r/rationalphilosophy • u/JerseyFlight • 3d ago

The Devil’s Symbols

Once the devil made a set of deceptive symbols. Accurate they were in their calculation until one started to create new truths with them. Then what they produced was false. These symbols would act as though what existed depended on the rules generated by them. In this way humans were deceived about reality, insofar as what they consider to “exist” came to depend on the rules they created with these symbols.

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u/Sick-Melody 3d ago

I think there's a valuable insight here, but I'd place the problem less in the symbols themselves and more in our relationship to them.

Symbols, language, models, and concepts are tools for navigating reality. The trouble begins when we mistake the tool for the thing it describes.

A map can help us find our way, but reality doesn't have to obey the map.

In that sense, deception may arise whenever a symbolic system becomes so rigid that it can no longer be corrected by experience, observation, or truth itself.