[Walter Watts]
Doubt everything you know until you've verified it at least twelve times. Then still be ready to change your position on it if new facts come in.
[Walpurgis]
That would take a long time.
http://www.maxmore.com/pcr.htm
"The new framework permits a rationalist to be characterized as one who is willing to entertain any position and holds all his positions, including his most fundamental standards, goals, and decisions, and his basic philosophical position itself, open to criticism; one who protects nothing from criticism by justifying it irrationally; one who never cuts off an argument by resorting to faith or irrational commitment to justify some belief that has been under severe critical fire; one who is committed, attached, addicted, to no position."
[Rafael Anschau]
It's Karl Popper's epistemology. The end result is that you will gain confidence because you know you're actions are grounded on Science. It's worth the time and effort.
[rhinoceros]
Caveat: Knowledge that you haven't integrated into a belief system, no matter if scientific or not, is just trivia stuff. Don't give up what you know so easily. Keep the knowledge that matters to you organized in a belief system as long as it is fertile and keeps you going. Try to master your scientific tools, but beware of overspecialized arguments because even engineers are a kind of lawyers today.
Eventually, your belief system may become ugly and full of patches and you may have to replace it with another one, but not without putting up a fight. The danger of not having a belief system at all is that you may be pushed around by crafty memetics or crackpots who have become respectable researchers by making money. The need to rely on peer review is the weak link of science today. Science is a creative process and it is not neutral.
---- This message was posted by rhinoceros to the Virus 2002 board on Church of Virus BBS. <http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=51;action=display;threadid=25692>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sun Sep 22 2002 - 05:06:15 MDT