Does truth really matter?

[Red Ryder]

I'm becoming even more convinced that most things in life have an element of manipulation, subtle exaggerations, and inherent influences designed to tap into our tribal cognitive bias.

Does truth really matter when our brains are wired to support our own cognitive bias?

Does truth really matter that much? I don't believe it does anymore.

Someone please convince me I'm wrong!

[Give-me-strength]

I’m kind of in the same place as you. What is truth? It’s different for every single person. Is there ultimate truth? I don’t know anymore.

[azflyer]

This is a thread that has been running through my head for quite a long time. The only conclusion I've been able to come to is that truth is relative. As I've had these thoughts, the hymn below has had so much more meaning. I'm sure most people would interpret it to take a more absolute version of truth, but I don't. Because of the ways our brains are wired emotionally, truth, just like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

1. Oh say, what is truth? 'Tis the fairest gem
That the riches of worlds can produce,
And priceless the value of truth will be when
The proud monarch's costliest diadem
Is counted but dross and refuse.

2. Yes, say, what is truth? 'Tis the brightest prize
To which mortals or Gods can aspire.
Go search in the depths where it glittering lies,
Or ascend in pursuit to the loftiest skies:
'Tis an aim for the noblest desire.

3. The sceptre may fall from the despot's grasp
When with winds of stern justice he copes.
But the pillar of truth will endure to the last,
And its firm-rooted bulwarks outstand the rude blast
And the wreck of the fell tyrant's hopes.

4. Then say, what is truth? 'Tis the last and the first,
For the limits of time it steps o'er.
Tho the heavens depart and the earth's fountains burst,
Truth, the sum of existence, will weather the worst,
Eternal, unchanged, evermore.

[Kishkumen]

The modern word "Truthiness" comes to my mind.

Fortunately or unfortunately, everything is relative. What is beautiful or profound to one person is not to another.

We are wired to value self-preservation over 'truth'. Tribal cognitive bias is much stronger than philosophical truth relativism.

For me, accepting that Life's not fair has much more value than understanding universal truths.

[dogbite]

Human consciousness is a lossy kluge. It constructs a model of reality just barely good enough to keep you alive to pass on your genes. Accuracy, truth, are not things particularly rewarded by evolution of consciousness. We have to go out if our way and exercise rigorous controls to keep the flaws of our consciousness from deceiving us, giving us shortcut answers sufficient for survival.

Humans are terrible observers with memories easily distorted. Left to our bodies abilities alone we could never develop. It requires writing for knowledge to be cumulative and stored outside of ourselves and our innate distortions.

[redjay]

You can't handle the truth

[wtfluff]

Does truth really matter when our brains are wired to support our own cognitive bias?

Does truth really matter that much? I don't believe it does anymore.

Someone please convince me I'm wrong!

What's your definition of "truth?"

I think you'd likely agree that there are "truths" that are currently proven by science that matter.

I'd also bet that if you were dealing with a medical issue, the "truths" that you doctor shares with you based on current scientific knowledge and tests are going to be much more important than any "truths" your doctor got from emotions.

I'm pretty dang sure gravity is true. I doubt I could find too many people who would jump off of a 30-story building to attempt to prove me wrong.

[redjay]

I'd also bet that if you were dealing with a medical issue, the "truths" that you doctor shares with you based on current scientific knowledge and tests are going to be much more important than any "truths" your doctor got from emotions.

I'm pretty dang sure gravity is true. I doubt I could find too many people who would jump off of a 30-story building to attempt to prove me wrong.
[/quote]

However, people don't always want medical truths either - consider people who smoke and cite the evidence of their 90 year old uncle who has smoked since he was ten years of age and was knocked over by a bus. And evidenced-based medicine isn't a given either e.g. drug trials funded by big pharma, possibly needless/ineffective knee surgery for arthritis sufferers.

We have flat earthers and climate change deniers and advocates - despite the apparent facts of science. I'm not arguing transparent accurate information isn't important - I believe it is: asymmetric information leads to people being duped.

