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People Are Complex

I agree with Feynman that figuring things out is hard. Godwin writes (The Enquirer, part 2, essay 8, page 292)
No one man ever completely understood the character of any other man.
Or the way I say it, "People are complex." Godwin elaborates on this well; read the essay if interested.

A few sentences later Godwin writes:
Let every thing be examined, as far as circumstances will possibly admit, before it as assumed for true.
Or in other words, figuring things out is hard.

I would go even a bit further than Godwin: if circumstances won't admit sufficiet investigation, then you don't know the truth. No excuse about unfortunate circumstances is good enough; the truth isn't easier to come by just because you have only limited ways of trying to find it.

Elliot Temple on March 16, 2009

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