Truth
PAGE IN PROGRESS
What you see here is a page of my hypertext book Me, Looking for Meaning. Initially empty, it will slowly be filled with thoughts, notes, and quotes. One day, I will use them to write a coherent entry, similar to these completed pages. See this post to better understand my creative process. Thank you for your interest and patience! :)
What you see here is a page of my hypertext book Me, Looking for Meaning. Initially empty, it will slowly be filled with thoughts, notes, and quotes. One day, I will use them to write a coherent entry, similar to these completed pages. See this post to better understand my creative process. Thank you for your interest and patience! :)
All truths wait in all things.
--Walt Whitman
--Walt Whitman
Even when we don't say the word "truth", we think about it, and we argue about it. My kids don't use the word, but their conversations revolve around what it means to them all the time. "You said this, and I did not like it!" - "No, I did not say that!" or "This is my toy!" - "No, it isn't!" They do often play nicely with each other, but when they do fight, it's often about who's right and who's wrong. And don't we, grown-ups, do that too all the time? Why is truth so important to us, and so controversial?
When I start thinking deeply about a term, I usually open a dictionary. Oxford Languages define truth as "that which is... in accordance with fact or reality." Truth is the way things are. If we dig deeper into the history of the word, we discover that it comes from a Proto-Indo-European root that meant "firm and solid". This root produced words that meant "security," "loyalty," "promise" and "faith" - something you can believe, rely on, trust. This might give us a hint why truth is so important for us. In the complex and often unpredictable world, it is important to have something we can absolutely believe it, something solid and firm in the chaos that surrounds us. In fact, having something to hold on is essential for our mental health for our happiness.
We can sometimes notice when other people hold onto their truth with an iron grip, with what Lawrence Wright (2013) calls crushing certainty. We might even feel the need (or the urge) criticize them for that ("How can't they see that they are wrong?"). But each one of us has something we deeply believe in, own own truth. I have it, and you have it too. It's not a bad thing, but it's something that I find important to name and acknowledge.
But it's hard, oh so hard - sometimes close to impossible - to let go of your truth. And that's probably why truth is so contested and controversial. Each person feels that they got closer than others to understand what's true - how things really are. All disagreements - personal, political, scientific, you name it - are essentially about truth, even though the word “truth” is not always spoken.
If you keep reading, you might find what follows to be too philosophical and abstract for you. Still, I hope that you will see the relevance of these ideas to your own life. After all, whenever we try to understand something or somebody (or ourselves!), whenever we argue or simply disagree with somebody, the idea of truth is lurking in our thoughts. Empathy is about feeling or intellectually grasping somebody else's truth. Political polarization can be seen a battle of truths. Concerns about mis- and disinformation, and about fake news, are concerns about truth. Even when we don't say the word "truth", we make assumptions about it all the time. Unless we start explicitly thinking about the idea of truth (and yes, this will require some philosophizing), these assumptions will remain unchecked and might even have negative consequences in the way interact with each other (polarization is one obvious example).
So, what is truth? Who holds it? How can one get access to it? Can we get access to it? The famous tagline of the TV show The X-Files is "The Truth is out there." But is it really? Some say that, since everybody has their own truth, there is really no one big Truth for someone to discover. Just a bunch of local or personal truth, a variety of perspectives. But... if truth is the way things are, aren't they one specific way that can be known? For example, the Earth revolves around the Sun - that's not a matter of any personal truth or opinion. And one can certainly know about it.
So, we can debate about the "contents" of truth: Is the way I see things is right and yours is wrong? Of we can debate about the nature of truth: Is there the Truth out there or isn't? Most people focus on the first debate. Somebody must be right, and somebody must be wrong! The second kind of debate is for scholars. It's the battle between positivisms ("I can be sure that a statement can be either true or isn't true. The goal of science is to discover what's true and objective") and postmodernism ("Even if there is one big Truth out there, human brain is probably incapable of accessing it. Science cannot produce an objective description of physical reality").
Both these debates are based on a binary. Something is true or it isn't true - there is no third option. Truth either exists or it doesn't exist. Truth can be accessed by the human brain or it cannot be accessed. In fact, no matter how abstract the philosophical debate is, it does boil down to the same true/not true dilemma. One can totally imagine a positivist scholar and an postmodernist scholar arguing passionately, each one shouting, "No, you are wrong and I am right!"
