Friday, September 9, 2016

Orwell's Seemingly Radical Intellectual Honesty

I came across this Orwell quote today (HT: EPPC):

I hope the account I have given is not too misleading. I believe on such an issue as this no one is or can be completely truthful. It is difficult to be certain about anything except what you have seen with your own eyes, and consciously or unconsciously everyone writes as a partisan. In case I have not said this somewhere earlier in the book I will say it now: beware of my partisanship, my mistakes of fact and the distortion inevitably caused by my having seen only one corner of events. And beware of exactly the same thing when you read any other book on this period of the Spanish war.

This seems radical, and it should be everyone's mission to reach this sort of level of constructive self-doubt.

As radical as it seems, though, it doesn't go nearly far enough.  "It is difficult to be certain about anything except what you have seen with your own eyes" is clearly wishful thinking.  In economics and finance the most powerful lies are the ones confirmed by our own eyes.

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