The Truth Is Out There
I’m an X-files fan, I admit it. I love a search for the truth but there is a major problem.
Truth and reality are constrained by the observers knowledge, wisdom and measurement (senses). We know that scientific process is designed to maximize observation, but it is still always so constrained.
While you have not obtained perfection in the senses (and the sciences) you can never begin to come close to the truth. The more knowledge you acquire the less certain you become about the truth of things. I think it’s a bit like a persons age having an inverse relationship to the knowledge the feel they have. The older you get the more you realise you don’t know.
So my aim is not to seek absolute truth but instead to simply close the theoretical gap and then be a creator. Apply the gain, the improved understanding, the better knowledge.
I love fables, here’s one I quickly made up to demonstrate my point about how truth despite being so blatantly obvious to everyone as observers can be absolutely wrong. My previous post in jest about letting my kids believe in Santa relates to this point. It applies equally to business such as what you think you customers want and who you think your market demographic is.
Ambitious Ant Seeks Truth
An ambitious ant is seeking the truth. He spends a lot of time trying to understand his world. One day determined to know the truth he goes on a mission. A month later he returns and the colony welcomes him. In his great returning speech to the colony he makes a profound declaration “I have traveled further than any ant in my colony has before. It has taken me nearly my whole life, a whole month, but I have discovered that there are grasses 100,000 times as big as ours with vast numbers of large round leaves on massively high stems. It takes a whole day to walk around one of these stems, I’ll call it a tree and the stem I’ll call a trunk. The universe is made up of trees and between them is the grasslands we live in. They appear to have existed long before our kind. So knowing this truth, I declare as your leader, that I will now be making the decisions for the colony based on this new truth and knowledge, the reality of our world.” The ant’s quest for knowledge rewarded their species with a better life, new foods from the great trees. However the truth was short lived. The next day one drop of ant-rid killed the entire colony and the Ants obviously never observed the cause of their demise.
How naive can the ant be, obviously we humans are the most advanced creatures in the universe. Just ask the majority of people who know this to be the truth due to the lack of evidence to suggest otherwise.
To continue the story. In 2100 A.D. (earth time) the Universe scratches the itch on its bum. Amongst fellow Universes it is well known that this itch is only a single planetary death roll. These death rolls are caused by species who have consumed there habitat or destroyed themselves with nuclear war. The Megaverse assures the Universe that the itch will go away.
How naive can we humans be to think we know and can even begin to understand what the truth is.
There are three main things my gut feeling tells me are probably right in life:
- Evolution seems to universally proclaim via repetition that reproduction or creation is an evolutionary requirement. So I’ll make this truth mean that having children is good!
- I should cause as small a ripple as possible that harms humankind. I should create as big a ripple as possible that helps humankind.
- We probably didn’t win the “intelligent life lotto” 1 planet in 50,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 probability and getting more unlikely with every new telescope.
The truth is out there, pick a version but be careful how you use it. It might just be wrong.