I am a big fan of paradoxes, so, to me, the best way to make sense of truth is to escape the binary. But how can something be true and untrue at the same time? How can truth simultaneously exist an not exist?
One way to do escape the binary when thinking about truth is to question our attachment to the idea of truth as something monolithic. This is something fairly obvious. That's why most of us will probably find hilarious the part of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that describes attempts to discover the "Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything." The answer turns out to be the nonsensical "42" - and that's about right. But when we are in a midst of a passionate debate about some fact/opinion or even about the nature of truth, we forget about that. Saying that there is no one Truth (aka, 42, or any other number, word or phrase, is not the answer to everything) does not mean that smaller truths can only be subjective. For all we know, there can be its own objective truth attached to every aspect of the universe.
And even if we take a specific aspect of the universe, it is unlikely to be described by one specific "truth" - one statement about it. It is true that the Earth revolves around the Sun, but there are also a million and one truths that can describe the Earth and the Sun. So arguing whether can can grasp the truth about something is also not very helpful. We might be able grasp one of the truths that describe this something, but not all of them. Does it mean that we understand the object/phenomena in question, or that we don't?
How to combine the idea that everybody has access to their own version of truth (metaphor of the elephant) with the understanding of biases and cognitive distortions.
Escaping the binary there is truth vs there is no truth. We are now talking of situations when people see things differently, not when someone is lying. One thing is if I say they sun is yellow and you say it’s green because of how your eyes work. The other thing is when I know it usually appears yellow to human eye but I say green because I want to confuse you. Because of us/them mentality, we assume that people who disagree with are bad and prone to lying; but people honestly see things differently. So we will leave lying out of the question. Matters of interpretation are much trickier because interpretations cannot be just discarded. They hold their own truth. Say, if we have a disagreement and you think I said something to insult you. We argue about intent. I might have said it without the conscious intent to insult you but I was angry and used a phrase that I know can be interpreted as insulting. Or maybe I was honestly trying to be supportive but you interpreted it as insulting because you are depressed. examples/cases to discuss: my fear of flying; elephants and blind men; sun or earth at the center of solar system; my ring (looks different in different light). Truth and mental conditions (depression, anxiety). Arguing about whether you said something or not vs. interpretation of the phrase. A phrase is either uttered or not - there is no third option. But even thinking that you did not say something might be because you said it automatically (so it’s not a lie if you claim that you did not say it). Interpretation is another thing.
Truth: biases.
Challenges of logic: if you give five pieces of meat to a dog, how many pieces will the dog have? Is it logical to say 5, or 0 - because the dog will eat the meat?
from “we have no idea”:
” The quest to find a Theory of Everything is an attempt to do something we have never before accomplished in science: reveal the deepest, most basic truth of our universe.”
what does it mean to reveal the truth about the universe?
Do we even have tools for that (including language, which has not been very helpful)
the authors continue:
” So far, we have proven ourselves to be pretty good at building useful descriptions of the world around us. From chemistry to economics to monkey psychology, we’ve put a lot these descriptions to work improving our lives and helping us build societies, cure diseases, and get faster Internet speeds. That these descriptions are not fundamental and describe only emergent phenomena doesn’t make them any less useful or effective.“
there might be a difference between building useful descriptions and reaching the truth
we can have an explanation that the god of sun has the day begin when he starts crossing the sky in his fiery carriage. This will help us predict that every morning the sun will come up, but will it really be the truth?
By the same token, we can see particles as moving points in space or as excitation if the fabric of space or as vibrations of tiny strings. Which one us truth?
Does this page tell the truth about truth? More like, a bunch of opinions, and it will not even cover all the opinions about truth.
A shared understanding of truth is important for the functioning of society. Examples: science and the justice system. We need to have this shared understanding for practical purposes. Having it does not mean that we cannot see its limitations.
Grannies from Bluey (fluidity/relativity of truth)
we live in the same physical reality, but interpretations differ
is the truth about physical reality or interpretations
Even simple facts: I own my clothes or do my clothes “own” me?
Information: infodemic. Is the problem that somebody is trying to deceive others by pushing false information? Or is it that, because more voices can be heard, more information can be accessed, truth has become more contested, it’s more obvious that there is no one subjective truth?
