The myth of sources
The beginning of the universe.
The prime mover.
The source of truth.
The root cause.
The real reason.
We are obsessed with where things come from. It’s a insatiable curiosity.
“We’re the kind of species that needs a frontier for fundamental biological reasons.” — Carl Sagan
It’s a good thing, and a bad thing. It’s where science comes from. It’s where religion comes from. It’s where progress comes from: how does the brain work so we can do it too? It’s where wars come from: who got here first? Who is more right?
But the source is an illusion. There is no source of truth that we have any access to.
I asked some friends to complete this sentence:
“The most reliable source of consistently trustworthy information that informs my decision-making about what’s true or not true, real or not real, is: _____________.”
The consensus seemed to be that it’s necessary to not trust any one source as completely trustworthy, but to use a variety of sources, each with their own independent sources, to slowly approach certainty about what is true and what isn’t.
Sources need sources, and those sources need sources. And it’s sources all the way down. Which is another way of saying that there is no source.
And in most cases, we have very little visibility beyond the first layer of sources, and most of the time sources are all relying on the same source, but haven’t verified that source’s sources.
I’d say it’s all a bit of sourcery. 🥁
Yes, I wrote this whole post just to make that joke. Here, have some 🐢s.
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