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> Almost everything we think (including me) is probably trash. We just need to accept we are mostly idiotic. I do not like this attitude. Everything is false,

by ordu 6y ago

> Almost everything we think (including me) is probably trash. We just need to accept we are mostly idiotic. I do not like this attitude. Everything is false, because the truth exists only in ideal condition of math. But it doesn't mean that we are all idiotic and know nothing worthy knowing. The trick is to understand the relation between knowledge and the reality, to feel this relation in your guts. It helps to know a lot of falsehoods, and to be smart, even wise and knowledgeable. > We are all mainly dumb at most things. I could agree with this, because to really know something one needs to spent all his life researching the topic. And even the life full of the dedicated research might be not enough. But as I see, to be dumb is not so about having no knowledge, as about having no idea of limits of one's knowledge.

nemo44x 6y ago
No - truth doesn’t only exist in an ideal condition of math. I mean, yes maybe literally in some ways, maybe. But not really. Math doesn’t prove the sky is blue on a sunny day. My main point is that of falsifiability. You don’t need math to make a falsifiable argument. However, much of our discourse can’t even meet this basic qualification.
- ordu 6y ago
  > Math doesn’t prove the sky is blue on a sunny day. Yeah, it doesn't. So it is not a truth, but a belief. It is pretty strong belief, so strong that it almost indistinguishable from the truth. But nevertheless it is just a belief. > My main point is that of falsifiability. You don’t need math to make a falsifiable argument. However, much of our discourse can’t even meet this basic qualification. Even falsifiability is a too rigid property for some discourses. My main point is that attempts to find a silver bullet to shoot "bad beliefs" are no-go. Knowledge couldn't be bad or good, true or false. It is the way knowledge applied could be good or bad. For example, even "the sky is blue on a sunny day" could be misapplied. Take the sky of a Moon or a Mars for example, which are not blue in a sunny day. Or let us imagine atmosphere of Earth with a lot of dust after collision of Earth and an asteroid: on such Earth sky could be orange, or gray or of some other color. I mean that even "true" statements have limits of their truthiness. As an opposite example, a "false" statement could be applied in a "good" way. Earth is flat? Oh, yes, it is convenient to think so when dealing with a relatively small area of the Earth surface. Or when communicating with people, who believe that Earth is flat. You need only to remember the limits of this belief, to not misapply it accidentally. In math the situation a little different. Math statements also could go wrong when assumptions change (the sum of angles of a triangle could be not equal to PI, if triangle drawn not on a plane but on some other surface), but mathematicians make sure to strictly state all the assumptions as axioms and definitions. It is possible in ideal conditions, but not possible in real ones.

by ordu 6y ago

nemo44x 6y ago

No - truth doesn’t only exist in an ideal condition of math. I mean, yes maybe literally in some ways, maybe. But not really. Math doesn’t prove the sky is blue on a sunny day. My main point is that of falsifiability. You don’t need math to make a falsifiable argument. However, much of our discourse can’t even meet this basic qualification.

ordu 6y ago
> Math doesn’t prove the sky is blue on a sunny day. Yeah, it doesn't. So it is not a truth, but a belief. It is pretty strong belief, so strong that it almost indistinguishable from the truth. But nevertheless it is just a belief. > My main point is that of falsifiability. You don’t need math to make a falsifiable argument. However, much of our discourse can’t even meet this basic qualification. Even falsifiability is a too rigid property for some discourses. My main point is that attempts to find a silver bullet to shoot "bad beliefs" are no-go. Knowledge couldn't be bad or good, true or false. It is the way knowledge applied could be good or bad. For example, even "the sky is blue on a sunny day" could be misapplied. Take the sky of a Moon or a Mars for example, which are not blue in a sunny day. Or let us imagine atmosphere of Earth with a lot of dust after collision of Earth and an asteroid: on such Earth sky could be orange, or gray or of some other color. I mean that even "true" statements have limits of their truthiness. As an opposite example, a "false" statement could be applied in a "good" way. Earth is flat? Oh, yes, it is convenient to think so when dealing with a relatively small area of the Earth surface. Or when communicating with people, who believe that Earth is flat. You need only to remember the limits of this belief, to not misapply it accidentally. In math the situation a little different. Math statements also could go wrong when assumptions change (the sum of angles of a triangle could be not equal to PI, if triangle drawn not on a plane but on some other surface), but mathematicians make sure to strictly state all the assumptions as axioms and definitions. It is possible in ideal conditions, but not possible in real ones.