If you are listening to an…

If you are listening to an "authority" who is using overly complex terminology or jargon to promote their ideas, ask them: "What problem are you trying to solve?"

In science, indeed in all knowledge creation we start with a problem.

Once you understand their problem, you can ask how their solution is better than the alternatives.

This will weed out hucksters, and those who don't understand knowledge creation.


Our best explanation of knowledge creation follows these steps:

1. Identify a problem, i.e. conflicting explanations.
2. Conjecture better explanations.
3. Critique the explanations.
4. Go with the explanation that best survives the critiques.
5. Repeat

ALL of our knowledge consists of explanations that have beat out their competitors. They are never proved. Not even in math. They are simply the survivors.

Nothing is ever proved. There is no book, god, machine, or 12 step program we can consult that will give us a guaranteed true, error free answer.

But there are correct answers! You can get the correct answer, you just can't know you have it!

Understand this dichotomy and you are on your way to understanding science.