And if you think you can explain the concept of “systematically underestimated inferential distances” briefly, in just a few words, I’ve got some sad news for you...
“I know [evolution] sounds crazy—it didn’t make sense to me at first either. I can explain how it works if you’re curious, but it will take me a long time, because it’s a complicated idea with lots of moving parts that you probably haven’t seen before. Sometimes even simple questions like ‘where did the first humans come from?’ turn out to have complicated answers.”
Sometimes even simple questions like ‘where did the first humans come from?’ turn out to have complicated answers
Of course it’s not actually a simple question, it’s really a broad inquiry. In fact it doesn’t even need to have an answer and even when it does, it usually alters the question slightly… the hard part is asking the right questions not finding the answer.
(It just dawned on me that this was the whole point of The Question in A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, thanks for that.)
“I know [evolution] sounds crazy—it didn’t make sense to me at first either. I can explain how it works if you’re curious, but it will take me a long time, because it’s a complicated idea with lots of moving parts that you probably haven’t seen before. Sometimes even simple questions like ‘where did the first humans come from?’ turn out to have complicated answers.”
Of course it’s not actually a simple question, it’s really a broad inquiry. In fact it doesn’t even need to have an answer and even when it does, it usually alters the question slightly… the hard part is asking the right questions not finding the answer.
(It just dawned on me that this was the whole point of The Question in A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, thanks for that.)