Hogwash!!

Is there anyone who doesn’t deal with some of this every day? Would our lives be easier if our daily hogwash dose dealt with our operational limits, such as measurement problems, and was not from muddying of the waters, not by necessity intentional?

One can think of hogwash in relation to truth, probably more normally in an inverse relationship. We could say that the more there is hogwash then the less there is truth, where a hogwash meter, such as one proposed for evaluating retirement options, could be the opposite of the ‘truth’ dial mentioned in an earlier post.

But, it may be more complicated than that. For one thing, there may be an issue of how much intent might be behind the hogwash, as we see with disinformation. For another thing, the absence of hogwash does not mean total truth due to issues, of which the quasi-empiricism arguments are an example.

An argument list could go on. Is it easier to assess untruth (such as hogwash) than truth? An approach in applied logic found this to be so as does science with its provisional basis founded upon empirical proof. Is there, and even must there be, a role for intuition?

Remarks:

07/14/2009 -- We ought to consider confoundedness.

01/27/2009 -- Now a new day and way to consider some of these matters.

Modified: 07/14/2009