Let them believe cake

James Samimi Farr asked this great question in response to yesterday’s post:

“What should we do about the fact that occasionally, what’s fashionable aligns with what’s true?”

Here’s the thing.

Fashionable ideas are sometimes true. But fashions are never trustworthy.

Fashions are never trustworthy because their goal is not to provide true information about the world — it’s to manipulate social status.

If a fashion does happen to be true, it’s by accident.

Fashions don’t care about informing you, so trusting them to inform you is like consulting a tomato about the stock market. Maybe there will be some insight there, but it’s not because it’s a good tool for the job.

So the answer to James’ question is… nothing. 😊

Let fashions be true, let fashions be false. Fashions should play no role in your epistemology either way. Why would they? Their purpose is not to seek truth.

Yours is.