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“Lies propagate, that's what I'm saying. You've got to tell more lies to cover them up, lie about every fact that's connected to the first lie. And if you kept on lying, and you kept on trying to cover it up, sooner or later you'd even have to start lying about the general laws of thought. Like, someone is selling you some kind of alternative medicine that doesn't work, and any double-blind experimental study will confirm that it doesn't work. So if someone wants to go on defending the lie, they've got to get you to disbelieve in the experimental method. Like, the experimental method is just for merely scientific kinds of medicine, not amazing alternative medicine like theirs. Or a good and virtuous person should believe as strongly as they can, no matter what the evidence says. Or truth doesn't exist and there's no such thing as objective reality. A lot of common wisdom like that isn't just mistaken, it's anti-epistemology, it's systematically wrong. Every rule of rationality that tells you how to find the truth, there's someone out there who needs you to believe the opposite. If you once tell a lie, the truth is ever after your enemy; and there's a lot of people out there telling lies.”
― Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
― Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
“There is no justice in the laws of nature, no term for fairness in the equations of motion. The Universe is neither evil, nor good, it simply does not care. The stars don't care, or the Sun, or the sky.
But they don't have to! WE care! There IS light in the world, and it is US!”
― Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
But they don't have to! WE care! There IS light in the world, and it is US!”
― Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
“I don't want to rule the universe. I just think it could be more sensibly organised.”
― Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
― Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
“Only by exhibiting actions in harmony with the sound words which he has received will anyone be helped by philosophy.”
― Musonius Rufus: Lectures and Sayings
― Musonius Rufus: Lectures and Sayings
“All is ephemeral, Oliver, all of it. And it's your job now to make it last forever.”
― The Flute Player
― The Flute Player
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