An important and possibly overlooked part of fallibility is that you are very frequently wrong about the way in which you are wrong, even if you’ve identified that there’s an error. These are mistakes about mistakes!
Example: You think: “I sort of understood this concept, but then forgot it, and that’s why I messed up.”
The truth: [...]
A page of a math PDF i downloaded. I thought this was awesome due to its reach ^_^
It’s possible to understand something in a vague sense, but not really think through the implications of it because you don’t want to deal with those implications. Ayn Rand referred to this sort of thing as a “blank-out” in her work. Here’s her talking about it:
Thinking is man’s only basic virtue, from which all [...]
There’s something in Poker called “going on tilt.”
It’s what people do when they they suffer a serious loss, particular one that was unlikely given the odds. They will start to play much more aggressively, get sloppy, make mistakes, take silly risks, etc.
This is irrational, of course: the loss suffered is a sunk cost. While losing [...]
Lots of people
1) do things in computer role-playing games they wouldn’t actually do, for moral reasons (example: murdering a village full of innocents with magical fire)
2) do things in sexual fantasies they wouldn’t actually do, for moral reasons (example: asserting control over another human being through physical violence)
3) imagine things in their daily lives they [...]
A common argument is that feeling bad is a warning sign of moral error, without which you might not be aware something is wrong. This is often described as a “twinge of conscience” –
Imagine two individuals. One is a Dedicated Nazi, who is sure Jews are vermin. The other is a Conflicted Nazi, who has [...]
Came across this article a while ago, which claims that women have more orgasms if partners are wealthier according to an analysis they did of a survey.
The link between enjoyment of sex and partner’s wealth was statistically significant even when they took into account other factors such as age, education, happiness, the length of relationship [...]
Lots of people say aspects of the war with Japan in WW2 were immoral.
Issues they raise include:
1. The United States provoked the attack.
2. The United States knew about the attack but didn’t take defensive actions in order to maximize casualties and civilian response.
3. The nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was immoral because killing innocent civilians [...]
Several banks are repaying their government bailout money, partially so they don’t have to abide by executive pay limits which they say reduces their competitiveness. The President is telling banks that having benefited from the help of U.S. taxpayers, they have to lend more.
Article in pertinent part:
President Obama told some of the nation’s top bankers [...]
Update: a commenter made some strong criticism of the Coolidge quote, and I think i agree with the criticism, and that the Coolidge quote isn’t right. But I leave this post up for the sake of posterity and for reminding myself of how I can be wrong!
Someone made a John Galt Speaking youtube [...]