After reading and understanding chapter 8’s points, I
think that Sherlock Holmes was explaining how it is difficult to keep stories
honest. Having opinions or exaggerations usually being a part of the story
complicates things. He is saying that to get the facts, everything must be stripped
to expose just the “framework” of the story. I believe a relative and important
example that I have experienced is the issues with the presidential campaigning
right now. It is really difficult to get to the source of the problem and the
actual proposed solution with all the covering up of the framework. A lot of
people will not go through the extra work to find out the real story so they
will take the politicians word at face value. Instead of taking the
“embellishments of hearsay and reports” it would be best to strip away all the
frills, and get down to the original and simplest story. This would probably
give the best chance at being able to understand the truth.
I agree with you that having opinions and exaggerations usually complicates things. Whenever someone hears something they immediately go on to tell another person with out even knowing certain facts. However, if they do know the story completely, they add their own opinion and twist to the story. Exaggeration is also something that comes along with unsupported assumptions. There are so many times there has been rumors about me that have gone completely to the highest extent of exaggeration and most people are just naturally accustom to believing everything they hear even if it is not true at all. I for one have had unsupported assumptions, and sometimes in the end I have been wrong so it is important not to have assumptions.
ReplyDeleteHello SjsuFM,
ReplyDeleteI wanted to just say that you do a great job of answering question with little to no bias. I think that is a great attribute to your writing. Now moving on to your answer for this weeks question was pretty good. I agree with you that exaggerations really complicate stories and hinder the recipients ability to distinguish truth from embellishments. Also like you alluded to the story changes when different people tell a story because they add their own exaggerations and bias opinion. This reminded me of the childhood game called "telephone" where at one end of a line would start with a given sentence and it would be passed from person to person with small changes and by the time it got to the last person the sentence was completely different then in the beginning. Once again great post.
Heisenberg