The value of truth is more important today than ever before, and modern society's interest in it seems to be lower than ever before.
That scares me, and I'm not willing to let truth be devalued. I will step on toes and be "right" if I am pushing truth, especially when pushing it on "deniers" and other politically- or otherwise-motivated falsehood peddlers.
- What if someone claims that your truth is based on different data or perspectives than their own?
- How can you reliably expect to cement truth when data or educated perspectives may change with time, especially if they are based on news or new events/research?
- Who gets to decide what truth is? Do you? Why? Is it because you're convinced that you're a "truthful" person as a subjective-experiential observation?
- How do you identify a liar? What is to be done with them? Who gets to decide?
My subjective experience is that the establishment of truth, or reconciliation with such questions, is a deeper topic than many are willing to credit.
I'll be controversial and offer that it may be helpful to view "truth" as just one more mental model; broken in some ways, just like any other mental model. (If this leads to fears of e.g. rampant dishonesty, maybe that also points to the fragility of the model)
If interest in truth is really lower than ever before, it may be related to aspects like these.
My concern is more with intellectual dishonesty and naive, shallow understanding.
An uneducated person who knows he is uneducated has more truth to him than an uneducated person who thinks he knows a lot and holds forth with BS.
There is more knowledge in the world than a single person ever learn.
Unfortunately if one has a mental model for this or that, and that model yields only a perception, that person has _maybe_ half a mental model. That means one can expect little traction and lots of frustration. The effective model will yield energy (instructive, actionable, or otherwise) toward the execution of this or that action or group of actions. Perceptions alone can be really concerning for sure...
> naive, shallow understanding
I'd say the same here, but add that there's usually a depth in there somewhere. For example, shallow understanding but deep empathy--_therefore_ that person showed up to support your opponent, for example. So can you expect to teach that person, in order to sway them? Probably not. Working the empathy side of things though--this could even be a really fruitful discussion for both sides.
Concerning, and frustrating, for sure...still, the journey may be worth the stretching and growing.
(I'll offer that these may be maddening perspectives, but that does not itself mean they are invalid)
If you want to reconcile or come to a shared understanding with flat-earthers, it may help to meet them where they are at, and show them why their mental models are effective and truth-yielding in some ways, while also limited in others. It may also help to understand their psychology, and work from a different angle. Wielding "wrong" as one's only tool can limit the opportunity to try a variety of such approaches, and test for effect.
Absolute truth is a mental model. It may have its uses, but its own absolute utility or validity is not guaranteed. Further it may do one great intellectual or psychological harm to remain caught in this logical trap: It feels so right, but its key doesn't fit all these locks (others' annoying positions). So why keep using it over and over? Humans can be amazingly flexible thinkers, holding contradicting mental models in the same mind. So why not take advantage of this? Absolutes and fixed thinking are a huge liability in this way.
Edited to add: In most cases the stakes are lower, too. Global warming probably won't be solved by one person's mental models, no matter how absolute or flexible and thoughtful. So there's also a misleading aspect, perhaps a falsehood-perspective, to the given examples. See also: Was so-and-so the dictator good in some ways, or pure evil, etc. These questions may belie the hyperbolic beginner mind more than they form a high-quality test of the framework.
It's difficult to accept that some individuals will never be open to a change of mind, or maybe that the patience required is too much.
And that's also a really good reason to have a simple framework to help with the moderation of effort, if the goal is to change a mind. For example, at the very least it may need to be understood that such a process could take years and years. It's not even just a logical precision or debater-quality question; it's also a question of energy, relationship values, and emotion.
I'd add that at an individual level there are also some leverage points that aren't available at a group level. For example, you can sometimes more quickly identify and speak to an individual's value system. E.g. are they afraid of being closed-minded in general, and as such do they get sucked up into every conspiracy that comes along? Usually there are a lot of little values that add up, within the individual. Walking through these can bring outside perspectives to an individual's awareness more quickly, as perhaps-unconscious motives are made conscious.
