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Knowing How You Know/gallery/connecting the dots

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Understanding how I understand

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— Connecting the dots

In a sense and to varying degrees, “all is connected to and related to all else”. So my way of assessing things is to constantly compare the dots and connect them, and to remain very curious and skeptical where/when dots don’t connect or point to different answers/understanding. So, for example, it seems to me that in order for someone to talk intelligently and deeply about “sustainability” and the lack of sustainability of our present approach to economic matters, that person will probably require a fairly deep understanding of the nature of nature, so to speak, and of the natural world; the nature of humans, from an evolutionary and biological standpoint, and the associated psychological standpoints, and cultural; the nature and present workings of our present “economic” assumptions and paradigms, a basic understanding of “money”, and related stuff. It is by having a reasonably good understanding of all three of these broad categories — Nature, Humans (as part of nature), and our present constructed so-called economics — that someone can enter into a credible and deep discussion of sustainability and the present problems. Put another way, assessing “truth” and plausibility is, among other things, a matter of connecting and comparing dots across (what we humans call) disciplines and sciences, and thus it is greatly facilitated by having a broad set of experiences and a broad education, although the “education” itself must be approached with a curious and skeptical attitude (because much of what is taught is a bunch of BS, sadly).