Some old dead white ancient Greek told us that the belief that we know something may prevent us from really knowing it Others have warned that assumptions, while necessary in some sense, may mislead us in dangerous ways. (They wouldn’t make and sell cigarettes if they were harmful, would they?)
This is the basic situation. We decided earlier this year to remodel our living room--replace the old paneling with new, also replace 120 year-old windows with new ones from Andersen. It was supposed to take a week. Anyone with experience in such things won’t be surprised that (a) it took two months, and (b) my wife and I both got a touch testy toward the end.
Now, there were two electronic situations to deal with. Both TV and stereo had been disconnected. The TV was wired for cable and a VCR. The stereo drove two sets of speakers. One set, in the kitchen, was connected via wires concealed in the kitchen walls during earlier remodeling. The other, in the living room, had been rewired, with new Monster cable in the walls.
Some really dumb painterso had cur off four feet of cable in the living room, the terminus of the kitchen cable. So splicing was required. But there was a problem. The Monster cable used for splicing had two wires, one red, the other black. The cable it was to be spliced to had three wires--red, green, and white. My younger son is hip electronically, so I asked him. He said ignore the green cable, that it was a ground wire.
Last night I attacked the TV. The cable line (female) was screwed onto a male post in the back of the TV. The problem was the VCR A line with a female plug was unattached to anything, but I couldn’t find anything to attach it to--the only likely candidate was a female receptacle. It was dusk. My night vision is showing my age. I cursed a lot, using that word Cheney has been spewing around the halls of Congress lately. Female to female? I had some Lesbian electronics on my hands.
After an hour of distress m wife said she didn’t understand the problem. Two weeks ago, when we had grandkids here, she had plugged the cable into the TV and it worked fine.
“Shiiiiiiitttt! Now you tell me!” I shouted. I had assumed that the cable was correct in being plugged into the TV set. But my helpmeet of 44 years had not bothered to tell me what she had done. So I unplugged the cable from the TV, plugged it into the VCR, and then connected the VCR to the TV. It worked. But there was marital damage to repair.
I spent much of today trying to connect the stereo to the cable to the kitchen--red wire to red wire, black wire to white. It didn’t work. I kept at it, thinking my splicing was defective. Then I had dark thoughts...get the electrician back, and rewire the kitchen, using Monster cable. Opening walls. $$$$$. It was about 8 hours later that the thought occurred. Ground wire doesn’t mean much with speakers. Green might not be a ground wire. It could be negative or positive instead.
And there was an easy way to find out. Go look at the back of the kitchen speakers and see what wires were used.
Red.
And green.
So I spliced red to red, green to green--and Barbara Cook started singing “Send in the Clowns” out in our kitchen.
I assumed my son was right. But he was wrong.
This anecdote seems trivial, but it isn’t.
Just think of all the assumptions involved in, say, matters of public policy.
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"It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in an argument." William Gibbs McAdoo. US Vice-President under Woodrow Wilson.
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