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favorite quotes or quotes you created yourself

Hellhound_dow said:
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((())). There's an old polish proverb about that.

"May I receive calmly everything that the Lord sends, understanding that it is His Will." - The Church and Her peoples.
 
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"Can you prove the truth of those who have reached paradise?"
- The Fifth Koan, Blue Archive

"If you believe your bikini bottoms are panties, then they're panties".
- Sensei, also Blue Archive
 
"I am an arrow. I have one singular purpose on this earth and can return to neither the bow nor the quiver once I take flight. And should I miss, all of my life up until now will have been nothing but a pointless waste. Don't miss."
 
"Some people seem to think reading is something you do with your mouth."

-Me, after my boss apparently misread a message from me for the third time.

Not responding this time, as trying to explain the last two just made him fly into a rage over what he thought he read in the first place.
 
"The subtle breeze of conformity slowly extinguishes independent thought."
"Small minds condemn anything they fail to comprehend."
"A large conforming mass can no more easily produce one original thought than five thousand fornicating sheep produce one wolf."

Social commentary excerpts from the book 'Bullets' by Thorin, formerly of Wicked Jester T Shirts.
 
"Let the world change you, and you change the world." Che Guevara.

"Beautiful in the midst of his misery, capable of loving in the face of afflictions and trials, man finds his greatness, his fullest measure, only in the kingdom of this world," Alejo Carpentier.
 
"Don't Be A Bastard."

Fairly decent words to live by. Samaritanism or martyrdom neither called for nor expected, but if aiding someone is within casual and painless reach, DBAB.
 
Reminds me of when Google used to have as their motto, "Don't be evil", but then they had to get rid of that motto because it was getting in the way of profits.

There's the rider, and then there's the elephant. The rider likes to think he's telling the elephant where to go, but all he's really doing is rationalizing what the elephant was going to do anyway. I'm paraphrasing Jonathan Haidt here.
 
"Every family has it's problems but love always overcomes." Chinese Proverb.
 
"As enunciated today, "progress" is simply a comparative of which we have not settled the superlative." - G.K. Chesterton

(in short, progress towards what?)

Following a recent conversation in another thread here about what is good, I stumbled onto a youtube video which drew some relevant quotes from Chesterton's book, "Heretics", written in 1905:

Every one of the popular modern phrases and ideals is a dodge in order to shirk the problem of what is good. We are fond of talking about "liberty"; that, as we talk of it, is a dodge to avoid discussing what is good. We are fond of talking about "progress"; that is a dodge to avoid discussing what is good. We are fond of talking about "education"; that is a dodge to avoid discussing what is good. The modern man says, "Let us leave all these arbitrary standards and embrace liberty." This is, logically rendered, "Let us not decide what is good, but let it be considered good not to decide it." He says, "Away with your old moral formulae; I am for progress." This, logically stated, means, "Let us not settle what is good; but let us settle whether we are getting more of it." He says, "Neither in religion nor morality, my friend, lie the hopes of the race, but in education." This, clearly expressed, means, "We cannot decide what is good, but let us give it to our children."
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He is not going to ask what will produce satisfactory saints or satisfactory heroes, but what will produce satisfactory fathers and mothers. The whole is set forward so sensibly that it is a few moments at least before the reader realises that it is another example of unconscious shirking. What is the good of begetting a man until we have settled what is the good of being a man? You are merely handing on to him a problem you dare not settle yourself. It is as if a man were asked, "What is the use of a hammer?" and answered, "To make hammers"; and when asked, "And of those hammers, what is the use?" answered, "To make hammers again." Just as such a man would be perpetually putting off the question of the ultimate use of carpentry, so Mr. Wells and all the rest of us are by these phrases successfully putting off the question of the ultimate value of the human life.
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humon said:
(in short, progress towards what?)
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The Goal, I would assume. The big question is "what's the Goal". And unfortunately, no real amount of questioning will let you answer that properly. You could say "Good is the Goal", but that's just replacing one word with another, which leads you no closer to the answer. From the perspective of evolution, it'd be the continuation of the human race, but well... That's basically the "hammer" line of questioning, but with humans instead of hammers.
Paradoxically, the idea of instrumental convergent goals can logically tell you that there are things you can do which near universally allow you to come closer to your Goal (generally by increasing freedom of action), but logic cannot tell you your Goal itself. It's part of what makes wireheading such a potential problem in AI, the Goal given to the AI being implemented in such a way that the directive we thought we gave it is actually different than what we actually handed it, simply because we're subconsciously making the assumption that the AI has the same instinct in regards to what makes sense as we do.
 
Or as the kid would say when blowing out the candles on his birthday cake, "I wish for infinity wishes" (intelligence always tries to maximize future options)

"No wishing for more wishes" - Aladdin's genie (as voiced by Robin Williams, loved his performance in that role)

Well then what did Aladdin wish for?
"I'd like to get out of this cave, for starters" - ⭐ Freebie! (no more freebies)
"I wish to be Prince Ali (fabulous he)" - blew up in his face
"I wish to not get murdered by the mafia via cement shoes" - sensible
"I wish to set the genie free" - meta!

They still didn't figure out what is good, but that's okay, because it's an asymptote. The more we fumble around in that direction, the closer we get.

Conan's answer:
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