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Bernardo de La Paz

(51,205 posts)
2. If you meet the buddha on the road, kill him
Mon Oct 30, 2023, 02:22 PM
Oct 2023

Fundamentally, if you wanna believe a factoid, try to explode it. If it survives attempts to find it false, then it is probably true or nearly true or mostly true or usually true.

What I see commonly in reich wing and magat cult posts is a search for confirmation. For example skating over or ignoring contradictory facts and details. Or cherry picking. Or completely misinterpreting statistics (most commonly taking a percentage of one thing and inappropriately applying it in calculations over different sets).

Disproof is the fundamental principle of science, since science admits its knowledge is and always will be incomplete and imperfect. Many people think science is all about proving things. Nope, that's mathematics. Science tries to disprove theories. What remains standing after multiple attempts is pretty good.

So it is similarly with our navigation of a bountiful infosphere that we imperfectly understand and apply against imperfect knowledge of history and any given current situation. We should subject anything we'd like to believe is true to a battery of tests to try to eliminate it for bad source, internal contradictions, use of propaganda techniques, cherry picking, contrafactual claims, distortion, slant, assumptions, ....

I am reminded of the famous koan: "If you meet the buddha while travelling on the road, kill him!" Being a koan it has multiple meanings and contexts and flexibilties, but one simple prominent one is the idea that if you think you have actually found the truth, put it to the test.

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