The only mistake people make in life is when they thought they knew something…

…so tell me. Whey do people still rely on what they know? That’s the very definition of a mistake.

You might try to tell me it’s possible to know something and not be mistaken, but isn’t that what everyone who was mistaken believed?

Maybe that’s why in terms of law we say “innocent until proven guilty”, or perhaps in this instance I would say, “stupid until proven smart”.

If the script can even possibly flip, you’ll want to make sure it’s right side up.

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hartfire · 61-69

How do you know what is right side up unless you've had consistent experience of gravity?

We need to distinguish between fact, belief, knowledge and assumption.

Assumptions are shortcuts - a mental tendency of humans to try to make things easier.
Quite often they work, but there's always a risk that an assumption may be wrong and could lead to mistaken words and actions.
There are many ways to check whether something might be an assumption, the means depending on the type of assumption it is.
But almost everyone makes mistakes with assumptions at least sometimes.

Reject · 31-35, M

@hartfire Well sure, but people generally don’t rely on assumptions, right? They think they’re more than assumptions to rely on them. People wouldn’t call something they know an assumption.

Misanthropic · 26-30, M

@hartfire

We need to distinguish between fact, belief, knowledge and assumption

Knowledge comes from fact but I agree with this statement.

I got the vibe from reject that this is what he was trying to articulate but I became preoccupied with answering the post as it was presented.

If the premise of the post was on assumption rather than knowledge I probably would have agreed with the post.