We say "she is saying the truth" as if truth is something monolithic. Whatever a person is saying is made up of a combination of statements, some of them more or less factual, more or less colored by this person's opinions. I was thinking about this as I was listing to the interview by the Russian actress Natalya Bondarchuk about the film Solaris by Andrey Tarkovsky (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgmKpWk_5Ps&ab_channel=CharlesM). I started paying attention to how some of the things she was saying can be described as "truth" (e.g., Tarkovsky was the film director of Solaris), while others were difficult to describe as facts or opinions (e.g., intended interpretation of the film, Bondarchuk's relationship with Tarkovsky, Tarkovsky's relationship with his wife, and some specific situations - how they met, how they were filming certain movie scenes, etc.). As it often happens when people tell things to each other, Bondarchuk was presenting as truth things they may or may not have been her opinion. For example, she said that Tarkovsky's wife left him in the hospital (details were unclear) when her was dying of cancer. I caught myself thinking that the whole interview cannot be described as "fact", "lie" or "opinion" - it was probably a mix of them. For example, I have read somewhere else (but then, what kind of mixture did that source present) that Bondarchuk and Tarkovsky had an affair, something that in the interview she did not mention (she said they were friends). When we read a book, see a film, listen to news, or talk to another person, we similarly encounter a mix of the three (facts, lie, opinion) or at least of the first two (admittedly, some people lie less than others). [scene from Inside Out where they say that facts and opinions get mixed up all the time].
Salaris and truth:
” What is simulated and what is real are, in Tarkovsky’s eyes, identical. As long as we believe something exists, everything else is lost in the ether.” From: https://lwlies.com/articles/solaris-andrei-tarkovsky-greatest-science-fiction-film/
Concerns about ChatGPT: it will make it even harder to get to the truth https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-ezra-klein-show-2/episode/a-skeptical-take-on-the-a-i-revolution-210560921?utm_medium=email&utm_source=sharpspring&sslid=MzKAAFMTcwtTM2MA&sseid=MzKAASMTI1MjAA&jobid=f3a7a616-9736-4693-9252-276da5a9d884
three blind men and the elephant (quote from my book)
-not wars over truth but wars over meanings
truth, interpretation, perspective : same ring but I see different colors under different lighting. Is the ring really blue or purple? Or is it more important that the ring can be blue or purple depending on the light?
-not wars over truth but wars over meanings
“Dharma is a potent Sanskrit word that is packed tight with meaning, like one of those little sponge animals that expands to six times its original size when you add water. Dharma means, variously, “path,” “teaching,” or “law.” For our purposes in this book it will mean primarily “vocation,” or “sacred duty.” It means, most of all—and in all cases—truth. Yogis believe that our greatest responsibility in life is to this inner possibility—this dharma—and they believe that every human being’s duty is to utterly, fully, and completely embody his own idiosyncratic dharma.”
SOURCES:
Wright, L. (2013). Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief. Alfred A. Knopf.
About this project: Start page
When I start thinking deeply about a term, I usually open a dictionary. Oxford Languages define truth as "that which is... in accordance with fact or reality." Truth is the way things are. If we dig deeper into the history of the word, we discover that it comes from a Proto-Indo-European root that meant "firm and solid". This root produced words that meant "security," "loyalty," "promise" and "faith" - something you can believe, rely on, trust. This might give us a hint why truth is so important for us. In the complex and often unpredictable world, it is important to have something we can absolutely believe it, something solid and firm in the chaos that surrounds us. In fact, having something to hold on is essential for our mental health for our happiness.
We can sometimes notice when other people hold onto their truth with an iron grip, with what Lawrence Wright (2013) calls crushing certainty. We might even feel the need (or the urge) criticize them for that ("How can't they see that they are wrong?"). But each one of us has something we deeply believe in, own own truth. I have it, and you have it too. It's not a bad thing, but it's something that I find important to name and acknowledge.
But it's hard, oh so hard - sometimes close to impossible - to let go of your truth. And that's probably why truth is so contested and controversial. Each person feels that they got closer than others to understand what's true - how things really are. All disagreements - personal, political, scientific, you name it - are essentially about truth, even though the word “truth” is not always spoken.
If you keep reading, you might find what follows to be too philosophical and abstract for you. Still, I hope that you will see the relevance of these ideas to your own life. After all, whenever we try to understand something or somebody (or ourselves!), whenever we argue or simply disagree with somebody, the idea of truth is lurking in our thoughts. Empathy is about feeling or intellectually grasping somebody else's truth. Political polarization can be seen a battle of truths. Concerns about mis- and disinformation, and about fake news, are concerns about truth. Even when we don't say the word "truth", we make assumptions about it all the time. Unless we start explicitly thinking about the idea of truth (and yes, this will require some philosophizing), these assumptions will remain unchecked and might even have negative consequences in the way interact with each other (polarization is one obvious example).
