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We can’t enjoy kissing just anyone, but we can relish being right about almost anything.
As absurd as it sounds when we stop to think about it, our steady state seems to be one of unconsciously assuming that we are very close to omniscient.
our very existence depends on our ability to reach accurate conclusions about the world around us. In short, the experience of being right is imperative for our survival, gratifying for
our ego, and, overall, one of life’s cheapest and keenest satisfactions.
Far from being a moral flaw, it is inextricable from some of our most humane and honorable qualities: empathy, optimism, imagination, conviction, and courage.
Pessimistic Meta-Induction from the History of Everything.
branch concerned with the study of knowledge became known as epistemology.
whether “right” and “wrong” reflect the real state of the world or are simply subjective human designations.
Rather than thinking of being wrong as believing something is true when it is objectively false, we could define it as the experience of rejecting as false a belief we ourselves once thought was true—regardless of that belief’s actual relationship to reality, or whether such a relationship can ever be determined.
