Bertrand Russell, philopher,mathematician, Nobel Laureate-smart man

[BrklynLiberal]

"The whole problem with the world is the fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts"

[RandomThoughts]

1. Great concept.

If that is true, then simply 'knowing' would be a factor in achieving.

yet things I know will occur have not happened, I have absolutely no explanation why they have not.




Ahh I know how that works, the more sure you are that something should be done, the more energy and passion you put into things. Making the person fanatic.

[DCBob]

2. yes, a very wise statement and so so true.

is it Bertrand or Beetrand?

[BrklynLiberal]

4. typo corrected. thanks.

:thumbsup: :hi:

[Smarmie Doofus]

3. "Believers are happy. Doubters are wise."

Russell didn't say it but..........

[secondwind]

5. My ex has a signed letter from Russell hanging in his office. He did some legal work for

him back in the 60's.

[Greyhound]

6. One of the greatest. Lived to 98 IIRC.

"One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny."

"If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years."

"The megalomaniac differs from the narcissist by the fact that he wishes to be powerful rather than charming, and seeks to be feared rather than loved. To this type belong many lunatics and most of the great men of history."

"Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance."

And I just have to ask, did you re-word the quote for PC or what?

The quote is "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt."

ETA; Special DU Russell quote, "Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd."

[Kolesar]

7. "great men of history" quote -- LOL

[DavidDvorkin]

9. The short version sounds much more like Russell than the one in the OP

He worked at making his prose succinct and lucid. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature, interestingly.

[BrklynLiberal]

12. LOVE this one!!!

"The megalomaniac differs from the narcissist by the fact that he wishes to be powerful rather than charming, and seeks to be feared rather than loved. To this type belong many lunatics and most of the great men of history."

I did not clean up the quote..Guess the source at which I found it did the PCing...I do like the original better.

[Greyhound]

17. Thanks for posting this.

I haven't felt compelled to post here for quite some time. Russell and Shaw are among the few with anything of worth to say, and fewer and fewer of those they speak to are interested in hearing their lessons any longer.

:thumbsup:

[BrklynLiberal]

18. ...

:toast: :hi:

[Bonhomme Richard]

8. Another

Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.
Bertrand Russell

[Fumesucker]

10. I like this one..

"Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate." -Bertrand Russell

[unblock]

11. self-confidence is ANTI-correlated with expertise

self-confidence is correlated with a modest degree of familiarity -- you aren't likely to be confident in an interview for a programming position if you don't know how to program at all. in order to project confidence, you need SOME familiarity with the subject matter.

but the positive correlation ends there and reverses itself after a while. once become a REAL expert at programming, or anything else, it's very hard to project great confidence because you are so much more aware of all the nuances, subtleties, trade-offs, alternative programming languages, libraries, techniques, business requirements, etc.

so when you ask a merely good programmer a question, they immediately and confidently respond with an answer that's probably largely correct. ask the expert the same question and they will immediately think of all the various possibilities and wonder which answer to give, how much detail to provide, whether to list out all the exceptions, and so on. that pause for thought followed by all those qualifiers generally comes across as less confidence and is often mistaken for less experience or less expertise.

and it IS less self-confidence as well, because the expert knows that there might be a better solution out there. the merely good programmer is usually oblivious to this, or at least doesn't appreciate how much that alternative might help.

[BrklynLiberal]

13. Sounds like ignorance is more than merely bliss...

[phasma ex machina]

16. Explaining a technical subject seems similar to telling history.

People phoning me for help with their computers typically seek a simple explanation. Preferably one pithy sentence. They grudgingly accept two sentences, but anything beyond a paragraph starts causing trouble. The preferred solution involves one or two mouse clicks at most.

Some ask me if I went to college to learn how to work on computers. As if any one soul can truly master all of the billions of lines of code associated with Winders, OSX, Linux, BSD, OS2, OS390, OS400, IOS, PS, PCL, ...

Impossible.

The whole enterprise of providing technical help reminds me of history. Take our current War on Terror for example. To fully perceive its history one needs to go back and see through the eyes of Bush, then go back and see through the eyes of bin Laden, then go back and see through the eyes of Blair, ...

But, that's no good because to truly understand the bias affecting Blair's historic actions one must actually go back and relive Blair's life. One actually needs to go back and relive the lives of billions of people for a truly unabridged history.

Impossible.

So instead historians try to distill history down to one pithy sentence. Perhaps two, but anything beyond a paragraph causes trouble.

(Obvious exaggerations to make my point.)

[qb]

14. He is one of my favorite philosophers. I have re-read "Nightmares of Eminent Persons" several times

http://www.archive.org/stream/nightmaresofemin032011mbp/nightmaresofemin032011mbp_djvu.txt

He also wrote some very readable stuff about philosophy and religion.

[Steely_Dan]

15. A Great Man

I studied Russell and Whitehead in school.

Didn't Russell get arrested a few times as an anti-war protester?

-P

[BrklynLiberal]

19. Yes, he did. He was a very well-known anti-war activist.

http://www.russfound.org

The Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation was launched in 1963 after twelve months of preparation. It was established in order to carry forward Russell's work for peace, human rights and social justice. This had been assisted by a small secretariat in earlier years, but its rapid growth and increasing cost made the burden larger than could be carried by one person, however distinguished. Preoccupied with the danger of nuclear war, Russell had always been deeply concerned with the defence of civil rights, and the institutionalisation of his work made it possible to create a number of desks which could specialise on different areas or particular problems.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

20. “Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.” Bertrand Russell

[marmar]

21. Yep, Bertrand Russell has uttered some of my favorite quotes.

nt