Hacker News Reader

Comment by drcomputer | Hacker News Reader

Try to prove yourself wrong about believing it is better to be wrong all the time.

Insanity!

I agree with you for the most part. But there's a line. When it starts to destroy your personal identity and sense of self, you've crossed that line. Sometimes it's just better to be right and trust yourself.

Or not. That's zen, I think. Trying to have so much information about everything that you wind up overloading yourself with it and can't make heads or tails of it, because in every simple truth exists an infinite proof. Analysis paralysis!

View on HN

Despite superficially resembling some self-referential paradoxes, if the heuristic can stand up to itself, it's not a paradox. You try to prove it wrong, and you fail, so you keep it, which, lo, is exactly what I've done. (Or perhaps more precisely, while it is not a perfect fit and I could quibble with details myself, it is the best one-sentence summary of true science in my opinion, and I'm familiar with most of the usual ones, and aware that I've only seen this variant in one or two other places even so.) No paradox, no contradiction, no insanity.

Alas, if you're looking for an excuse to tie either yourself or me up in some sophomoric philosophical conundrum, this doesn't do it. But there's no lack of such things if you look, so don't be disappointed. Keep on trucking. May I suggest Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid if you would like the industrial strength version rope, err, braid to tie yourself in?

I understand where you are coming from, but I'm not trying to engage you in a 'sophomoric' debate. I came to the existential philosophical argument from mathematics and the computer sciences, not the other way around. I started my interest in computing science through automating proof (mathematical and computational). I doubt you care, but it's more about looking at the big picture of software development versus the little picture. You can't build anything if you keep testing the first thing for every bug, including everything it was built with, including all the mathematics used to reason about it.

But I'm sure there are two ways to respond to my comment: pretend you know what you are talking about, or admit you could be wrong and care to engage me in a real conversation. I've been down the same road hundreds of times on the internet, and it is hard to find people to talk to about things and meet in some kind of scientific, logical middle. But if that's not your thing, oesn't bother me if all you came here for was to prove yourself right about the noble ethics of your science. At least I'm no longer trapping my mind in a paradox of it's own creation. (Or am I? I never really know).

Logic is very different from science, that's all I have to say. Rigor is for precision, not discovery.

"I understand where you are coming from, but I'm not trying to engage you in a 'sophomoric' debate."

Considering the entire rest of your message consists of you essentially trying to lord over me whatever superiority you seem to think you have, and not missing an opportunity to slide a snide comment in, which I'd also observe is consistent with your original post, I've come to the conclusion that the rest of your post belies this claim. You're being abrasive and abusive while trying to pretend to be so much more open minded.

No sale. I recognize that tactic and refuse to engage with it. I'm sticking with my original assessment; you're being too sophomoric to engage with, and I reject your attempts to psychology me into engaging with you in the presupposed frame of your superiority.

Apologies, I would not interpret receiving my post back to me in the same way (I do not think, I usually read my posts back to myself and pretend I am talking to myself to try to understand how another person may take it, which I realize is fairly biased given my potentially unique perspective on reality). Human socialization is very difficult for me.

I don't like psychology.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com