“Rationality is the master lifehack which distinguishes which other lifehacks to use.”

— Eliezer Yudkowsky

Epistle to the New York Less Wrongians (April 2011) http://lesswrong.com/lw/5c0/epistle_to_the_new_york_less_wrongians/

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Rationality is the master lifehack which distinguishes which other lifehacks to use." by Eliezer Yudkowsky?

Eliezer Yudkowsky 56

American blogger, writer, and artificial intelligence resea… 1979

Related quotes

“Religion, which should most distinguish us from the beasts, and ought most particularly elevate us, as rational creatures, above brutes, is that wherein men often appear most irrational, and more senseless than beasts.”

John Locke book An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Book IV, Ch. 18
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689)

“The subject must distinguish itself through opposition from the rational being, which it has assumed outside of itself. The subject has posited itself as one, which contains in itself the last ground of something that is in it, (for this is the condition of Egohood, or of Rationality generally;) but it has also posited a being outside of itself, as the last ground of this something in it. It is to have the power of distinguishing itself from this other being; and this is, under our presupposition, possible only, if the subject can distinguish in that given something how far the ground of this something lies in itself and how far it lies outside of itself.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher

Source: The Science of Rights 1796, P. 63

“We are not masters of the truth which is borne in upon us: it overpowers us.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 273

“God, give us grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed, courage
to change the things which should be changed,
and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.”

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) American protestant theologian

Niebuhr's preferred form, as declared by his widow
The Serenity Prayer (c. 1942)
Variant: God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.