“The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.” – Paul Valery, French poet and essayist. 

French poet & essayist Paul Valery once wrote about how sometimes knowledge isn’t exactly what we think it is. Life is full of many paradoxes, but the mere discovery of these paradoxes isn’t enough to truly understand what the paradox actually means. So many things in life seem to contradict each other, and many Catch-22 situations exist in our society. Sometimes, it’s very hard to put a finger on why exactly these paradoxes exist.

While this quote is from the late 19th century, it still serves as a perfect diagnosis of a problem that has become more true in the 21st century. We are drowning in information but starving for wisdom. We’ve built an entire system—from academia to the workforce—that often rewards the appearance of knowledge over the substance of it. We are, as Valery said, “inborn” with the capacity to fool ourselves. We mistake the symbol for the reality.

So, Valery gives us a perfect, four-part framework to deconstruct this problem. Let’s use his listed follies as our guide.

Folly #1: Mistaking a Paradox for a Discovery

Let’s start with the first folly, which is perhaps the most defining one for our modern economy. What is the “discovery” our society sells to young people? It takes the form of a “clear path,” a script to success: go to college, get a degree, and you will get a good job.

But anyone who has tried to follow this path quickly “discovers” something else: a fundamental paradox. This is the classic Catch-22 of credentialism, and the one that fueled my own frustrations for years. You’re told you must have a college degree to get a particular job. But, to get that same job, you’re also told you need prerequisite work experience.

This is the trap. The very act of acquiring the degree—spending four years in classrooms, incurring debt—is the same act that prevents you from gaining the practical experience required. Students are encouraged to take on unpaid internships (if they can even afford to), working for free in the hopes of closing the gap. They find themselves in a no-win situation: incurring mind-numbing debt for the “degree” while simultaneously facing burnout trying to get the “experience.”

The folly isn’t just that this paradox exists, but the very act of mistaking this trap for a “discovery.” We are sold a map (the college path) that leads directly to a wall (the experience requirement), and then we’re blamed for not being able to walk through it.

Folly #2: Mistaking a Metaphor for a Proof

This paradox of credentialism leads us directly to the second folly: confusing the symbol of knowledge with the substance of it. In this system, the university degree has become the ultimate metaphor. It’s a piece of paper that stands in for competence. Society accepts it as a proxy for genuine understanding, rather than the certificate of merited achievement that it should represent. But the “proof” is something else entirely: the actual, practical ability to perform the work.

This is an observable fact in the hiring market. As someone who has worked in recruitment research, I’ve seen the gap between the metaphor and the proof firsthand. I’ve reviewed countless candidates who were “perfect” on paper. They had the degrees and the right keywords on their polished resumes.

Yet, so many of them, upon reaching the interview, revealed they didn’t know the first thing about the job. They had learned how to sound intelligent in papers and how to look qualified on a test, but they had no real-world application. They were masters of the metaphor, but had no proof.

Conversely, the best candidates I found often had non-traditional backgrounds. They may have lacked the “right” degree, but they could prove their skills. They had discovered knowledge through practice, not just acquired it as a metaphor. Sadly enough, many times, those candidates weren’t inevitably hired by those companies and had to find employment elsewhere.

Folly #3: Mistaking a Torrent of Verbiage for a Spring of Truths

This brings us to the most dangerous folly: confusing style with substance. If the degree is the metaphor for knowledge, then “verbiage” is the sound of it. Back when I first wrote about this Valery quote in 2014, my main examples were the “talking heads” on TV, paid to fill 24 hours of airtime, or the charismatic professor who was a great orator but couldn’t teach. They’re the masters of sounding informed but offering little in the way of actual wisdom.

But in 2025, this folly has a new exemplar: the Large Language Model. An LLM is a “torrent of verbiage” by definition. As I’ve discovered through personal experimentation with sycophantic LLMs, they are brilliant at producing plausible-sounding fluff. It can “beef up” an essay with clichés and confidently exacerbate existing flaws. It sounds like truth, but it’s just a statistical echo, writing with conflated language that buries original thought and papers over existing logical flaws in the text.

The fear that AI will drown out human writing is not entirely unfounded but overblown. Per the language offered to us by Valery, the real danger here isn’t the “torrent”; but rather our inborn folly of mistaking it for a “spring.” The “spring of truth” is the human critic—the one who applies the filter, who does the hard work of thinking, and who knows the difference between AI overcompensation and real human expression.

Folly #4: Mistaking Oneself for an Oracle

This leads us to the final, and most tragic folly, which locks the other three into place. The Oracle that Valery is referring to is a person who has fallen for the entire system. They accepted the Paradox, acquired the Metaphor, and mastered the Verbiage… and now they believe they are finished.

Essentially, such an individual becomes a sort of information sponge, someone who has mistaken the collection of information for the development of intellect. They convince themselves they know all they need to know.

The only way to acquire true knowledge, however, is to do the opposite. You must consistently question your assumptions and understand why you know what you know. This is the only antidote and it requires constant brainwork. Gaining knowledge through books, degrees, or even AI is fine. But we must remember how to think critically about things lest we fall into one or more of Valery’s follies.

Valery’s most important warning to us now in the 21st century is that these follies are inborn. We’re all wired to take these shortcuts. This is because it’s easier to accept a paradox as a path, a metaphor as proof, and a torrent of verbiage as truth. It’s easiest of all to believe that we, ourselves, are the finished product.

So, the “Oracle” is the system of credentialism itself, one that values the appearance of knowledge over the hard, humble, and unending work of discovery. Yes, Valery said these things in the late 1800s, but this quote is more relevant than ever. We must be the ones to recognize these follies in the systems we navigate, in the torrents of content we consume daily, and, most importantly, in ourselves.

~ Amelia Desertsong