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Truth-Seeking Modes

ribbonfarm.com · 220 words · saved by 4 readers

Been on a Venn diagram kick lately, since being primed to think in Venns by Harris campaign. This one summarizes an idea I’ve long been noodling on: The healthiest way to relate to a truth-seeking impulse is as an infinite game, where the goal is to continue playing, not arrive at a dispositive “winning” right answer. Trivial truths might have such win conditions, but no interesting truth can be “won.” It can only be healthily related to, because it will produce an inexhaustible supply of salient novelty. A “healthy relationship” to a suspected truth is, I think, a dynamic equilibrium at the intersection of the three forces illustrated above. And every unbalanced configuration is unhealthy. This is the second such dynamic equilibrium Venn I’ve made recently. Yesterday I had one in my newsletter about cozytech. There I characterized it as “individually delusional, collectively rational.” I think that’s true here as well. The ring of six 1/3 and 2/3 subsets is a buffet of delusion traps.

Been on a Venn diagram kick lately, since being primed to think in Venns by Harris campaign. This one summarizes an idea I’ve long been noodling on: The healthiest way to relate to a truth-seeking impulse is as an infinite game, where the goal is to continue playing, not arrive at a dispositive “winning” right answer. Trivial truths might have such win conditions, but no interesting truth can be “won.” It can only be healthily related to, because it will produce an inexhaustible supply of salient novelty. A “healthy relationship” to a suspected truth is, I think, a dynamic equilibrium at…

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