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Cake day: April 20th, 2023

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  • Yes, but orders of magnitude less often than random members of the public “doing their own research”. And looking at the consensus of the experts rather than individual experts the error rate is further orders of magnitude below that. You need to let go of the idea that information being a good basis for decisions means that it’s “absolute truth”, because only religion has that; what we have is some sources of information that are less likely to be wrong than all the others, and that’s unfortunately the best you can get.


  • davitz@lemmy.catoMemes@lemmy.mlPlato
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    7 months ago

    To oversimplify, it’s a metaphor about what it’s like to go through life relying only on your senses and not using reason to question or analyze the deeper meanings behind your surface impressions. The story goes on to discuss a prisoner who escapes the cave and gets a taste of true reality, that prisoner is meant to represent a philosopher. When the escaped prisoner returns and tells the others of what he’s seen, they reject his claims saying how absurd it would be to believe that there’s anything more than just the shadows. I think in this day and age it’s easy to guess what that interaction represents, but Plato had a particular bone to pick about this since his mentor had essentially been executed for questioning various things.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_cave?wprov=sfla1