@Reconstructo,
Subjectivity9;163523 wrote:
If we cannot expect the majority to understand those who are either superior in their understanding and/or wisdom, or even ahead of their time, than it certainly makes equal sense not to expect the majority to know the truth, in any Ultimate sense.
I lean towards the opinion that the average person, at the middle of their life, already knows that the truth is. The problem is that, while the truth is in their mind, it is obscured by all the extra stuff that's not truth, but hasn't been categorized as such, so is still potentially true. That makes those "ahead of their time" superior only in that they clearly identified something that everyone else knows, but hasn't identified yet.
That's why everyone understands heliocentricity, but only after some brilliant people identified the truth of it. For example. I think it takes a particularly stupid or oblivious person, well outside the norm, to not have access to truth. What makes someone average is their inability to identify the truth among all the possibilities.
Subjectivity9;163523 wrote:
You are optimistic in believing that any truth that is ahead of its time, or simply unique in its properties, will in due time become evident.
I don't think it's a matter of optimism. I think that the truth is what it is, whether or not we agree with it, so the truth will outlast our ignorance. Either we'll disappear entirely, or we'll gradually uncover more and more of the truth. It's only a matter of time.
Subjectivity9;163523 wrote:
I, on the other hand, have to wonder how many great possibilities have been lost irretrievably in time never to be regained. : ^ (
Possibilities have been lost. We can't go back and try things again. But possibilities are not truth. We'll never get the chance to not bomb Hiroshima, but that's got nothing to do with losing out on a truth. The truth can't be missed, because it is an inherent part of everything, it can only be covered up.
By way of an example, look at the natural evolution of "truthiness" as a tactic in modern media. It's no longer possible to hide information, or to lie effectively. The only thing that's possible now is to so confuse the issue with many potential truths that people discount all of them.
Subjectivity9;163523 wrote:
What if a unique idea can become extinct just like some of our wonderful species have, because of a sheer lack of respect and cooperation and even through a deficit of compassion. Could our narrow understanding of what is truth actually kill off variety at some point?
Ideas can become extinct. I'm reminded of some kind of knots-in-rope language some south american group invented back in the day that no one can translate anymore. Ideas exist in the environment of the mind. And like all things that depend on an environment, it is possible for the environment to disappear. But, unlike living things, ideas are never permanently lost. They only await rediscovery.
I'm not sure what compassion has to do with it. And I don't think we have to worry about a lack of variety. If there's one thing ideas do, it's breed more ideas.
Subjectivity9;163523 wrote:
Does every idea have to dumb itself down to a place where everyone can understand it, before it can be useful, I think not.
Yes. An idea is only useful when someone understands it. That doesn't mean the average human being has to understand it, but it does mean the average person in a particular subset of the population does have to understand it. I don't really understand how a router works, but the people who design them do. Moses had to get the most important rules written down in bullet-form.
Subjectivity9;163523 wrote:
Incidently, a dream truth would be a truth that took place within a dream scenario. Sometimes these truths can be transposed upon what we call our waking life; even great inventions have come down to us in this way. But, sometimes a dream truth only makes sense within the dream itself. Is this any less of a truth?
Yes. Buy definition it's less of a truth. It can only be "transposed upon waking life" if it happens to also be true in the real world. If not, whatever it is in a dream doesn't matter, cuz it's a lie in reality. Of course, a dream could help us expose a truth that we had previously missed, but, again, it is only real because it works in waking endeavors.
Subjectivity9;163523 wrote:
Remember the fact that truths in the tiny world of physics do not always remain equally true and efficacious in our conventional larger world. They are marginal truth, perhaps, in this way.
A grain of sand doesn't become less grainy when we look at a picture of a coastline from orbit. The grain of sand is still there, doing its thing, like it always has. Likewise, if we were the size of an atom, a grain of sand would still be a grain of sand, no matter how much bigger it was. Any misinterpretation is our fault, it's not a flaw in nature. Just because we can't simultaneously think on the scale of a grain of sand and a planet doesn't mean we can't understand the difference, and the validity of each.
