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What's something you believed to be true but recently learned is actually false? (lemmy.world)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 7 months ago

There's a Pratchett quote that I always think about in this context, about "lies to children"

As humans, we have invented lots of useful kinds of lie. As well as lies-to-children ('as much as they can understand') there are lies-to-bosses ('as much as they need to know') lies-to-patients ('they won't worry about what they don't know') and, for all sorts of reasons, lies-to-ourselves.

Lies-to-children is simply a prevalent and necessary kind of lie. Universities are very familiar with bright, qualified school-leavers who arrive and then go into shock on finding that biology or physics isn't quite what they've been taught so far. 'Yes, but you needed to understand that,' they are told, 'so that now we can tell you why it isn't exactly true.'

Discworld teachers know this, and use it to demonstrate why universities are truly storehouses of knowledge: students arrive from school confident that they know very nearly everything, and they leave years later certain that they know practically nothing. Where did the knowledge go in the meantime? Into the university, of course, where it is carefully dried and stored.

I could've cut that down more, but I like that whole chunk. I think there is a usefulness in the lies to children approach, if done well. As you highlight though, it can be frustrating when the simplified thing that's being taught isn't just simplified, but straight up wrong.