Udhay Shankar N via Silklist wrote on 4/29/24 4:47 AM:
Here's a question I've been pondering, and I thought silk might enjoy
pondering it too.
What is a deeply held belief of yours that you think you would change
if presented with data that contradicts the belief?
You mean, like that recursive solutions are always less efficient than
iterative ones? That fell about 10 years ago, followed shortly by the
idea that doubly-linked rings are a Bad Idea.
Those deeply held beliefs were subject to falsification, unlike, for
example, the belief or disbelief in gods, which probably isn't.
(I personally believe that belief or disbelief in gods is a category
error. Gods are abstract, metaphoric entities that no more require
belief to be interesting than poetry does. This is probably not
falsifiable, either).
The last time all four of my children were gathered around a table, we
had a long discussion about P = NP. We all tend to believe that P != NP,
but were sharply divided by whether this ever could or would be proven.
To my utter startlement, the physicist and the geneticist argued against
any of us living long enough to see this proved, while the two people
with math degrees believed it might be.
The physicist thought it was unprovable, full stop, while the geneticist
thought that proof was either impossible or so difficult that it might
take hundreds of years. The physicist thought we, in our hubris, tend to
ignore the fact that there exist many propositions that are unprovable.
So many of my deeply held personal beliefs have either been dethroned or
at least challenged by life that I hesitate the think that any of them
are actually right in an objective way.
This has special resonance in the times we're in, where a default
response to data one (where "one" refers to most people in
public-facing positions) doesn't like is to attack the messenger.
Thoughts?
There are certainly plenty of accounts of people shooting the messenger
when they didn't like a challenge to their precious beliefs.
Changing beliefs is not so rare, but it takes time. There's still plenty
of racism in the US, but we've definitely come a long way in my
lifetime. I was astonished at how quickly most Americans came around
about gay marriage. Despite strong disinformation campaigns, most people
accept that smoking causes all kinds of disease and that burning fossil
fuels has led to climate change.
But them I attended a high school with the words "You will know the
truth, and the truth will set you free" engraved in 1-foot tall letters
on the science building.
Perhaps that belief still holds more sway with me than "A lie can get
around the world before the truth can get its boots on."
One of the hard social nuts to crack is that a lot of people benefit
from lies. The lies serve them, and the truth would deprive them of the
upper hand they need to exploit other people.
Years ago, I put this "some people want to be free and other people want
to be free to own slaves." A friend of mine recently corrected me: "some
people want to be free and other people want power and call it freedom."
--
Heather Madrone ([email protected])
Blog: http://www.knitfitter.com/category/personal/
http://sheltershock.thecomicseries.com
The Goddess moves mountains -- bring a shovel.
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