Sunday 17 April 2011

Does a single honest person exist?

Diogenes of Sinope used to carry a lamp in the daytime, claiming to be looking for an honest man. He would still be looking today. The problem is not that people deliberately lie (that causes cognitive dissonance) but that people do not care whether what they believe is true or not.


How many people have thought through their beliefs? How many can trace their ideas to pure logic? How many people even try? Sure, philosophers specialize in narrow areas, but where is the general theory of everything? Maybe it is hard to find, but who is even looking for it? Who cares?


Take economics for example. Read any economics text book. You will find thousands of pages of anecdotes, and logic with gaps - i.e. major assumptions are not traced back to first principles. 


Nobody is even trying. Many economists make a lot of money and have high intelligence, but they don't spend their free time in fixing their intellectual house of cards, they spend their free time enjoying their wealth. Truth is much less important to them than the accumulation and enjoyment of money. The same can be said for every occupation on Earth.

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