Subjectivity9;163523 wrote:
So with a dream truth, what if it can act and actually be simultaneous to our waking world, much like the aboriginies speak of "Dream Time," without having to ask permission to have its own truth from our waking mind?
Sure, why not.
Subjectivity9;163523 wrote:
Or even, is a child's mind a mistake, or an undeveloped adult mind, or simply a different kind of a mind with its own truths?
There's a reason we don't let children, "the developmentally challenged," and people who wear cantaloupes on their head have any influence in society. They don't think very well. It's possible to judge how well someone thinks by their ability to achieve their own objectives. If someone consistently takes steps that are absurdly misaligned with their own goals, well, no one else should listen to them and it might be necessary to protect them from themselves.
You can't call something a truth just because you want to be open minded. There is such a thing as keeping your mind so open your brain falls out. Just include the caveat that theoretically anything is possible, however unlikely, and you've preserved intellectual honesty.
Subjectivity9;163523 wrote:
We have to be willing to think outside of the lines of what we now believe ourselves to know.
Why? Why not just leave the crazy to the people who like that kind of thing? If they uncover something relevant we'll find out about it when it works.
Subjectivity9;163523 wrote:
Everything we think we know, is just "SO FAR."
Technically, that means if you think you know that it's appropriate to give absolutely everyone the benfit of the doubt, that's still only what you know "so far." Ultimately, you have to accept that it is possible for a statement to be true or false, otherwise it becomes impossible for you to say anything at all. Truth is only worth talking about if it can be compared to something else, like false. If everything is true, what are we talking about?
Reconstructo;163528 wrote:
I don't have a problem with tautologies. But what are we learning from any tautology? If we sew them up in a network, we do sometimes learn something. But individually, they don't mean anything. That black equals black is already implied in the word black.
The simplest, most fundamental rules are of vital importance. Their simplicity often creates conditions where they are forgotten or ignored. In those situations, refocusing attention on them is a good thing, not a distraction. It may well be that "you can't divide by zero" seems too simple to state, but if someone crafts a proof in which they divide by zero, it is appropriate to remind them of the rule.
Reconstructo;163528 wrote:
Is it true that it's wrong to eat meat? Is it true that it's wrong to tax progressively? Is it true that it's wrong to murder? As soon as we move away from formal logic, morality and truth become more intertwined. Epistemology is connect to values, ethics, whether it should be or not.
I think it's illuminating to take a holistic view of thinkers, and see how questions of truth are related to questions of right and wrong.
It's always illuminating to investigate how one thing relates to another. That doesn't mean that the relationship is always relevant to the discussion. Often the problem with illuminating questions is that they are constructed with a shoddy framework. "Is it true that it's wrong to eat meat" needs to come AFTER a long discussion of what exactly truth and morality mean. If it comes before it is useful only in that it is quickly ignored to focus on the discussion that should have preceeded it.
Reconstructo;163528 wrote:
It seems to me that physics has its hands full with strange situations. I'm no expert, but just reading about quantum computers is fairly mind-blowing. And what about entanglement? What about string-theory? All that jazz. I think there was a time when that feeling prevailed, but perhaps it was Planck who put an end to that.
The new discoveries of the modern world are increasingly on the margins of well-defined areas of study. The new stuff is filling in the cracks. It requires more and more time devoted to study, greater and greater specialization, and vaster time and materiel investments. The days of someone sitting under an apple tree and creating a new branch of mathematics are gone. There's nothing to stumble over anymore. Just like the physical world, in the world of ideas it takes strenusou effort just to make it to the frontier, let alone advance past the frontier.
Reconstructo;163528 wrote:
Perhaps a small "transcendental" core or structure of perception will not change, but most of our "truths" do seem to be dynamic.
Only in the sense that our ability to recognize truth is flawed, so we are only ever operating with a best guess. Hopefully our guess gets less "guessie" over time. Both on an individual and species scale.
