An Adventure of Ideas

As with most philosophy books I have read, I spend half the time feeling like I am reading another language, but every now and then reading a few passages that grab me. If the balance between the two is too much on the side of greko-mandarin, I put the book down quickly.

Nassim Taleb mentioned Karl Popper a lot in 'The Black Swan' and 'Fooled by Randomness', and the stuff he said resonated... so I got the book based on the concept which most appealed to me.

That we should have bold ideas, and then attack those ideas vigorously trying to find the holes. That you should spend your efforts on interesting problems that can be disproved. Don't sit oohing and aahing at someone who promises they can bring rain, and dances until it eventually rains. Rather, spend time on ideas that could be disproved.

I find this idea both empowering and exciting if somewhat scary. It is safer to just accept dogma. It is more comfortable. I guess it depends whether your curiosity outweighs your comfort.

Here is one of my favourite sections so far.

Because, as you said, we are not passive receptors of sense data, but active organisms. Because we react to our environment not always merely instinctively, but sometimes consciously and freely. Because we can invent myths, stories, theories; because we have a thirst for explanation, an insatiable curiosity, a wish to know. Because we not only invent stories and theories, but try them put and see whether they work and how they work. Because by a great effort, by trying hard and making many mistakes, we may sometimes, if we are lucky, succeed in hitting upon a story, an explanation, which 'saves the phenomena'; perhaps by making up a myth about 'invisibles', such atoms or gravitational forces, which explain the visible. Because knowledge is an adventure of ideas.