Confessions from the Edge

Edge.org, a super cool website, popped out to me via “Arts & Letters Daily” via “From Boston with Love”

I highly suggest going to the site and reading a couple of these responses to The Edge Annual Question for 2008:

When thinking changes your mind, that’s philosophy.
When God changes your mind, that’s faith.
When facts change your mind, that’s science.
What have you changed your mind about? Why?

I was fascinated by this extensive catalog of flip-flopping theories coming from people a lot smarter than myself. I have always thought that if you were smart enough, achieved enough, were published enough, etc. that you would enjoy some modicum of psychological peace, knowing you’ve done everything you could, considered all variables, bask in the sunlight of your own mental prowess, ripening to perfection, the goals you set – achieved - and you can simply rest.

Not the case, and these answers shed some light.

I tend to salivate at celebrity misgivings and this site was a candy shop of shifting mentalities on display. Their public declarations of wrong-ness, failure, and doubt make my private obsession seem bearable, even healthy and normal.

When a physicist speaks of the laws governing his science as “fuzzy and flexible” instead of “absolute and perfect” it makes me feel like I am right to follow my hunch and assert that things don’t follow a one size fits all path. For example, for the longest time I believed crap outlined in self-help tomes, condensed to shorthand here: “If you just believe in yourself you can achieve all your dreams.” A nice rosy picture, but far from reality, and detrimental to healthy pursuit of goals in my opinion.

When a Harvard philosopher says that she has come to regard the theory of falsifiability as “a blunt instrument, unthinkingly applied” I think of arguments I have had with philosophy types who corner me with logic, leading me to feel dumb and wrong. Instead I can cheerily recognize that anything can be disproven with enough reason, even the fact of our existence. So, I don't need to feel so bad when someone proves to me contradicitions in my belief systems. Big f-ing deal.

I’m no philosopher, but I’ll take a stab: I think, I doubt, therefore I am fuzzy and flexible. Yawn, stretch, sigh…smile.