Dec 11

Save

▷ Listen

From a young age, we get impressed upon the idea that one should avoid being wrong at all costs.

When you fail a subject, you FAIL, ok? And that’s real bad.

A societal norm of this kind downplays the excellent offer of making mistakes.

It’s simple. Make no mistakes, make no progress.

The biggest mistake you actually make is when you supposedly stop making any. Dogma, as its called, the idea that you have an ultimately certain, unquestionable truth in possession, is a fallacy.

In reality, people learn from making and correcting mistakes. Those “corrected mistakes” are only just better mistakes which people learn from again via the same procedure.

Mistake —> Error correction —> Better mistake —> Error correction . . .

“Man errs as long as he strives.” — Johann Wolfgang Goethe

There’s no end point, no “final truth” to be uncovered, no certain knowledge, only better and better mistakes to be made.

Perhaps then, sometimes the person who gains the most is the one who loses the argument.

Maybe the greatest scientific discovery was that of our ignorance.

The Amazing Things & Ideas List

1. Observations are theory-impregnated

There is no such thing as pure observation. Theories, problems and prior knowledge build up to observations.

Without any of those, you don’t have a pure observation but only an empty mind.

This post well summarizes the epistemology of Karl Popper and explains how theories (or conjectures) come before observation, i.e. observations are theory-impregnated.

2. Andrew Kirby on the shortcut to writing good cold DMs

I once wrote a cold DM to Andrew Kirby (a YouTuber with over 600,000 subscribers) which took me like 30 seconds to write and the next day was featured on his newsletter and eventually got to do a podcast with him!

On our podcast episode together, Andrew explains the importance of and the shortcut to writing good cold DMs.

Watch him explain the most effective way to cold DM in 60 seconds.

3. The first civilian mission to the Moon is planned to take place in 2023.

And my favorite rocket science YouTuber, the Everyday Astronaut will be on SpaceX's Starship rocket that will take 8 other talented members of the human race to orbit the Moon.

Learn all about this astronomical mission for humankind here.

4. Introducing Critical Rationalism News

This week, we announced Critical Rationalism News, a monthly newsletter with curated content about critical rationalism — our deepest theory of knowledge and how it grows.

Inspired by the now countless Twitter discussions around CR related topics, this newsletter will deliver news in the critical rationalist world, as well as interesting content about which CR has something to say.

It is curated by Logan Chipkin, Aaron Stupple, Moritz Wallawitsch and me.

First edition is out now. Subscribe to receive posts by email and please do share about it to spread the rational memes!