So, what is truth? Who holds it? How can one get access to it? Can we get access to it? The famous tagline of the TV show The X-Files is "The Truth is out there." But is it really? Some say that, since everybody has their own truth, there is really no one big Truth for someone to discover. Just a bunch of local or personal truth, a variety of perspectives. But... if truth is the way things are, aren't they one specific way that can be known? For example, the Earth revolves around the Sun - that's not a matter of any personal truth or opinion. And one can certainly know about it.
So, we can debate about the "contents" of truth: Is the way I see things is right and yours is wrong? Of we can debate about the nature of truth: Is there the Truth out there or isn't? Most people focus on the first debate. Somebody must be right, and somebody must be wrong! The second kind of debate is for scholars. It's the battle between positivisms ("I can be sure that a statement can be either true or isn't true. The goal of science is to discover what's true and objective") and postmodernism ("Even if there is one big Truth out there, human brain is probably incapable of accessing it. Science cannot produce an objective description of physical reality").
Both these debates are based on a binary. Something is true or it isn't true - there is no third option. Truth either exists or it doesn't exist. Truth can be accessed by the human brain or it cannot be accessed. In fact, no matter how abstract the philosophical debate is, it does boil down to the same true/not true dilemma. One can totally imagine a positivist scholar and an postmodernist scholar arguing passionately, each one shouting, "No, you are wrong and I am right!"
I am a big fan of paradoxes, so, to me, the best way to make sense of truth is to escape the binary. But how can something be true and untrue at the same time? How can truth simultaneously exist an not exist?
One way to do escape the binary when thinking about truth is to question our attachment to the idea of truth as something monolithic. This is something fairly obvious. That's why most of us will probably find hilarious the part of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that describes attempts to discover the "Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything." The answer turns out to be the nonsensical "42" - and that's about right. But when we are in a midst of a passionate debate about some fact/opinion or even about the nature of truth, we forget about that. Saying that there is no one Truth (aka, 42, or any other number, word or phrase, is not the answer to everything) does not mean that smaller truths can only be subjective. For all we know, there can be its own objective truth attached to every aspect of the universe.
And even if we take a specific aspect of the universe, it is unlikely to be described by one specific "truth" - one statement about it. It is true that the Earth revolves around the Sun, but there are also a million and one truths that can describe the Earth and the Sun. So arguing whether can can grasp the truth about something is also not very helpful. We might be able grasp one of the truths that describe this something, but not all of them. Does it mean that we understand the object/phenomena in question, or that we don't?
How to combine the idea that everybody has access to their own version of truth (metaphor of the elephant) with the understanding of biases and cognitive distortions.
Escaping the binary there is truth vs there is no truth. We are now talking of situations when people see things differently, not when someone is lying. One thing is if I say they sun is yellow and you say it’s green because of how your eyes work. The other thing is when I know it usually appears yellow to human eye but I say green because I want to confuse you. Because of us/them mentality, we assume that people who disagree with are bad and prone to lying; but people honestly see things differently. So we will leave lying out of the question. Matters of interpretation are much trickier because interpretations cannot be just discarded. They hold their own truth. Say, if we have a disagreement and you think I said something to insult you. We argue about intent. I might have said it without the conscious intent to insult you but I was angry and used a phrase that I know can be interpreted as insulting. Or maybe I was honestly trying to be supportive but you interpreted it as insulting because you are depressed. examples/cases to discuss: my fear of flying; elephants and blind men; sun or earth at the center of solar system; my ring (looks different in different light). Truth and mental conditions (depression, anxiety). Arguing about whether you said something or not vs. interpretation of the phrase. A phrase is either uttered or not - there is no third option. But even thinking that you did not say something might be because you said it automatically (so it’s not a lie if you claim that you did not say it). Interpretation is another thing.
Truth: biases.
Challenges of logic: if you give five pieces of meat to a dog, how many pieces will the dog have? Is it logical to say 5, or 0 - because the dog will eat the meat?
from “we have no idea”:
” The quest to find a Theory of Everything is an attempt to do something we have never before accomplished in science: reveal the deepest, most basic truth of our universe.”
what does it mean to reveal the truth about the universe?