Your point about the value system is intriguing. In my experience, debate has always been more fulfilling on the individual level, since it feels like the exchange of ideas comes more easily. Trying to expand this to a wider audience takes much more effort like you described.
What are the ideas, and why isn't there any room for debate? It seems like a bit of an imaginative and wide-open perception to yield much traction for the purposes of this discussion.
> I can't come in with some creative new idea and implement it with out first learning the right way to build a bridge
Hmm, is there "a" right way? What size is the bridge? For what use? I can build a Lego bridge that's pretty strong. Did I just meet nature at its bridge-building rules while not knowing your right way, or are those rules perhaps more nuanced than expected? Also, are we sure that the imaginary creative idea in question is in total disagreement with nature? What if it's fitting observed perceptions? Perhaps it has leverage in this way or that. Again there's not much else to be said in the conceptual zone here. I'd also add that dichotomous model like "adapt or suffer" is in my experience a common sign of a mental model which may be in need of further adaptation :-)
I would offer that the questions you ask do seem to point at a fixed mental position, around which theoretical and intractable constructs are arranged as seems most expeditious to the closure of the discussion. If that's what you really want, permission to go your way and think your thoughts without others butting in with details, then you don't really need a partner with whom to reach that decision. But there's also no guarantee that relevant and contextual details won't cause someone in your position considerable philosophical trouble in the future, around this fixed concept of truth...
I think there is truth and that we have to drop our egos and continually adapt and understand. To be honest I think that humanities ego has never been bigger, postmodernism is a symptom of this, and we are suffering more than we need to because of it.
So what you have to ask is, who's doing this thing, and why? What factors are involved? Details. Otherwise the solution will fail to the extent that it is divorced from context. And that's no way to develop policy, be it personal or public. This kind of fixed, non-adaptive thinking leads to the Judge Judy phenomenon, rewriting public policy discourse as shallow "common sense" pornography for what amounts to entertainment for armchair critics.
Your summary of my position as "no truth" is also unfair to the details, since I communicated upthread that multiple truths and perspectives may exist, and that this can create a smarter approach to problem-solving. This is true even in computer programming, where multiple, conflicting truths about an object can be reconciled, simulated and leveraged. But the trick is depth, and details. That's why there's no computer program that stops everyone from driving in oncoming traffic. By itself it's not a useful rule in that it fails to account for the exceptions.
What seems to be happening at the end of your comment is that you have a set of perceptions from your past, these exist as fixed labels or categories in your mind, and you are attempting to map them onto my words without so much as asking if they're relevant. Which, unfortunately, they're not. Postmodernism needn't be involved; these ideas predate it by quite a stretch. So while your conclusion seems to have felt therapeutic, it's also a communication of subjective-emotive values, and not quite ready for logical and useful public discourse.
Anyway, I'll continue to treat you as an equal and tell you straight that I think you are being dishonest throughout this exchange. Most people when asked the question about driving in the wrong lane would give me the benefit of the doubt and assume that it wasn't the highly unusual situation you describe. I think your know full well what I meant but you chose to come at it like a lawyer (which is what I mean by dishonest). In order to prevent that I'll try to lock it down:
Would you agree that if you routinely drive down the wrong side of the highway when it is fully open to the public and there are cars driving against you in the lane that you are in that in that case you are likely to suffer as a result of your failure to adapt your model to that of the rest of the society around you?
Knee jerk black and white statements are very rarely correct.
This seems to get more and more emotional, but even if not so, I would suggest that people who feel it's an absolute truth that every lawyer is dishonest are really doing the legal world a disservice by not at least offering training via ethics courses.
I also admit to being frustrated at the unfairness of the argument, in which I've communicated several times a point that gets at the crux of the issue: Real context and details. Both are needed.
So what happened was: I encouraged you to think about real context, and instead you added more details to the fake example, turning it into a corner case and making it an exceptional situation as opposed to a workable general example justifying absolute truth. In effect you've further marginalized the reality and utility of the absolute truth idea.
