3 ms·
Epistemology is an interesting area of philosophy. It asks "How do I know whether something is true or not?" It interests me because while there's consensus on
by man-and-laptop 8y ago
Epistemology is an interesting area of philosophy. It asks "How do I know whether something is true or not?"
It interests me because while there's consensus on what's true in the hard sciences, there isn't any outside of it. People have passionate and utterly divergent opinions on politics, which they don't have about mathematics or physics. There has to be a way to live in a world where people disagree massively about politics, or idealistically, where we can resolve the disagreements. I find this more interesting than most specific issues in politics.
I recommend Less Wrong or Nassim Taleb.
- skybrian 8y agoBefore even getting into politics, we need to agree about what's going on in the world. I would consider it a great improvement if political discussions could move beyond naive realism: assuming we understand what's happening just because of what we read in the news. (Or worse, on Twitter.) Journalism is only the "first draft of history" and often gets it wrong. We should therefore be more uncertain about most things we read, particularly breaking news.