However, people can find themselves not wanting to know the truth if it doesn't reinforce their beliefs ("I am intelligent", "My family is saved" "I am unworthy", "I can't possibly be wrong", "I'm special" etc.).

[Hagoth]

I think we are more wired to seek certainty than to seek truth. We all want to feel like we are "right." From there it branches off in all directions based on individual personalities. Some want to feel like what they believe is right and will only look for evidences that build upon that. Others want to find truth by removing the things from their belief system that don't hold up. Some just try to stay away from any thoughts that frighten them.

I'm sure if we could yank off our cultural blinders we would all be shocked at what "truth" would look like to us then. And it would still just be scratching the surface because every piece of information that comes to us is still just an interpretation of energy waves that are translated to internal symbols by our brains.

p.s. Cthulhu lives.

[wtfluff]

However, people don't always want medical truths either - consider people who smoke and cite the evidence of their 90 year old uncle who has smoked since he was ten years of age and was knocked over by a bus. And evidenced-based medicine isn't a given either e.g. drug trials funded by big pharma, possibly needless/ineffective knee surgery for arthritis sufferers.

We have flat earthers and climate change deniers and advocates - despite the apparent facts of science. I'm not arguing transparent accurate information isn't important - I believe it is: asymmetric information leads to people being duped.

However, people can find themselves not wanting to know the truth if it doesn't reinforce their beliefs ("I am intelligent", "My family is saved" "I am unworthy", "I can't possibly be wrong", "I'm special" etc.).

Whether or not people want to believe in medical truths, spherical earth facts, or climate change facts, does not change any of those truths or facts.

Once again: Gravity as we know it is a fact. If you believe it or not doesn't matter, gravity is going to take over when you jump off of the 30 story building.

[Reuben]

It's utility that counts, not necessarily truth. But they're related.

An example of a false belief with high utility is "white people are smarter than black people" - at least, among white people in many areas of the US in the past (and unfortunately today). It serves as a unifying principle for white social groups, and a justification for helping other white people at black people's expense.

Here's the thing, though: truth and utility aren't independent. At a basic level, the more accurately our brains can assemble a model of the world around us, the longer we live on average, which is useful. (This isn't all low-level reasoning, either. It's a mind-bogglingly complex process that draws from not only sensory data but also instinct, conditioning, and a lifetime of memories.) This extends all the way up to collective reasoning such as scientific research. We survive so much better nowadays largely because of scientists' commitment to truth.

The relationship between utility and truth is so important that we're wired to experience actual emotional pain when we attempt to believe contradictions, and actual emotional rewards when we make correct predictions. Basically, our brains convert cognitive consistency into personal utility, which would be a useless thing to do if truth and utility had no relationship.

I think of it this way: within an applicable context, eventually, on average, truth is useful.

[alas]

I think there is objective truth “out there” but that all we humans can access, even with science, is subjective truth. I know that not everybody feels as I do, but I want my subjective truth as closely aligned with objective truth as I possibly can get. So, I constantly question my cultural perceptions of the world as well as my personal perceptions of the world. Because, yes, objective truth matters.

Since here is where we discuss things about the church, I will use that as an example. I was raised in the very middle of cultural Mormonism. I remember growing up, (probably 5 or 6) I said something to my father about the relative number of Mormons in my world compared to the number of nonMormons. Well, Provo UT was 80% Mormon at the time, so my perception of the world was that the world was 80% Mormon. My father told me that my perception of the world was wrong, that in the whole world, Mormons were about 1% of the world. I learned from that to question my personal perceptions of the world. I also learned EARLY that people perceive the very same “truth” differently because my father was color blind and what was green to me might be brown or pink to him and what was pink to me might be blue to him. What I called green, was for him divided between “blue, we’ll probably blue green” and “brown, muddy color”. Very tiny differences, that I had to really LOOK to see, were very important to him. So, I learned to question my perceptions of the world. My parents also taught us not to get conned by TV ads, to always look to see if someone had something to gain by what they were trying to tell us. I was also a perceptive child. I could read body language so well, that by 4 I had the Santa thing figured out and my parents figured out to such an extent that when I fell in total love with a toy frog (go figure that my first true love was a frog) and then saw my parents unspoken body language, then Mom took us to another store and Dad stayed for a few minutes, I KNEW I was getting *my* frog for Christmas from Santa and I stayed awake all night until I heard noise and knew “Santa” was there and I got up to get *my* frog.

