From: Jeff Dee (jeff@illusionmachines.com)
Date: Tue Sep 24 1996 - 08:42:44 MDT
>From: Kathryn Aegis
>On Mon, 23 Sep 1996, Ira Brodsky writes:
>>Throw out "black and white facts," and you throw out concrete knowledge.
>Cling to black and white facts, and cripple your ability to move
>beyond the edifice of whatever discipline forms your base of
>knowledge.
>Cling to black and white facts, and find yourself stranded on a
>static bit of earth as the universe moves its processes around and past
>you.
>Cling to black and white facts, and watch your children take off into
>the worlds of knowledge that you now seek.
>Kathryn Aegis
Ira never promoted 'clinging to black and white facts'. Ira was
responding to an apparent attitude that 'everything we think we
know should be considered grey'. If all ideas are considered
equally grey, then it is impossible to learn anything. I think
the trouble is that some people only think in terms of a single
shade of grey, as if all ideas that contain an element of
uncertainty must be equally uncertain. But that's not so.
Certainty comes in all shades of grey from black to white.
There's nothing wrong with treating all ideas as 'grey' if we
recognize that they're not the *same* grey.
-Jeff Dee
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