Your sense of the existence of absolute truth is apparently held hostage by unrealistic conceptual examples, turning it into a straw man, which I hope you can understand I'm not interested in debating...
"There are, after all, no post-fact conversations when we talk about how to build a bridge, for example."
I don't know if I would be able to function in a world where this kind of statement had to be qualified every time. The editor of Die Zeit appears to think similarly. So it looks like there's at least three of us who think like this. But you're not alone either. Each to their own.
Only on perverse semantics. You can always provide a plausible-sounding semantic model of any proposition stated in natural language that renders that proposition true or false. But natural language utterances actually do mean things despite their inherent ambiguity. When someone says "Smoking causes cancer" they mean, "Smoking a lot produces a statistically significant increase in your risk of developing cancer." They do not mean, "Smoking one cigarette is guaranteed to give you cancer." Picking at semantic nits is counterproductive. There's probably even a name for it as a logical fallacy but I'm too lazy and frustrated at the general state of discourse in the world to bother looking it up right now.
Hmm. I'm curious as to the value of attaching such an archaic, subjective values-oriented term as "perverse" to the label here. What does "perverse" mean in this context, and is it really expected to sway opinions with what appears on its face to be rather emotional language?
> But natural language utterances actually do mean things despite their inherent ambiguity
This statement seems to work in anyone's favor, or no one's, where the argument is concerned...
> Smoking a lot produces a statistically significant increase in your risk of developing cancer
With an error rate of...zero? With a bell curve of...? With a qualitatively superior study based on the population of...? Let us have the study. Let us tear it apart. What do we have to lose by admitting that smoking may not cause cancer in this way or that one?
> They do not mean, "Smoking one cigarette is guaranteed to give you cancer"
Your assumption, but not mine. For all I know, smoking one cigarette may do the job.
> Picking at semantic nits is counterproductive.
Why? Details are important.
> There's probably even a name for it as a logical fallacy
Even logical fallacies are not fallacies when they are relevant to the discussion at hand. This is Logical Fallacy 101--see the "Fallacy Fallacy".
> I'm too lazy and frustrated at the general state of discourse in the world to bother looking it up right now.
This is discourse, right here. Bringing frustration into it is fine, but there's no guarantee it won't affect the quality of the discourse...
Shooting yourself in the head causes an early death.
Eating sugar causes an early death.
All of those are true in some cases and false for others. Nuance matters because that’s where the truth actually is. You don’t convince people who disagree with you by loudly yelling the generality - they know the generality and already disagree with it. Dig deeper.
Some prefer actionable predictions, so will favor beliefs which lead to higher quality predictions. Belief as optimization.
Which value is represented by statements such as there is no truth, truth is unknowable, we make our own reality?
Edit: Grateful for chance to articulate my own heuristics. Decided to add third category. All the stuff people do and say just to get thru their days. Knowingly or not, sincerely or not. Social graces, agreeability, cooperation in the form of habits, idioms, norms, and culture. Belief as social cognition.
Stating something that is empirically and objectively true will not change someone's belief if they're not already open to it. It will bounce right off them if they have a strong emotional attachment to their belief.
And some people are bad actors. They lie knowingly, and they cannot be debunked with facts, because they're playing a different game.
So much in politics and propaganda (and marketing, and elements of management) is about stock techniques for managing the emotions of groups and individuals. The emotional control provides leverage which can then be converted into beliefs, and eventually into desired actions.
This is a tough and unflattering lesson to learn, but - unfortunately - it seems to be how these things really do work.
Telling your climate change denying uncle he's an idiot won't change his mind, but it will ruin thanksgiving. That's why it's important to consider if your emotions are leading you to do something counterproductive.
Usually it does change his mind if he respects you enough. It wont work on a stranger but it is very effective on long term friends.
Why is there selected group of people and opinions who can run their mouths and everyone else must shut up else they destroyed the event?
This is nice example how something completely different: social hierarchy where it is super importsnt to keep illusion that some people are right.
Mathematics tells you what is not possible, but it tells you nothing about what exists. Every other discipline is separated from truth by bias in observation. And there are no perfect observers.
