From: Charles Hixson (charleshixsn@earthlink.net)
Date: Sat Aug 31 2002 - 12:05:36 MDT
On Saturday 31 August 2002 01:46, Lee Corbin wrote:
>
> ...
> It seems to me that almost always the truth is obtained
> after enough decades. What was very controversial about
Perhaps you mean a consensus is agreed on? I'm not sure that the decay of
evidence ever improves the truth of the conclusions. It meerly means that
you loose the complexity (except occasionally when once hidden evidence
surfaces).
> ...
> I hope that that does not mean that some of these
> controversies will, as you fear, never be settled
> because too many of us live forever!? Well, that's
> a small price to pay, actually, if we live :-)
Controversies are always settled. People loose interest, and that settles the
matter. This is different from truth.
>...
>
> Lee
Truth probably only exists in an axiomitzed framework. It certainly can't be
derived from a historical reconstruction. High probability, perhaps, and
consensus, usually, but not truth. Truth is when the probability reaches
100%, and that doesn't happen in the physical universe. If you look instead
for the "best guess" or "highest probability" then you have much better odds.
I wish that I could believe that this was meerly nitpicky, but it doesn't seem
to be. People seem to become fixated on "truth", and when they can't reach
real certainty, they reach for fantastic things that might "really be true".
Just consider the slogan of the X-Files (about all I know about them, sorry)
"The truth is out there!". It isn't. If you started talking about how to
estimate the probabilities of various ways of making crop circles, people
would quickly realize that aliens from flying saucers had a very low
probability, but when you start talking about "how they really happened" the
aliens pop right up. Possibly the mechanism is something different, so this
could be really wrong, but that's the way it seems to work, and I haven't
found a decent explanation as to why. But "Truth" and "Really" seem to tie
into the same circuits as religious worship, and evoke the same kinds of
belief and explanations.
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