fallibility
Compiled with AI assistance and selectively reviewed. Please consult the cited passages; the books remain the authoritative source. About this companion
Editorial synthesis · provisional
Definition
Fallibility is the susceptibility of models and knowing to error, distortion or failure despite their practical usefulness. AB emphasizes anticipation that can misfire and affectively situated inquiry that can mistake its own distinctions for reality. Correction remains essential without guaranteeing success. Other books extend the issue to scientific change, adaptive cognition and technical judgment under consequences.
Explanation
AB's missing stair and deceived bee show models failing against a world that exceeds them. The text explicitly refuses to infer an open future from a failed prediction: predictability and determination are different questions. Its account of care also locates error in unnoticed wants and fears, proposing openness to correction rather than affectless neutrality. RB2 develops the same epistemic problem through Johnson and Tucker and Dewey, while preserving the possibility of genuine knowledge.
RB1 applies fallibility to science's contingent, non-teleological trajectory, not to a denial of cumulative problem-solving. RB3's discussion of Riedl distinguishes an adaptive cognitive apparatus from an infallible one. PB lacks the literal fallibility stem in the targeted search but directly discusses error and correction in technical judgment: fluency is not judgment, and correction from the world can involve irreversible harm. That consequential application is retained without treating every occurrence of error as this concept.
Scope and attribution
Fallibility is not falsity, skepticism, physical indeterminism or guaranteed corrigibility. Scientific contingency and technical correction remain local applications.
AB — The Actual Book
Models misfire and feeling structures unnoticed bias. Correction matters without prediction failure establishing indeterminism.
Occurrence locators: 99, 102, 103, 107, 208.
PB — The Possible Book
Archive fluency is not judgment; external correction and world consequences matter, including irreversible harm.
Occurrence locators: 104, 105.
RB1 — The Real Book, Volume I: The Possible Is Real
Science remains contingent and fallible while retaining problem-solving capacity, with paradigm change reorganizing informational structures.
Occurrence locators: 246, 247.
RB2 — The Real Book, Volume II: Becoming Is Being
Motivated inquiry risks distortion and overconfidence. Caring inquiry open to correction replaces affective neutrality as the ideal.
Occurrence locators: 124, 128, 129, 141, 144, 243.
RB3 — The Real Book, Volume III: Murmurations
Adaptive cognition is not infallible, and technical models remain partial before reality's resistance.
Occurrence locators: 124, 171, 340.
Background used in the editorial explanation
Named theories and mechanisms are distinguished from neighboring background, homonyms and the author’s own synthesis. Reproduced AI passages retain their separate voice.