Curiouser and Curiouser
In his awesome book, Labyrinths of Reason , William Poundstone describes the generally accepted criteria to truly “know” something: 1) Belief : You must believe what you think you know (e.g. “We wouldn’t say a flat-earther knows the earth is round”); 2) Justified : There must be a valid reason why you think you know something. This is to rule out lucky guesses; 3) True : This feels circular, but it means that you can’t know something unless it really is true in the first place. Consider the topic of antibiotics-resistant bacteria. An antibiotic resistant strain called MRSA has been the posterchild for just that trend. It certainly feels like something we “know”, right? Over/mis-use of antibiotics caused the bacteria to mutate and become resistant, thereby making the antibiotic useless for further use. It sounds right and logical. And yet, as Ed Yong writes , the story of MRSA is far more ...