Of Taleb and Medicine and Experts and the Pope
The young specialist in English Lit, having quoted me, went on to lecture
me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they
understood the universe at last, and in every century they were proved
to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about our modern
"knowledge" is that it is wrong. The young man then quoted with approval
what Socrates had said on learning that the Delphic oracle had proclaimed
him the wisest man in Greece. "If I am the wisest man," said Socrates,
"it is because I alone know that I know nothing." the implication was that
I was very foolish because I was under the impression I knew a great deal.
My answer to him was, "John, when people thought the earth was flat,
they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were
wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as
wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both
of them put together."
The basic trouble, you see, is that people think that "right" and "wrong"
are absolute; that everything that isn't perfectly and completely right
is totally and equally wrong.
However, I don't think that's so. It seems to me that right and wrong
are fuzzy concepts, and I will devote this essay to an explanation of why
I think so.
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