Platt,
This is a good example of how there is no Truth
but there is truth.
SA
Platt:
> Much of the debate on this site is not only about
> how to interpret the
> writings of Mr. Pirsig, but the trustworthiness of
> sources used to support
> a point of view. An example of the problem comes
> from today's NY Times in
> an article about the effect of art instruction on
> learning An excerpt:
>
> "Obama cites sober social-science research on the
> poor city neighborhoods
> he knows best. Studies in Chicago have
> demonstrated, his arts statement
> reads, that test scores improved faster for
> students enrolled in low-
> income schools that link arts across the curriculum
> than scores for
> students in schools lacking such programs.
>
> "Theres just one problem with this ostensibly
> hardheaded defense of arts
> education. The studies invoked as proof that
> involvement in band or dance
> or sculpture spurs higher academic performance
> actually show nothing of
> the sort. To the consternation of arts proponents
> wedded to this way of
> arguing, the instrumental logic has been challenged
> by a team of
> investigators affiliated with Harvards Project
> Zero, an education research
> group with a focus on the arts. An emphasis on the
> arts utility in the
> quest to reach math and reading benchmarks may seem
> politically smart, but
> the science it rests on turns out to be shaky."
>
>
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/magazine/27wwln-lede-t.html?ref=magazine
>
> I guess most of us tend to discount claims made by
> politicians. But,
> "scientific studies" have also been known to be
> suspect. Some of us rely on
> Wikipedia to provide "facts" to support an argument.
> Perhaps more reliable
> than other sources, I've seen criticisms of it, too.
> There's also a human
> tendency to discount a source when it doesn't "fit"
> one's political
> beliefs.
>
> No doubt there's been an "information explosion"
> since the advent of the
> internet. But as we all known, advances in
> technology do not necessarily
> assure better quality. So what to do?
>
> For me, the criteria laid down by Pirsig is the best
> I know of. "The tests
> of truth are logical consistency, agreement with
> experience, and economy of
> explanation." (Lila, 8) The weakness in this is
> "experience," as Pirsig
> acknowledges in SODV: "The reason there is a
> difference between individual
> evaluations of quality is that although Dynamic
> Quality is a constant,
> these static patterns are different for everyone
> because each person has a
> different static pattern of life history. Both the
> Dynamic Quality and the
> static patterns influence his final judgment. That
> is why there is some
> uniformity among individual value judgments but not
> complete uniformity."
>
> So try as we might, there's no escape from our
> biases based on our life
> history. I guess all we can do in ascertaining the
> reliability of sources
> is to try to limit those biases as best we can.
>
> Which ain't easy I admit.
>
> Best,
> Platt
>
>
>
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