People mislead us with stories

Yes, they do. But what should we conclude from this?

Let me go to something I said way back when. I said epistemology was "... about knowledge. It's about distinguishing what we really know from what we just think we know." Most epistemologists wouldn't hold with that. Or rather, they'd insist on emphasizing how we come to know what we know over how we make mistakes. Any dictionary will tell you that epistemology is the study of knowledge, not that it is the study of mistakes.

But no one would bother if we didn't make mistakes. If human beings got truth right every time the way water gets things wet every time, we wouldn't care a whole lot about it. And don't let the fact that there are rare cases of times when water doesn't get things wet bother you here. Rarity wouldn't be an issue with truth either. It's because we make mistakes all the time that anyone bothers with epistemology. If there was a way to to distinguish the times we are getting knowledge from the times we are fooling ourselves, the epistemologist thinks, then the human race would be so much better off.

And maybe it would but, in nearly three thousand years of trying, no one has come up with anything that even vaguely resembles such an ability. Making mistakes—such as buying a beer because you are influenced by lifestyle advertising—is normal for human beings. "I thought X but now I know Y," is a daily experience for some of us. Right this moment, things I am certain of and things you are certain of are untrue. Things everyone is certain of are untrue. There is consensus science, stuff that is in every university text book being used today that people in the future will look back at and laugh at us for having been so stupid as to believe such a thing.

Why can't we just live with that? Yes, you can be fooled by stories. That is why you need to be critical of stories. That is why we have to tell and retell our stories to accommodate our new understanding.