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PRETTY_TRUE

                                                    June 6, 2004

    "Pretty true"?

    I have no idea
    what was supposed      Did I just think it
    to go here.            was a good title?         (A pretty one?)


We might work over the infamous
Yeats quotation, from
"Ode on a Grecian Urn":

      When old age shall this generation waste,
      Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
      Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
      "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all
      Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

   It's difficult to take
   an equation between
   Truth and Beauty                  STRANGE_EQUATIONS
   seriously, without
   using unusual (radical?)
   definitions.

   DEFINITION_GAME              Can you do
                                anything
                                with it?


We know about
ugly truth.
                                     GENTLER
Certainly, there are truths
that people want to ignore.

                   It's a common technique of
                   persuasive rhetoric to point
                   out that you are making a case
                   for something ugly.                  UTOPIA

                   That makes
                   it more
                   believable.    You get points for
                                  pragmatic realism.


                                                       (Nov 28, 2001)
It's a common syndrome to presume that
bad news is more plausible than good
news ("too good to be true"),            Perhaps not a bad
                                         rule of thumb:
   You shouldn't fall into               probability/         ENTROPY
   the trap of assuming that             thermodynamics
   the negative and the real    
   are synonymous.              
   
            Some times things that
            "seem too good to be                    GENTLER
            true" really are true.
                                               SCREWTAPE
                               
   Theoretical physicists      
   like to talk about          
   "elegant" theories, and     
   their perception that           This causes a lot
   for them beauty and             of confusion.
   truth are equivalent.       
                                                OBJECT
   ELEGANCE
   

                                   While philosophers have tried
                                   very hard to put things like
                                   Truth on a solid footing,
                                   they have run into tangles.

                           Objective Truth can
                           start looking like a
                           delusion of the naive.

                                               A "view from nowhere".
                  However, if you take that     
                  seriously, you can totally    
                  go off the rails...           
                                                
   E.g. with the extreme postmodern            
   claim that it's all just words, and      
   no words deserve to be privileged        
   over any other; and all of Science is                      GARDNER
   just a collection of stories.            
                                            

Really, (practically?) you need to         
assume an ability to know something
about the external world.

   It may not be possible                      TRUTH  OBJECT  SOCIAL_REGISTER
   to know something that's
   absolutely true.

   But you can know something
   that's pretty true.

                                                                       
   As well as you can know                                                  
   what's truly pretty?                 A day without double-meanings       
                                        is like a day without labored       
                                        attempts at witticism.              
                                                                            
                                                                           
                                                                     
                                                                 
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