Raw Meat is a quoteblog by Aaron Swartz.

In the immortal words of Dr. Johnson, “Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent: deliberation, which those who begin it by prudence, and continue it with subtlety, must, after long expence of thought, conclude by chance. To prefer one future mode of life to another, upon just reasons, requires faculties which it has not pleased our Creator to give us.”[^15]

[^15]: I might, however, “conclude by chance” and then invent the “just reasons,” for instance, by giving greater weight to the attributes on which the chosen option is clearly superior. This can have undesirable consequences. Suppose I have the choice between going to law school and going to frestry school. Being unable to make a reason-based choice, I go to law school more or less by chance and justify the decision retrospectively by giving more weight ot the income dimension of the two careers. With these newly induced preferences, I might go on to make other decisions that differ from those I would have made on the basis of my pre-choice preferences.