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Well... If you also come around to the view that most nonfiction is fiction too... you might find yourself in a pretty nihilistic place. Those depictions of bu
by dalbasal 5y ago
Well... If you also come around to the view that most nonfiction is fiction too... you might find yourself in a pretty nihilistic place.
Those depictions of butterflies are intended to be nonfiction.. naturalism. A precise and true representation of butterflies, an artistic culture that people like Darwin were steeped in.
- pixl97 5y agoI was going to reply something similar. We dont have access to much thermodynamic truth and the vast majority of our experience is fictionalised in one way or another when it is later described.
- eru 5y agoThat's a good reason why archaeologists are so keen on digging in garbage. Garbage doesn't lie as much as the written word. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midden
- dalbasal 5y agoThe garbage itself may not lie, but the process of turning garbage into history is still storytelling. It's very hard to escape. Most anything meaningful, to us, is a story. A fully empirical/popperian approach to knowledge isn't workable. Or rather, it's extremely sparse. You have to accept that you know almost nothing.
- eru 5y agoWell, I guess the full empirical approach would involve a lot of betting and prediction markets? If you watch or read any business news, people always readily invent just-so stories about why the stock market moved this way or that. So that's the effect you are describing in full effect. But making many (hopefully successful) predictions in a row is a good yardstick to keep yourself honest buy. See also Slatestarcodex's annual predictions and scoring. Or Bryan Caplan's string of bets. (Btw, as long as you are not trying to outguess the markets, it's almost too easy to make mostly successful predictions: just predict whatever the market predicts.)