The limits of our knowledge

CBD writes in the Ace of Spades blog,

The limits of knowledge is something that conservatives should appreciate, but all too often we substitute our belief for knowledge. Just because we think it is true...should be true, want it to be true...doesn't make it so.

There is something in philosophy (or epistemology) called "Gettier Cases," and they expose the limits of what we know, or what we think we know. Something that makes sense based on our incomplete data may still be false.

We love to trot out "Chesterton's Fence" to slap down the hare-brained schemes of the idiot freedom-stealing progs, but we ignore the limits of knowledge, and sometimes embrace what is called "Justified True Belief," even though it is incomplete. Yeah...Plato was wrong, or at least didn't get to the whole truth.

Anecdotal evidence, correlation without causation, and a host of logical shortcomings will always...ALWAYS...bite us in the ass. Maybe not today, but definitely tomorrow!

This is what separates us from the beasts and the liberals (but I repeat myself): the ability to interpret facts and understand the limits of our knowledge. That's why we embrace Adam Smith's invisible hand, and laugh and laugh at communist five-year plans and government-run...um...anything.