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> This doesn't mean that there's no such thing as truth, or that we can't generate knowledge Oh I agree we can generate knowledge, but it is never the Truth, i
by visarga 1y ago
> This doesn't mean that there's no such thing as truth, or that we can't generate knowledge
Oh I agree we can generate knowledge, but it is never the Truth, it can't be. Any knowledge is composed from imperfect abstractions, the edge cases of which we don't know.
We are taking patterns from our experience, and coining them as abstractions, but ultimately we all have our own lived experience, a limited experience. We can only know approximatively. Some people know quantum physics, others know brain surgery, so the quality of our abstractions varies based on individual and topic. We are like the 5 blind men and the elephant.
- tshaddox 1y agoA piece of knowledge is a claim about some property of reality, which is another way to say that it's a claim about what is true. Thus knowledge can contain truth and can also contain errors, and importantly it's impossible to guarantee that knowledge does not contain errors.
- rfrey 1y ago> Any knowledge is composed from imperfect abstractions, the edge cases of which we don't know. That is a pretty concrete epistemological statement. Is it true? That's not just a game, or a "gotcha". Any discussion about "truth" eventually ends up with the question of what it means to know something, a subject about which you seem to be fairly confident.