Do we even have tools for that (including language, which has not been very helpful)
the authors continue:
” So far, we have proven ourselves to be pretty good at building useful descriptions of the world around us. From chemistry to economics to monkey psychology, we’ve put a lot these descriptions to work improving our lives and helping us build societies, cure diseases, and get faster Internet speeds. That these descriptions are not fundamental and describe only emergent phenomena doesn’t make them any less useful or effective.“
there might be a difference between building useful descriptions and reaching the truth
we can have an explanation that the god of sun has the day begin when he starts crossing the sky in his fiery carriage. This will help us predict that every morning the sun will come up, but will it really be the truth?
By the same token, we can see particles as moving points in space or as excitation if the fabric of space or as vibrations of tiny strings. Which one us truth?
Does this page tell the truth about truth? More like, a bunch of opinions, and it will not even cover all the opinions about truth.
A shared understanding of truth is important for the functioning of society. Examples: science and the justice system. We need to have this shared understanding for practical purposes. Having it does not mean that we cannot see its limitations.
Grannies from Bluey (fluidity/relativity of truth)
we live in the same physical reality, but interpretations differ
is the truth about physical reality or interpretations
Even simple facts: I own my clothes or do my clothes “own” me?
Information: infodemic. Is the problem that somebody is trying to deceive others by pushing false information? Or is it that, because more voices can be heard, more information can be accessed, truth has become more contested, it’s more obvious that there is no one subjective truth?
We say "she is saying the truth" as if truth is something monolithic. Whatever a person is saying is made up of a combination of statements, some of them more or less factual, more or less colored by this person's opinions. I was thinking about this as I was listing to the interview by the Russian actress Natalya Bondarchuk about the film Solaris by Andrey Tarkovsky (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgmKpWk_5Ps&ab_channel=CharlesM). I started paying attention to how some of the things she was saying can be described as "truth" (e.g., Tarkovsky was the film director of Solaris), while others were difficult to describe as facts or opinions (e.g., intended interpretation of the film, Bondarchuk's relationship with Tarkovsky, Tarkovsky's relationship with his wife, and some specific situations - how they met, how they were filming certain movie scenes, etc.). As it often happens when people tell things to each other, Bondarchuk was presenting as truth things they may or may not have been her opinion. For example, she said that Tarkovsky's wife left him in the hospital (details were unclear) when her was dying of cancer. I caught myself thinking that the whole interview cannot be described as "fact", "lie" or "opinion" - it was probably a mix of them. For example, I have read somewhere else (but then, what kind of mixture did that source present) that Bondarchuk and Tarkovsky had an affair, something that in the interview she did not mention (she said they were friends). When we read a book, see a film, listen to news, or talk to another person, we similarly encounter a mix of the three (facts, lie, opinion) or at least of the first two (admittedly, some people lie less than others). [scene from Inside Out where they say that facts and opinions get mixed up all the time].
Salaris and truth:
” What is simulated and what is real are, in Tarkovsky’s eyes, identical. As long as we believe something exists, everything else is lost in the ether.” From: https://lwlies.com/articles/solaris-andrei-tarkovsky-greatest-science-fiction-film/
Concerns about ChatGPT: it will make it even harder to get to the truth https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-ezra-klein-show-2/episode/a-skeptical-take-on-the-a-i-revolution-210560921?utm_medium=email&utm_source=sharpspring&sslid=MzKAAFMTcwtTM2MA&sseid=MzKAASMTI1MjAA&jobid=f3a7a616-9736-4693-9252-276da5a9d884
three blind men and the elephant (quote from my book)
-not wars over truth but wars over meanings
truth, interpretation, perspective : same ring but I see different colors under different lighting. Is the ring really blue or purple? Or is it more important that the ring can be blue or purple depending on the light?
-not wars over truth but wars over meanings
“Dharma is a potent Sanskrit word that is packed tight with meaning, like one of those little sponge animals that expands to six times its original size when you add water. Dharma means, variously, “path,” “teaching,” or “law.” For our purposes in this book it will mean primarily “vocation,” or “sacred duty.” It means, most of all—and in all cases—truth. Yogis believe that our greatest responsibility in life is to this inner possibility—this dharma—and they believe that every human being’s duty is to utterly, fully, and completely embody his own idiosyncratic dharma.”
SOURCES:
Wright, L. (2013). Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief. Alfred A. Knopf.
About this project: Start page