Still true after more than 40 years
The point is that (little-t) truth is a matter of definition relative to the grid one is using at the moment, and that (capital-T) Truth, metaphysical reality, is irrelevant to grids entirely. Pick a grid, and through it some chaos appears ordered and some appears disordered. Pick another grid, and the same chaos will appear differently ordered and disordered.
Fnord.
Kira
Richard B.
May 8th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
[...] you should heed are the ones that admit they’re jokes. I don’t know if Chris at Homo Sum had read my comments yesterday about being obsessed with truth when he quoted this: The point is [...]
May 25th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
Hmm, and you felt compelled to ask me about Things As They Really Are?
May 25th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
Sure. The idea that your “grid” qualifies what you see doesn’t necessarily mean that what you’re seeing is part of some absolute Truth, despite what Cam Benares says.
The point of the quote for me is that there are lots of different ways of looking at the world, and some of them are more useful for some purposes than others. That doesn’t mean that any one is “closer to true” than the others–just that it is more useful for some purpose.
Being able to shift paradigms to find the one that makes your problem easy to solve is a pretty good trick, is what I’m saying.