So, I learned to both question my perceptions, and to trust them above what anyone told me. Of course my parents TOLD that I had to leave the frog there, but there was that unspoken body language that I saw, and which was the truth? So, while I was deep in Mormon culture, I was also immune to indoctrination. I trusted what people didn’t say above what they did. I learned to look for the truth that lay hidden under what people were teaching me. This was kind of a habit of double and triple checking to make sure things matched. Gravity is good because people teach the same things as I can observe. Church is not good because they are teaching me about this supper spiritual 14 year old boy and my own observations that 14 year old boys were NOTHING like that, and the stories told about this man as a grown up show an arrogant??? Tilt. Somewhere there was objective truth between or under what I was being taught and what I myself saw.

So, I learned there was objective truth that may not be obvious that I needed to search for, but it was the only safe “truth” out there. The objective truth is not that “this flower is pink,” but that there are wave lengths of light that our eyes pick up or fail to pick up and while we agree as a culture that “this flower is pink” we have only agreed as a culture to call a particular wave length of light pink, and a similar but slightly different wave length violet. So, there is no objective truth behind the color of the flower, only cultural truth and the objective truth needs a machine to measure where that wave length is on the spectrum. Different regions of the country can call the same shade of bluish pink either pink or violet which is a variation not in the color of flower, but the culturally agreed upon name of that color.

But back to the church, the “objective truth” under the cultural truth is valuable because objective truth doesn’t get you falling off a cliff when your particular culture teaches you there is no cliff. For example big oil cultural truth is that there is no such thing as global climate change. But the bjective truth is that the annual temperatures are going up all over the world. So, big oil’s cultural truth has the current #1 politician believing there is no climate change and leading the world over a cliff. Now, church. The Mormon beliefs about the worth of females and how God protects the people he loves ran me over an emotional cliff. So, I had to pick up the broken pieces and figure out if the cultural truth I was raised in was objectively true.

It really helped to be able to do that and get myself out of that cultural truth that was harming me. Objective truth MATTERS when you find your cultural truth dysfunctional.

[redjay]

However, people don't always want medical truths either - consider people who smoke and cite the evidence of their 90 year old uncle who has smoked since he was ten years of age and was knocked over by a bus. And evidenced-based medicine isn't a given either e.g. drug trials funded by big pharma, possibly needless/ineffective knee surgery for arthritis sufferers.

We have flat earthers and climate change deniers and advocates - despite the apparent facts of science. I'm not arguing transparent accurate information isn't important - I believe it is: asymmetric information leads to people being duped.

However, people can find themselves not wanting to know the truth if it doesn't reinforce their beliefs ("I am intelligent", "My family is saved" "I am unworthy", "I can't possibly be wrong", "I'm special" etc.).

Whether or not people want to believe in medical truths, spherical earth facts, or climate change facts, does not change any of those truths or facts.

Once again: Gravity as we know it is a fact. If you believe it or not doesn't matter, gravity is going to take over when you jump off of the 30 story building.

The objectivity of fact is not the whole story. Surely an acceptance and awareness of the truth matters? Yes, if you jump off a thirty story building gravity is going to take over - but most of us, in our right minds know that. But when you can't access that fact through deceit (imposed by others or self), or plain ignorance; then that IS hazardous, e.g. taking up snakes because you refuse to believe they will bite you, engaging in prosperity gospel thinking because you refuse to accept that you will end up out of pocket after giving your money to a church, not immunising children because you believe the vaccine puts children at risk of autism etc.

[wtfluff]

The objectivity of fact is not the whole story. Surely an acceptance and awareness of the truth matters? ...

Well, again, we would have to have to define "truth" wouldn't we?