So, pushing "truth" is really pushing a specific perception.
That said.. you can fight against "false".
>Seeming to be right justifies disrespect, contempt, and other forms of emotional pollution
I don't think it's about being right per se, but that feeling that you are right often also makes you feel justified in being an awful jerk to other people. This is especially true online. In my experience, the people who pride themselves on being brutally honest are more interested in the "brutal" part.
And this behavior often hinders the spread of truth, because while rationally we should simple evaluate arguments on their own merits, in reality no one likes being treated badly and so people are going to be less receptive to even true statements delivered in an abusive way.
The facile response to this is to cry that we're supposed to never say anything or do that would upset people so we have to hide the truth, but this is ridiculous. There's a huge gulf between being an asshole and never saying anything. Being right isn't a license to be a terrible person, and it would serve those in interested in the truth to remember that.
A deontological ethic, doing the right thing regardless of the consequences is still my favourite, but nature is rolling over to a consequentialist maximization of profits at the expense of everybody.
yes... i think this boils down to basically the difference of "being right" vs "doing the right thing"
But who’s truth is it?
Also the articles point is about having compassion for others not winning the argument.
Climate, social change, technology, development, covid response etc..
Best example: Masks.
Do they help?
Probably somewhat, but possibly not. There was the very real concern overall that masks might give people a sense of confidence. Any 'reduction in hand-washing' would offset mask usage.
In the early stages, the plan was to not create 100x demand for masks (I mean, there was going to be 10x no matter what) by suppressing public need for them, so as to get the PPE to medical workers. (Not sure if that was the right move, but there's logic in it.)
Once the mask-making gears are moving into production, then the new perspective means 'masks can become more of a requirement for regular people'. So the equilibrium shifts, and then, 'as a whole, we should wear masks'. i.e. a 'new truth' to be propagated.
To any regular person sitting on the sidelines, it has to be confusing, and we should forgive people for being cynical that the press was screaming from day one 'don't use masks, you're not responsible enough and they need to go to doctors, they are in desperate short supply' to a few weeks later: 'wear a mask or you are an inconsiderate redneck'.
So 'new realities, create new 'truths'' in a way.
Even more nuanced 'truthiness':
Right now on CNN you see these graphs of COVID 'spiking' again in America --> 'scary'.
But - when you look at the graph of deaths it tells a completely different story. Mostly, it's still going down with a little bump recently.
Have a look [1]
The 'more complicated truth' is that the US has been expanding testing a lot, and possibly different kinds of people are getting infected (younger?), more people are taking it, and the rate fatality is dropping.
So what is the 'truth' there? Can we blame CNN for showing a chart every day, when technically speaking its 'factual'? But in reality it doesn't really tell the whole story at all and is potentially misleading? Or what about the responsibility of mass media to err on the side of being conservative (small 'c') so as to promote positive behaviour, in that people need to 'feel' the pandemic is material, or they won't wear masks.
For those people with the intelligence, means, education and wherewithal, ok, it's possible to 'sift through' the headlines, but most aren't in a position to do that, they have 'real jobs, real lives, diapers to change' and so the 'truth' is always going to be in flux.
[1] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ So it's often very complicated.
Where was this stated officially? I see this repeated a lot, but it would be nice to have a primary source.
CDC at the end of March was saying:
> If you are NOT sick: You do not need to wear a facemask unless you are caring for someone who is sick (and they are not able to wear a facemask). Facemasks may be in short supply and they should be saved for caregivers.
There is no collateral damage if half the planet believes the world is flat. You don't need to be "right" with these people.
Anti-vaxxers are a different story. Their "wrong" directly infringes on my liberty and, thus, yes, being "right" is extremely important.
Anti vaxxers don't seem to realistically cause terrible issues in the amounts of them (currently). People who believe HAES seems way more socially accepted yet has a larger impact on the healthcare system, consumer products and food offerings, yet there's way less dislike of them than anti vaxxers. Why is that?