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RobinZ comments on A Fable of Science and Politics - Less Wrong
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Comments (93)
Nice example of Bliks in action. Literature is powered by such dramas, where people's individual mindset shifts the spectrum of every photon right or left of the reader, or the other protagonists, and the tragedy is that too few rays of light fall true, through a clear eye.
Ferris I suppose has seceded, too advanced to bother with the various foolish repercussions she knows will ring through the world under her feet from this new data. That's fine, she's too far ahead to go back anyway. (</sardonic>)
I worry that we (denizens of this website) are too confident that OUR vision is so sure. I'm a noob of course and not sure that I feel myself at home but I suggest caution. All those fools who see blue or green... they're sure they're right, too. Hubris is the danger.
Not "the" - "a". Being too confident is liable to get you into quite a lot of trouble ... but so is being underconfident.
More important than garbing yourself in properly humble fabrics is actually paying attention when your beliefs are contradicted, and updating your beliefs accordingly. I can be confident that, say, the Ford Taurus was a rubbish car, and change my mind when I discover the first and second generation Tauruses were widely admired. My confidence therefore costs me little in this instance.
Other possibilities; reconcilement. Some modern Chinese look to Mao's "little red book" for leadership advice to run their business, for example. Or people arguing that the sky used to be green before the cataclysm and that some aspect since then changed things (which is where the blue legends might have come from.)
Also, it's worth remembering that ancient political texts (religious texts most certainly included) were often written without the freedom of speech that we enjoy today. By necessity, they were indirect. To interpret them literally, which some followers did (and which this fable might even imply should be done), of course, was a mistake. And those who were persuaded to change their mind because of their mistakenly literal interpretation might very well consider those who still valued the old stories to be obstinate fools, not those who believed in the value of some esoteric statement.
Or sometimes people make the opposite assertion, and take something which is supposed to be literal and make it metaphorical.
The Greek Gods were said to reside on mount Olympus, and as people started to climb to the top of that mountain the myths got moved to a mythical mountain somewhere else. (Or so I was once told.)
Awesome comment. Shame you seem to have so few other posts on Less Wrong