✳flâneur — a map of the web's best reading

Qualitatively Confused — LessWrong

lesswrong.com · 9,347 words · saved by 1 readers

I suggest that a primary cause of confusion about the distinction between "belief", "truth", and "reality" is qualitative thinking about beliefs. Consider the archetypal postmodernist attempt to be clever: "The Sun goes around the Earth" is true for Hunga Huntergatherer, but "The Earth goes around the Sun" is true for Amara Astronomer! Different societies have different truths! No, different societies have different beliefs. Belief is of a different type than truth; it's like comparing apples and probabilities. Ah, but there's no difference between the way you use the word 'belief' and the way you use the word 'truth'! Whether you say, "I believe 'snow is white'", or you say, "'Snow is white' is true", you're expressing exactly the same opinion. No, these sentences mean quite different things, which is how I can conceive of the possibility that my beliefs are false. Oh, you claim to conceive it, but you never believe it. As Wittgenstein said, "If there were a verb meaning 'to belie

x Qualitatively Confused — LessWrong Reductionism 101 Bayes' Theorem Bayesianism Calibration Personal Blog 75 Qualitatively Confused by Eliezer Yudkowsky 14th Mar 2008 4 min read 86 75 I suggest that a primary cause of confusion about the distinction between "belief", "truth", and "reality" is qualitative thinking about beliefs. Consider the archetypal postmodernist attempt to be clever: "The Sun goes around the Earth" is true for Hunga Huntergatherer, but "The Earth goes around the Sun" is true for Amara Astronomer! Different societies have different truths! No, different societies have diffe

Explore this link on the map →

related reading