Thursday, January 14, 2021

Insatiable Desire

It seems obvious that our shoes should fit our feet. There is little point in wearing over sized shoes. The shoe should match the needs of the foot. Is it not also true that our other possessions should match our needs? We may be tempted to excess — to own more than we need, but there is little point. And in doing so, we may be depriving someone else of something they need. 

Think carefully about your needs. Beware the trap of insatiable desire and excess. Insatiable desire can never be satisfied and thus will never lead to contentment. 

- S

 

Wednesday, January 6, 2021

Conspiracy Theories

A recent philosopher by the name of Karl Popper observed that a single piece of evidence can falsify a scientific theory. I, myself, made a similar observation back in Athens while dialoguing with friends in our search for true definitions. I found that a single counter example could serve as a refutation to a general claim. For example, while discussing friendship with my friend Lysis, we proposed that friendship could be defined as “like being attracted to like”. But when I suggested that bad people can’t really be friends with anyone — including other bad people — our initial idea was refuted, thus requiring us to find a better definition of friendship. So, it would appear that a claim is only good until counter evidence is discovered. This is a rule that underpins much reasoning in science and philosophy.

Now, here is my confusion. I have been looking at collections of ideas that you moderns call “conspiracy theories”. These are interesting phenomena to me because they seem to violate what I have said above. When conspiracy theorists are presented with counter evidence, they do not reject their theory. Rather, they take the counter evidence as further support of their theory. They reframe the counter evidence as evidence of the sophistication of the theory — as if the conspiracy was so well orchestrated that it includes its own counter evidence as a mechanism for covering up the truth. In this way, it seems that no evidence could ever be presented to refute a conspiracy theory. They are immune to counter example.

What should I conclude from this? If nothing else, I believe that there is little point in dialoguing with conspiracy theorists about the truth or falsity of their claims. For the conspiracy theorist, their claims should only ever be considered true. So there is nothing to discuss with them.

-- Socrates