E.T. Jaynes > Quotes

“A paradox is simply an error out of control; i.e. one that has trapped so many unwary minds that it has gone public, become institutionalized in our literature, and taught as truth.”
― E.T. Jaynes, Probability Theory: The Logic of Science

“if fallacious reasoning always led to absurd conclusions, it would be found out at once and corrected. But once an easy, shortcut mode of reasoning has led to a few correct results, almost everybody accepts it; those who try to warn against it are not listened to.”
― E.T. Jaynes, Probability Theory: The Logic of Science

“Not only in probability theory, but in all mathematics, it is the careless use of infinite sets, and of infinite and infinitesimal quantities, that generates most paradoxes.”
― E.T. Jaynes, Probability Theory: The Logic of Science

“As soon as we look at the nature of inference at this many-moves-ahead level of perception, our attitude toward probability theory and the proper way to use it in science becomes almost diametrically opposite to that expounded in most current textbooks. We need have no fear of making shaky calculations on inadequate knowledge; for if our predictions are indeed wrong, then we shall have an opportunity to improve that knowledge, an opportunity that would have been lost had we been too timid to make the calculations.
Instead of fearing wrong predictions, we look eagerly for them; it is only when predictions based on our present knowledge fail that probability theory leads us to fundamental new knowledge.”
― E.T. Jaynes

“...it would not be quite right to say that the problem is unsolvable in principle; only so complicated that it is not worth anybody’s time to think about it. So what do we do?
In probability theory there is a very clever trick for handling a problem that becomes too difficult. We just solve it anyway by:

(1)  making it still harder;
(2)  redefining what we mean by ‘solving’ it, so that it becomes something we can do;
(3)  inventing a dignified and technical-sounding word to describe this procedure, which has the psychological effect of concealing the real nature of what we have done, and making it appear respectable.”
― E. T. Jaynes

“something which is absurd or logically contradictory, but which appears at first glance to be the result of sound reasoning.”
― E.T. Jaynes, Probability Theory: The Logic of Science

“passage to a limit should always be the last operation, not the first.”
― E.T. Jaynes, Probability Theory: The Logic of Science