And it would seem that acceptance and awareness of truth doesn't matter to some people. It might be to their detriment, but that's their choice isn't it? Even if the are unaware of a fact because of deceit or something else, that still doesn't change the fact.

So I guess I would use the same statement about "acceptance and awareness" just like belief: Neither acceptance or awareness can change facts.

[RubinHighlander]

Someone please convince me I'm wrong!

Lately I've been feeling like humanity may not be able to overcome tribalism and the problems associated with the intertwining of emotion and logic, interfering with our ability to make rational decisions on behalf of the species. If we don't nuke ourselves or the Universe causes our mass extinction, perhaps artificial silicon based life forms will take over and be the next evolutionary advancement of what this universe is cable of. But, they my also carry on the flaws of the homo sapiens that built them and have their own issues with their existence.

At least some of us are aware of our flawed tribal biased emotional view of the world and can sometimes modify our filters. It seems most of humanity just doesn't care. I just have to lean on the side of science and not think about it too much. Or I head out to the lake or mountains with a little jazz cabbage and escape from it all for a while.

Sorry, that wasn't much convincing.

[redjay]

The objectivity of fact is not the whole story. Surely an acceptance and awareness of the truth matters? ...

(1)Well, again, we would have to have to define "truth" wouldn't we?

(2) but that's their choice isn't it?

On point (1) that can be a pretty wide discussion, the Philosophy of Epistemology, Scientific proof (at what confidence level, interval level?), widely held assumptions. I'm happy to go with verifiable observed phenomena or probably just about anything you propose.

On point (2) Not a fully informed choice. The issue is that people do not always make fully informed decisions due to having poor information either through a lack of information being available or through self-censorship and bias. So with restricted information, the choice is restricted. Consider the efforts of public health professionals to get people to engage in sanitation or adopt safe sex practices. Although both are important and have bullet proof evidence that they save lives, getting people to change their behaviours can be difficult, due to belief and habit - why? Often because the target population refuses to accept what they are being told.

There's a whole fascinating body of work out there supporting the notion that people are irrational. Behavioural economics challenges the notion that people are rational entities that maximise utility. Thinking fast and slow by Kahneman and Predictably Irrational by Ariely are fun books if you like a bit of accessible psychology written by academics. It's an area I really quite enjoy. Thanks for the exchange.

[MerrieMiss]

Lately I've been feeling like humanity may not be able to overcome tribalism and the problems associated with the intertwining of emotion and logic, interfering with our ability to make rational decisions on behalf of the species. If we don't nuke ourselves or the Universe causes our mass extinction, perhaps artificial silicon based life forms will take over and be the next evolutionary advancement of what this universe is cable of. But, they my also carry on the flaws of the homo sapiens that built them and have their own issues with their existence.

Tribalism is neither good or bad - it's a part of our nature that enabled us to evolve to where we are today. Humans would have great difficulty surviving as solitary animals. Because of tribalism, we have agriculture, space exploration, vaccinations, architecture, and have created democracies, art, literature and so on. Of course, with the ability to create good with each other comes the ability to commit genocide, engage in war, and enslave each other. I think the key is maintaining a balance and I'm optimistic that in general, humanity is moving to a better place than it has ever been.

[MerrieMiss]

Does truth really matter?

Isn't this the post-modern problem we're in now? For a couple of decades the idea that truth is subjective has permeated the culture and as a result we have people who believe the earth is flat, antivaxxers, and people who believe essential oils are better than antibiotics.

A child may not know the word gravity or understand Newton or Einstein (I'm not sure most adults do, myself included), but they still know they shouldn't jump off a cliff. There could be a dozen reasons why they think it's a bad idea and not one of then may be True, but that doesn't make the belief any less helpful.

Maybe there is no Truth. Maybe there is no free will. But unless we live and believe like there is, we devolve into the madness we're seeing now.

[FiveFingerMnemonic]

We all live in our own "movie" in our consciousness that is different from other's movies, yet most of us figure out how to propagate the species and continue to live and succeed despite having totally different perceptions of reality.

[Hagoth]

...on average, truth is useful.

Boyd K. Packer might take exception to that.