We all take pride in claiming that humans are the most intelligent creatures on planet earth. That’s ironic because the definition of intelligence is also created by us. In other words, we’re giving ourselves high ranking on a scale created by us.
But the irony doesn’t end there.
Inspite of wearing our intelligence as badge of honour, we all make errors which our “so-called intelligence” classify as dumb mistakes. That’s because no matter how hard we try, we can’t fight mother nature — the traits deeply ingrained in our behaviour by millions of years of evolution.
In the popular rationality blog Less Wrong, while explaining the thoughts behind the blog’s odd name, Ruby writes —
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A humble recognition that no human is ever going to attain perfectly true beliefs and be right about everything. We should always believe that some of our beliefs are mistaken, we just don’t know which ones.
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A bold recognition that notwithstanding the impossibility of being perfectly right, there is still the possibility of being less wrong. Everyone believes false things, but some believe a lot fewer wrong things than others.
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