9 Quotes by Stuart Sutherland

The willingness to change one’s mind in the light of new evidence is a sign of rationality not weakness.

To establish that a rule is likely to be true, one must try to prove it false.

The effects of conformity on beliefs and attitudes are the more injurious because people tend to associate with others who have similar beliefs to themselves. ... the only way to substantiate a belief is to try to disprove it. But because like mixes with like, people are rarely exposed to counter-arguments to their more deeply held convictions, let alone to counter-evidence. Their beliefs conform to those of their associates: hence, there is little possibility of eliminating persistent errors.

...is impossible to specify what [consciousness] is, what it does, or why it evolved. Nothing worth reading has been written on it.

What constitutes a rational decision depends upon one's knowledge. There is a rider to this. If one has reason to believe one's knowledge is insufficient, then it is rational, particularly in the case of important decisions, to seek out more evidence: unfortunately, as we will see, when people do so, they usually act in a wholly irrational way, since they only seek evidence that will support their existing beliefs.

The term 'love' was defined in an authoritative dictionary of psychology as 'a form of mental illness not yet recognised in the standard diagnostic manuals'.

People have an amazing capacity to remember pictures. After being shown 10,000 photographs just once they can correctly recognize almost all of them a week later. This is in marked contrast to the very poor memory for isolated words.

Much psychology is like the Bible – it can provide support for almost any conceivable view.

Man has no need of divine inspiration, his reason is sufficient unto itself.