Wrong Opinions Only
This is a slight rebranding of this blog.
All models are wrong, but some are useful.
All models are wrong, some are useful, and their usefulness scales with your understanding of how they are wrong. The same is not true of all opinions, granted, but of most of them. Most useful opinions can be successfully argued with. Why?
Well, if an opinion cannot be successfully argued with, it must either be a truism (boring, useless), or so tightly scoped that there is no room for argument. Those opinions are still useful – but probably only within the scope, and slightly beyond it. Usually the scope is “for me”, but it can also be anything else. provided you have legislative or genie-safe phrasing skills.
I don’t particularly enjoy arguments that I didn’t search out in the first place, and I find myself take steps to avoid them where I can. This sort of thing is poison to creative processes, because it adds a literal internal censor to all creative processes. So I’m hereby declaring all opinions in this blog wrong but useful. This is a neat hack to keep my creativity from crumbling under minor frivolities like reason and logic.
“If I write this, I’ll invite argument” is an annoying thought, but one I’ve learnt to work with. Sadly that doesn’t help: My inner censor has co-evolved to present lots of counter-arguments while I’m having and expressing an idea. To keep this strategy from putting me off my writing, I’ll put those counter-opinions into posts, too. Posts that refer to each other will have “related” references, even if the other post isn’t really a refutation.
I’m hoping for a good game of tag between “yes, and” and “no but”.