So, you want to know about "Popper David," huh? Sounds like some kind of weird stage name, doesn't it?
Well, it's not. It’s more like a… a phase I went through. Or rather, was forced into.
My Forced Dive into Popper
There was this guy, David. I met him at this local meet-up. Smart guy, I guess. Or at least, he really thought he was. And his big thing? Karl Popper. The philosopher.
Honestly, before David, Popper was just some name I vaguely remembered from a dusty old philosophy class I took ages ago. Didn't stick, you know? But David? Oh, David made sure Popper was going to stick this time, whether I liked it or not.
Every single conversation, I'm not kidding, somehow, someway, would loop back to Popper.
"Well, as Popper famously argued about falsification..."
Or, "If you'd actually taken the time to read Popper's definitive take on historicism, you'd understand..."
It was just exhausting, man. Pure and simple.
So, my "practice," if you can even call it that, kicked off purely from frustration. I figured, okay, fine, if this Popper fella is so darn important, I should at least try to get what David's constantly on about. Maybe then I could, you know, actually have a normal conversation with the guy. Or at least figure out why he was so completely obsessed.
I went out and actually bought a book. "The Logic of Scientific Discovery." It sounded heavy. And believe me, it was. Like a brick.
My process, my grand plan, was pretty straightforward, or so I thought at the start:
- Sit down with the book (and a strong coffee).
- Attempt to read a chapter. Or even a few pages.
- Try my best to make some sense of it all.
- Maybe, just maybe, jot down a few notes if anything clicked.
Yeah, that was easier said than done. Much easier. I'd read a page, and honest to goodness, my eyes would just glaze over. Then I'd force myself to re-read it. Still nothing. It felt like I was trying to catch smoke with my bare hands, totally pointless.
I even caved and tried watching some YouTube videos, you know, "Popper for Dummies" type stuff. Some were okay, I guess, they broke it down a bit. But then I'd try to connect what they were saying back to what David was always spouting, and it just wouldn't click. David's version of Popper seemed different, more… weaponized, if you know what I mean?
This whole charade went on for a couple of pretty miserable weeks. Just me, wrestling with these super dense texts, all because David couldn't talk about the price of milk without dragging some long-dead philosopher into it.
The Big "So What?" Moment
I vividly remember one evening, I was slogging through a particularly brutal section on probability, and I just couldn't take it anymore. I slammed the book shut. Hard. What on earth was I even doing? Was I seriously trying to become a philosophy expert just to deal with one incredibly annoying guy?
The "implementation" part of my little Popper project, well, it never really happened in the way I'd initially hoped. I didn't suddenly transform into a Popper scholar overnight. Shocker, right? I certainly didn't win any debates with David. In fact, if I'm being honest, I started actively avoiding those meet-ups for a good while.
But here’s the actual thing I did realize, my genuine takeaway from this whole "Popper David" saga, the thing that stuck:
Sometimes, people don't use these big, complex ideas to enlighten or share. Nah. They use them to, like, build a wall around themselves. To make themselves sound way smarter than everyone else in the room. David wasn't really trying to share the wisdom of Popper; he was just... David-ing, using Popper as his favorite tool to do it.
So, my grand "practice" in trying to understand Karl Popper? It mostly just taught me a lot about people like David. And it taught me that sometimes, it's perfectly okay to just throw your hands up and say, "You know what? This is way too much work for a casual chat," and just walk away. Save your sanity.
I still have that Popper book on my shelf, gathering dust. It's a reminder. Not of falsification or the principles of open societies, or any of that deep stuff. Nope. It's a reminder of David, and the time I tried way, way too hard for all the wrong reasons.
