The demands of socialism are not moral conclusions derived from the traditions that formed the extended order that made civilisation possible. Rather, they endeavour to overthrow these traditions by a rationally designed moral system whose appeal depends on the instinctual appeal of its promised consequences.”
― Friedrich A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek Book 1)

“They assume that, since people had been able to generate some system of rules coordinating their efforts, they must also be able to design an even better and more gratifying system. But if humankind owes its very existence to one particular rule-guided form of conduct of proven effectiveness, it simply does not have the option of choosing another merely for the sake of the apparent pleasantness of its immediately visible effects.”
― Friedrich A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek Book 1)

“By ‘reason properly used’ I mean reason that recognises its own limitations and, itself taught by reason, faces the implications of the astonishing fact, revealed by economics and biology, that order generated without design can far outstrip plans men consciously contrive.”
― Friedrich A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek Book 1)

“It is important to confront these consequences, for the notion that, in the last resort, the whole debate is a matter of value judgements and not of facts has prevented professional students of the market order from stressing forcibly enough that socialism cannot possibly do what it promises.”
― Friedrich A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek Book 1)

“The contention that we are constrained to preserve capitalism because of its superior capacity to utilise dispersed knowledge raises the question of how we came to acquire such an irreplaceable economic order – especially in view of my claim that powerful instinctual and rationalistic impulses rebel against the morals and institutions that capitalism requires.”
― Friedrich A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek Book 1)

“Our moral traditions, like many other aspects of our culture, developed concurrently with our reason, not as its product. Surprising and paradoxical as it may seem to some to say this, these moral traditions outstrip the capacities of reason.”
― Friedrich A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek Book 1)

“These modes of coordination depended decisively on instincts of solidarity and altruism – instincts applying to the members of one’s own group but not to others. The members of these small groups could thus exist only as such: an isolated man would soon have been a dead man. The primitive individualism described by Thomas Hobbes is hence a myth. The savage is not solitary, and his instinct is collectivist. There was never a ‘war of all against all’.”
― Friedrich A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek Book 1)

“if our present order did not already exist we too might hardly believe any such thing could ever be possible, and dismiss any report about it as a tale of the miraculous, about what could never come into being. What are chiefly responsible for having generated this extraordinary order, and the existence of mankind in its present size and structure, are the rules of human conduct that gradually evolved (especially those dealing with several property, honesty, contract, exchange, trade, competition, gain, and privacy).”
― Friedrich A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek Book 1)

“Mankind achieved civilisation by developing and learning to follow rules (first in territorial tribes and then over broader reaches) that often forbade him to do what his instincts demanded, and no longer depended on a common perception of events. These rules, in effect constituting a new and different morality, and to which I would indeed prefer to confine the term ‘morality’, suppress or restrain the ‘natural morality’, i.e., those instincts that welded together the small group and secured cooperation within it at the cost of hindering or blocking its expansion.”
― Friedrich A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek Book 1)

“In our economic activities we do not know the needs which we satisfy nor the sources of the things which we get. Almost all of us serve people whom we do not know, and even of whose existence we are ignorant; and we in turn constantly live on the services of other people of whom we know nothing. All this is possible because we stand in a great framework of institutions and traditions – economic, legal, and moral – into which we fit ourselves by obeying certain rules of conduct that we never made, and which we have never understood in the sense in which we understand how the things that we manufacture function.”
― Friedrich A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek Book 1)

“Nonetheless it is true that the greater part of our daily lives, and the pursuit of most occupations, give little satisfaction to deep-seated ‘altruistic’ desires to do visible good. Rather, accepted practices often require us to leave undone what our instincts impel us to do. It is not so much, as is often suggested, emotion and reason that conflict, but innate instincts and learnt rules. Yet, as we shall see, following these learnt rules generally does have the effect of providing a greater benefit to the community at large than most direct ‘altruistic’ action that a particular individual might take.”
― Friedrich A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek Book 1)

“Competition is a procedure of discovery, a procedure involved in all evolution, that led man unwittingly to respond to novel situations; and through further competition, not through agreement, we gradually increase our efficiency.”
― Friedrich A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek Book 1)

“operate beneficially, competition requires that those involved observe rules rather than resort to physical force. Rules alone can unite an extended order. (Common ends can do so only during a temporary emergency that creates a common danger for all.”
― Friedrich A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek Book 1)

“Man became intelligent because there was tradition – that which lies between instinct and reason – for him to learn. This tradition, in turn, originated not from a capacity rationally to interpret observed facts but from habits of responding. It told man primarily what he ought or ought not to do under certain conditions rather than what he must expect to happen.”
― Friedrich A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek Book 1)

“It is less accurate to suppose that thinking man creates and controls his cultural evolution than it is to say that culture, and evolution, created his reason.”
― Friedrich A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek Book 1)

“In any case, the idea that at some point conscious design stepped in and displaced evolution substitutes a virtually supernatural postulate for scientific explanation. So far as scientific explanation is concerned, it was not what we know as mind that developed civilisation, let alone directed its evolution, but rather mind and civilisation which developed or evolved concurrently.”
― Friedrich A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek Book 1)

“Shaped by the environment in which individuals grow up, mind in turn conditions the preservation, development, richness, and variety of traditions on which individuals draw. By being transmitted largely through families, mind preserves a multiplicity of concurrent streams into which each newcomer to the community can delve.”
― Friedrich A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek Book 1)

“Just as instinct is older than custom and tradition, so then are the latter older than reason: custom and tradition stand between instinct and reason – logically, psychologically, temporally.”
― Friedrich A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek Book 1)

“Learnt moral rules, customs, progressively displaced innate responses, not because men recognised by reason that they were better but because they made possible the growth of an extended order exceeding anyone’s vision, in which more effective collaboration enabled its members, however blindly, to maintain more people and to displace other groups.”
― Friedrich A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek Book 1)

“cultural evolution is brought about through transmission of habits and information not merely from the individual’s physical parents, but from an indefinite number of ‘ancestors’. The processes furthering the transmission and spreading of cultural properties by learning also, as already noted, make cultural evolution incomparably faster than biological evolution. Finally, cultural evolution operates largely through group selection; whether group selection also operates in biological evolution remains an open question”
― Friedrich A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek Book 1)

“Social Darwinism is wrong in many respects, but the intense dislike of it shown today is also partly due to its conflicting with the fatal conceit that man is able to shape the world around him according to his wishes.”
― Friedrich A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek Book 1)

“While facts alone can never determine what is right, ill-considered notions of what is reasonable, right and good may change the facts and the circumstances in which we live; they may destroy, perhaps forever, not only developed individuals and buildings and art and cities (which we have long known to be vulnerable to the destructive powers of moralities and ideologies of various sorts), but also traditions, institutions, and interrelations without which such creations could hardly have come into being or ever be recreated.”
― Friedrich A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek Book 1)