Abandoning Truth

[andrewducker]

Everything is possible, nothing is True.

While growing up I was obsessed with Truth, with finding out what was true, being right and finding the best methods for isolating the truth.

Over several years that got changed from "finding the truth" to "getting closer to the truth, even though you can't get there."

Inspired by some arguments about science that I've been reading, I've decided that a change in definition is needed:

I'm interested in theories with predictive power. That is, I'm interested in ideas that, when given information about the present can tell me something about how the future is likely to be. Now, the predictions will not be 100% accurate, but that's just fine, they need to be accurate enough for the context that they are being used for.

Newton's laws of physics, for instance, aren't Truth, they aren't even the most accurate predictive theories we have for plotting the movement of objects (relativity superseded them), but in the context in which they are used, they work perfectly well.

If I accept that there is no accessible truth (which I did, back in 1995 or so), then I'm left with gossip and opinion on the meaning of that gossip. Most of the gossip is stuff that I can just accept with a grain of salt and place in the "events people have reported on, of which I have no first hand knowledge" folder.

"President Bush invaded Iraq to save the innocent Iraqis", "President Bush invaded Iraq to protect the oil business", "President Bush invaded Iraq to stop Saddam getting Nukes.", "President Bush invaded Iraq because Saddam had his father shot." Nobody will ever know which one of these is true, except for George Bush himself, and no amount of blustering about the subject will find out what his personal motives were. you simply have to read as widely as possible and weigh up the opinions you read, certainly not a recipe for truth by any means.

Opinions are more reliable in general terms, when dealing with masses of people and making statistical generalisations. Similarly, predicting the behaviour of a single atom is impossible, but when they cluster together it's possible to be fairly precise about their combined movements (changes in pressure, for instance).

But which opinions are worth taking and which aren't? Well, the ones that are reproducible are obviously better than the ones that aren't - all sorts of results will occasionally occur by happenstance, but if a result is repeatable then chances are it has some value. If it has predictive value then it's even better - i.e. explaining why something you can see happens is one thing, but explaining something that you haven't seen yet and then finding it indicates that you are definitely on the right track.

So there you go - theories with predictive power. They aren't as catchy as 'truths', and they depend on lots of that 'context' stuff that causes so many arguments, but they're a lot more realistic than Truth, and you're liable to bump into a lot more of them out there in the real world.

Comments

[kpollock.livejournal.com]

As often happens, you are following the same track as me, just your usual 5-10 years later :-)

I wonder who I am following????

[andrewducker]

As I said, I accepted the lack of accessibility of truth back in 1995 (or so), in the year after graduating. So not as far behind as all that :-P

I'm actually reiterating an article by Dawkins, to be honest, that I read a few years back, only not as well. I just felt like saying it myself.

[kpollock.livejournal.com]

As I said, 5-10 years behind :-P In fact ai'm nto sure that I ever believed in ultiamte truth (though I think I was trying half heartedly in the late 80's)

Nothing wrong with re-iterating, but where the other person has put it better than you can I'd include a link (or at least the name of the book or article).

[diffrentcolours]

Interesting. olethros, wehmuth and rainbowskye were discussing trust metrics in the media on IRC earlier. My Cunning Plan for a web browser extension may form the first part of this...

[andrewducker]

The problem with trust metrics is "trust them to do what?"

[diffrentcolours]

On the one hand, you get the immediate effect. A trust metric can be used to say that a person "trusts" a story, in that it seems to come from a reputable source, is corroborated by other stories, blah di blah. On the other hand, you can have trust networks - if I trust a person to make good calls about the trustworthiness of articles, I'm going to trust articles that they have indicated are trustworthy, although not as much as ones I've verified myself.

[wolflady26.livejournal.com]

Truth is a really important thing to many people, but how many really think of the definition of truth?

I was thinking about it after I read this post, and about the closest to a definition that I liked that I could come up with was:

"The complete set of circumstances defining or explaining a specific event."

