GRE Issue
本帖最后由 tingting 于 2011-12-11 12:31 编辑GRE Issue
Two heads are better than one.
This statement sounds good, but what sounds good does not always mean there's no argument for its truth. The arguer emphasize the advantage of larger amount, which seems understandable yet over which we ponder whereupon it doesn’t act like that in reality, as it’s no other than a general idea. Quantity does not count but quality does.
Firstly, when it comes to the so-called “two heads”, there arouses an argument that what if the “two heads” happens to be empty-minded novices. We can’t deny that if fifty million people say nothing but a foolish thing, it will still be a foolish thing. Far more helping the situation, they are just making it worse by repeating the foolish thing and taking it for granted uncritically, somewhat like a parroter, even a foolish one. As is the case, we say “two heads” worth nothing. And another argument is that what if the “two heads” take issues with each other. Provided that every fogey firmly holds his own opinion and refuses to consider others’, it’s less likely to come to an agreement among those stubborn heads. In such case that the “two heads” can’t accept even receive each other, they actually make no sense, for there hardly exists harmony among their opinions or them. As we see, the “two heads” can’t go ahead because there are two heads.
On the other hand, the “one” in the statement is ambiguous and unclear. Assuming a man of plenty of sense, anyone with one eye and half sense knows that a group of disengaged heads can’t compare with his, not to speak of a man who is doomed to be a thinker. And it’s the heart of the problem that the argument has blinked the fact that truth always has to be discovered by one individual first. That is to say, however many ideas there are or whatever these ideas denote, there’s one best proposed by a certain head.
Taking it as a whole, it’s an incomprehensive saying that two heads are better than one, which seems to prefer to quantity rather than quality, whereas to the latter we need to pay more attention. So the use of this expression must be based on such premise that the “heads” are of equal quality.
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