How do we know things and what we can know?
The word comes from the Greek “epistēmē” meaning knowledge or understanding.
Epistemology includes questions like:
- How do we acquire knowledge?
- What constitutes evidence?
- What are the limits of human knowledge?
- How reliable are different ways of knowing?
- What makes a belief justified?
Ontologically subjective = the existence of the thing depends on minds/observers/conventions (e.g. money).
Epistemically objective = the facts about it, given that it exists, don’t depend on what any individual thinks.
Once the institution of money is in place, “this bill is a $20” is a fact that anyone can be right or wrong about.
Ontologically\Epistemically subjective objective subjective humor money, marriages, borders, … objective facts without (known) answer physical laws
“Everything that is not impossible is possible, confidence gets assigned according to evidence”
Figuring out what a person’s in-group believes is often much more important to humans than what’s actually the case.
→ Don’t pick a narrative, model the space of possibilities.