I think this definition helps to make it clear why it is so difficult to find "the truth," because the key word is "complete".

For example, even your Iraq example implies that one of those options is the truth, we just can't know for sure which. But in reality, the "truth" is probably composed of all of those options, plus some more we don't even know about. If that were the case, anyone who asserts that the reason for the war in Iraq is one of those options is right, but not completely right. And because he or she would not be completely right, what they are saying would not be the truth.

That the truth does not exist is blatently, well, untrue. The attack happened, and there is a true reason for the attack. The problem is, the truth is probably so complicated, that even an exhaustive interview with George W. cooperating 100% to the best of his abilities probably wouldn't end up with the complete answer. Maybe he has an ingrained fear or resentment of Iraq that sprouted during the Gulf War that even he doesn't realize. Maybe he didn't have a complete breakfast on the morning he made the decision to attack, and therefore was more on edge than normal, not that this factored into his conscious process.

And so long as the answer is not complete, it is not truly True.

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

Congratulations, Andrew.

You are now a scientist.

[andrewducker]

Thbpppppppppppppppppppppppppppt!!!

[heron61.livejournal.com]

It's always seemed obvious to me that all truths are largely to completely subjective. However, knowing what someone believes to be the truth can tell you a lot about them, which is useful data. Also, as long as your own model of truth is mostly self-consistent and predicts the experiences you need to deal with reasonable well, it's as good as any other.

That said, I'm fairly satisfied with the predictive power of my truth that Bush is a would-be theocratic dictator with no respect for freedom or the lives of anyone not loyal to him and his beliefs.

[spaj.livejournal.com]

Well:

I kinda see what you're saying. It um... seems a little obvious? No, more than that. It's the way things are, if you're only going to search for truth half-heartedly.

It was once shouted loudly across a court room that "you can't handle the truth". It's not far wrong. For you, Andrew Ducker, to find out the "truth" about, for example why George Bush invaded Iraq would require such exertive efforts on your part as to change your life entirely. And even then, success wouldn't be guaranteed. As you said, there is no accessible truth.

Well, not entirely. Take your postuations on why George bush invaded Iraq: At no point did you question that G. Bush invaded Iraq. That is a truth, dare I say it? (Obviously, it's possible that the TV, and radio have been malfunctioning in just such a way to broadcast messages to say this, and people around you have all been having torrets attacks about it, sufficient to confuse you into thinking that it has been invaded, whereas infact it has not, but the possibility is remote. And very very silly. And although sience has to be prepared for "silly", it generally realises that it is "silly" and puts it in a box marked "SILLY".

So, there is a possibility that Iraq wasn't invaded. There is a possibility that this post was made by an accident from an ISP, and it just so happens to be completely coherent. But if you are prepared to have a box marked "SILLY", you can accept that some things are true. Or at least that, if you have to go into the box marked SILLY, ascribing meaning to anything becomes impossible.

Scientific truths, again, box marked SILLY.

Anyway, tired now. Hungry too. Gunna go do something to fix that.

Adam

[andrewducker]

Or at least that, if you have to go into the box marked SILLY, ascribing meaning to anything becomes impossible.

Yes, there is truth, but it';s not accessible, because you access the universe through your senses, which are fallible, and through interaction which is both fallible and affects things.

Anythig you handle is no longer the truth :->

[spaj.livejournal.com]

Yes. Falable senses.

You could be suspended in a tank, a-la the matrix. You could be dreaming, or this could all be one giant drugs trip.

Put all of those into the box marked silly. There's no way you can ever know if those things are true, and they can never have any impact on your life. They will not help you ascribe meaning, past accepting that there is a box marked silly. And you said you'd accepted that in 1995?

So the things you handle with your senses once again become true, with an except for clause, and an arrow pointing to that big old box.

Adam.

[andrewducker]

That's _totally_ fallible senses.

