Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

This article (6 page PDF) would be better, I think, had it been written more clearly, but I get that what Eamon Costello is trying to do with the text is to illustrate the phenomenon being discussed. If I had to summarize (and I do; it's the job) I'd say that it illustrates how language leads us along and the meaning (or truth, or whatever) that we find in reading is created as much by the reader as by anything that has been written (which in the best fashion says as little as possible). "The problem is that we are theory machines. We fabulate, take shortcuts, and spin stories upon the slightest whim or germ of evidence. Most stories we tell ourselves and each other are unprovable. The social world is too complex to make anything but the most banal predictions about but, because we crave certainty, we always fall for the future and its purveyors, AI or otherwise... This is Papañca: 'We will discover that everything we are carrying around in our minds is nothing but extraneous matter. It has been put there by our desires, rejections, reactions, thoughts, plans, hopes, ideas, and viewpoints.'"

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Dec 31, 2025 6:53 p.m.

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