Generalizations and truth.
48 upvotes | August 1, 2015 | by Whisper
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If you have a controversial or unpopular opinion, and you say or write
it, sooner or later, someone is going to accuse you of "generalizing",
as if this were somehow a refutation of what you have said.

It's pointless to argue with them. Debates are won, in the long term,
by action, not words. But it helps us to understand why people would
say such a thing.

Some people think generalizations are not "true", or, at least, not
"true" enough. And yet everything we ever say is a generalization,
whether it is that objects on earth fall at 9.8 m/s2 , or that women
are shorter than men, or that I weigh 210 pounds.

So what does it mean to be "true"? What does the word _truth_ mean? To
say "accuracy" or "representation" means nothing, these are just other
words for truth. The question to ask is why we _care_ about truth. Why
do we argue about what is true? Why do we seek to find it out? When we
ask this question, we would in danger of disappearing up our own
ass... except that there is a simple straightforward answer.

WE CARE ABOUT WHAT IS TRUE BECAUSE IT ENABLES US TO PREDICT WHAT WILL
HAPPEN. Knowing the law of gravity lets me predict the orbit of
planets, knowing someone's address lets us predict where we will find
them.

Simple enough, and so much for philosophy. THE WORD "TRUTH" MEANS
"PREDICTIVE POWER". This is how we test truth, and why we care about
it, so this is how we define it.

Whenever someone asks you if something is true, ask yourself what it
empowers you to predict, and what that empowers you to do. You do not
need to possess the absolute truth, the perfect model that would allow
you to predict _everything_, to say something is "true". It is enough
that something be true _enough_ to help you.

Are _ALL_ women like "that"?

Who can say? To perfectly describe all women would require more words
than can be printed on every flat surface in the universe, in
microscopic print. We're not here to perfectly describe women, or
ourselves, or humans in general. We're here to describe them _well
enough_ to get done what we need and want to get done.

Red Pill "truths" are not absolutely true, because nothing we have is.
They are _true enough to help us do what we need to_.

Related reading:

Asimov's Axiom [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wronger_than_wrong].
Wittgenstein's Ladder [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie-to-children].

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Archived from https://theredarchive.com/post/35174