Your senses are innacurate _all_ the time. They approximate, guess and fill in the blanks.

When shown a murky video of a scuffling pair, with one person being stabbed, a third of all people asked to describe the attacker said he was black. Both people were white. Not because they were knowingly racist, but because their minds filled in the gaps with what they expected to see.

There are immense problems with witness descriptions, because what people think they see is frequently not what they actually saw.

[spaj.livejournal.com]

way off topic andy.

A third of people aren't going to be fooled about Iraq having been invaded. Senses are fallible, but Iraq was invaded. And, putting several silly options in the silly box, there you have a workable truth. Like you say, it's not 100% accurate, but like you say, nothing can be.

This smells of "typing for the sake of typing" rather than furthering the discussion Andy. I expected more from you. ;)

Adam

[andrewducker]

Exactly on-topic. I started the topic, and this was it.

Andy: "Over several years that got changed from "finding the truth" to "getting closer to the truth, even though you can't get there."

You said (paraphrasing) "Well, you could decide the universe is illusion, but place that in the box marked silly and then you can trust your senses."

I said (paraphrasing): "I'm not going that far, I'm talking about the basic fact that your senses do not report Truth, they report bits of truth, mixed in with preconceptions and guesswork."

You said: "That's off-topic."

And then you agreed that it's not 100%, but is 'Workable truth', which is what I was talking about in the first place - what makes some truth workable and some not - my conclusion being "theories with predictive power" are workable.

Leaving aside your insults, I'm really not sure what you're getting at here.

[spaj.livejournal.com]

Well, firstly, there was one insult, and it was followed by a winky. ;) Meaning I am not being serious.

What I'm getting at is that you didn't really go far enough into "why truths were impossible". And I think that theories with predictive power is too airy fairy to accurately portray the way that we see the world.

Let me illustrate:

You mentioned Newtown's laws of motion, (which have been, as you mentioned, superseded). Let's look at gravity:

If I drop an object, it falls down.

This, as I perceive it is a truth, short of silly.

It could be co-incidence that every time any object has ever been dropped, it has fallen down. If you flip an infinite number of coins an infinite number of times, an infinite number of them will only ever come up heads. So maybe it's just luck. Things like this are scientifically feasible (omg spelling). But I feel that they belong in the box marked silly.

Where I drift away from your theory is when you tell me that my senses are fallable. I find it difficult to conceive that I'm going to mistake an object falling down for an object falling up, in most circumstances. I'll be the first to recall the optical illusion of the car rolling up the hill. Certainly. But when I hear the object hit the ground, and I feel it, as I'm picking it up from the floor...

How fallable are my senses here? Do objects fall when you drop them? I say yes.

Did we invade Iraq? I say yes.

Why did George Bush invade Iraq? god knows. Theories with predictive power all the way.

But there are many things which, aside from the SILLY box, have to be true. Even with fallable senses.

What I'm getting at is that the box marked silly is a pretty silly thing to give consideration to. Equaly, the fallability of your senses seems a minor thing.

Unless I've totally missed the point?

Adam

[andrewducker]

Simnple things with almost no possibility of being mistaken - sure, you can be 99.999999999995 certain, at which point you agree that yes, it's effectively true outside of silliness.

But so much of life is made up of more complex things than that. All human interaction with other humans, for instance, is full of inferences, assumptions, etc. An awful lot of witness statements turn out to be similar. For a long time people thought the earth was flat, because, well, it looks flat in a lot of ways.

The brain is evolved to do some tasks very well, but because it's specialised it's easily foolable too. Which is good, because otherwise we wouldn't be fooled by small dots changing colour (when watching tv) and bad, because the wrong person gets sent to jail, and people spend 30 years in a vendetta over simple misunderstandings.

[spaj.livejournal.com]

Right. I'm happier with that. It's just not what I got from my first reading. Thanks for going through it with me.

I absolutely accept that the senses are fallable. But I also think that there are certain things which are out and out true.

Adam