One of the Basic Questions of Philosophy?

[The Dude]

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Case in point, some studies suggest that 1/5 of children of a married couple are not the husbands.

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If this means what you are representing it to mean, which is that 1/5 of children of a married couple where the husband believes he his the father are not the husband's, I would be very suprised to see the number that high. I'm not saying it's impossible, just that I think the study more likely shows something different than what you're representing it to.

Link, please.

I see a teacher in every single person that I meet. I pick out the good points and imitate them and the bad points and correct them in my self.
So what means being correct? I have my way, you have your way. As for the correct way or the only way it does not exist.

i think it has alot to do with the amount of information available in order to determine correctness. for example a man in the 1800's who chose not to smoke because he thought it would cause a 3rd leg to grow is at an advantage in a world where legitimate information on the dangers of smoking is not available. put that man in the world today, however, and the correct view of the dangers of smoking would be at an advantage over the 3rd leg growing belief.

"People live under the mistaken belief that being correct is advantagous. This may or may not be the case. I think it is very possible, that certain incorrect views might have an advantage."

If an incorect view is advantageous, perhaps it is actually correct, at least for the person to whom it is advantageous.

Is the correctness or incorrectness of a view universal?

[PLOlover]

I think the real numbers are like 1/20, but some studies are that high in certain populations. Also to nit, I believe the terminology is couples where the man is raising a child he thinks is his, but is not.

Anyway, I was just giving the gist of it.

[Cooker]

Let me clarify specifically what I meant by "correct" and "advantageous". By correct, I meant holding views consistent with objective reality for the reasons that make them correct in objective reality (I don't want to debate whether or not there is an objective reality, but I do believe that there is one). I intend this to mean that the person has a full and clear understanding of objective reality. As for advantageous, I mean this simply in the evolutionary sense that the belief will help propagate the genes of the person that holds the belief (and with some probability correlated to reproduction the ideas pass to the offspring through parental influence).

Under this definition, if there were no god in objective reality, I would consider the Catholic view "birth control shouldn't be used because it is a sin" to be incorrect even if the conclusion that not using birth control is the most advantageous.

I am sure that there may be a good bit of gray area here, because I haven't thought about this in a tremendous amount of detail (and I am in the early stages of playing around with my personal philosophies and casting off most of what I as taught growing up in a very baptist community). My main point is that while full understanding may be your personal goal, it might not be an important pursuit for mankind.

In some sense these ideas stem from my belief that theoretical physics is neglecting non-equilibrium statistcal mechanics in favor of pursuit of "final" theories. I think an approximate theory of NESM would be much more useful than a correct final theory.

[David Sklansky]

It seems like everybody is not exactly getting my question. Rephrased. How important is it to be right? What is worth giving up to be right?

[Piers]

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"Many people live under the mistaken belief that being correct is advantagous. This may or may not be the case. I think it is very possible, that certain incorrect views might have an advantage."


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I agree.

[mosquito]

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If it isn't it, I think it probably should be. The question is: Is Cooker right when he posted on another thread

"Many people live under the mistaken belief that being correct is advantagous. This may or may not be the case. I think it is very possible, that certain incorrect views might have an advantage."

My answer is an in between one which I will get into later. What's yours?

PS We are not talking here about obvious occasional short term benefits of incorrect thoughts.

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The case of personal relations/viewing people as 'good'
may be a case in point.

A specific case may be a housewife
who incorrectly belives her husband has never cheated,
but he did so on one occasion for "no harm". If finding
out about the cheating is more harmful than the erronious
belief, we have a winner.

[Josh W]

being right? or doing the right thing?