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Socrates on wisdom to know know what you don't know...

To paraphrase Socrates…don't be certain that what you know is right.  I always want to actively listen to people on topics and then measure their thoughts against my thoughts.  I find that this is a good way for me to challenge my biases and formulate better ideas with input from others.   Or basically I try not to close my mind to other ideas and keep my mind open to the possibility that I don't know shit.

From the Philosophizethis.org podcast transcript is this interesting story about Socrates's comment on wisdom.


The best guess historians can make as to how he developed this intense questioning style is in a famous story about friend of his going to the oracle at Delphi, which was essentially a rotation of an older peasant woman that lived in the area that was on drugs, who apparently channeled the god Apollo…and Socrates’s friend asked the woman who the wisest man in the world was…she said Socrates…his friend came back and said hey Socrates the oracle said you’re the wisest man in the world! Socrates was absolutely shocked by this. he went instantly to work to get to the bottom of it…no victory dance or anything he just started… he went around to all the wisest people he knew and interrogated them to get to the bottom of it. he realized that these people only thought they knew a lot…when you ask the right questions…it turns out their knowledge is false.
quote from apology:
“I am wiser than this man; it is likely that neither of us knows anything worthwhile, but he thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas when I do not know, neither do I think I know; so I am likely to be wiser than he to this small extent, that I do not think I know what I do not know.
“To fear death, gentlemen, is no other than to think oneself wise when one is not, to think one knows what one does not know. No one knows whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they knew that it is the greatest of evils. And surely it is the most blameworthy ignorance to believe that one knows what one does not know.

http://philosophizethis.org/socrates-sophists-episode-3-transcript/ 

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