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PRETTY_TRUE

 
                                                    June 6, 2004 
 
    "Pretty true"? 
 
    I have no idea what was 
    supposed to go here. 
 
    Did I just like the 
    title? 
 
 
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 
   "Truth == Beauty" 
   seriously, without                STRANGE_EQUATIONS 
   using unusual (radical?) 
   definitions. 
 
   DEFINITION_GAME              Can you do 
                                anything 
                                with it? 
 
 
We know about 
ugly truth. 
 
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            UTOPIA    
                   something ugly. 
 
                   That makes it more 
                   believable. 
 
 
This should not obviate the 
possibility of pretty truth:                GENTLER 
some times things that "seem 
too good to be true" really                SCREWTAPE 
are true. 
 
 
   Theoretical physicists 
   like to talk about 
   "elegant" theories, 
   and their perception 
   that for them beauty            This causes a lot 
   and truth are                   of confusion. 
   equivalent. 
                                                OBJECT 
 
 
 
                                   While philosophers have tried 
                                   very hard to put things like 
                                   Truth on a solid footing, 
                                   they 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 
   take that it's all just words, 
   and no words deserve to be 
   privileged over any other; and           Quoth I:          GARDNER 
   all of Science is just a 
   collection of stories.                   And the idea of objective 
                                            truth strikes me as fairly 
Really, (practically?) you need to          close to being objectively 
assume an ability to know something         true. 
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                A day without 
   what's truly pretty?                   double-meanings 
                                          is like a day 
                                          without labored 
                                          attempts at 
                                          witticism.     
                   

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