Garbage in, garbage out #

Our ongoing formulation of what-is truth #

Truth is hard. It’s ultimately a binary state attributed to a complex compilation and interpretation of a set of data and information. It’s leveraged as a springboard into decision making, cultural norms, and society-level agreements. 

It is a characteristic that is bandied about with great flair, emphasis, and passion. It’s also dependent on information, which can be adhering to reality, or a confabulation of cognitive bias, storytelling, and/or shaky memory. It can have within its construction misapprehension, misguided facts, misinformation, and even disinformation and outright lies predicated on manipulation. And because it’s a simplified construct of a complex amalgamation of data and information, one person’s truth can be another person’s falsehood. 

Because it’s a simplified construct of a complex amalgamation of data and information, the perception of truth and falsehood can both be right based on that amalgamation, plus the varying priorities and insights. 

But we conflate narrative and perceptual truth with the quality of truth. We have one word to encompass all the states. 

Scientific methodology provides a framework for testing for truth: replicate, through multiple people and perceptions and cognitive biases, to see if the outcome is the same; and triangulate through multiple approaches to test the replicated outcomes. Scientific method acknowledges that, no matter how robust the critical thinking, if others can’t replicate the test, the finding isn’t true. The finding passed the test of perception and narrative truth, but didn’t meet the quality of truth. It did not manage to adhere to reality.

The shaky bit is that scientific methodology can still be skewed by cognitive bias, leaving out certain aspects of the outcomes as ‘irrelevant’ or ‘junk data’ as they write up their interpretations for others to replicate. Bad science happens, it's part of why it's replicated. If it's built on a test or question that is leading, or caught up at a fundamental level to test for a too-narrow finding or too-narrow answer, it's more likely to come to light as more minds are approaching it with critical thinking. 

“Are eyes brown”, only looking for brown eyes, will have a universal acceptance. “Are eyes only brown”, looking for all the potential color of eyes, will quickly fail replication. “Are eyes in all vertebrate animals only brown with circular pupils”, broadening the population beyond the implicit human form factor in the first two suppositions, will again quickly fail. 

This is a known quality in the formation of scientific study, and yet it can still be a point of fumbling. That’s why we also need to triangulate.

We need to observe, study, and test from multiple points of view. It is not enough to acknowledge that eyes are brown, or that eyes can be more than brown, or that eyes are present in more species than just homo sapiens. Any information or pattern that eyes encompass and are adjacent to are relevant to incorporate as we develop questions around eyes. 

It’s only after testing against multiple conditions, from multiple points of view, over and across time, set within multiple environments, and acknowledge the vast array of spectrum modalities that can be encompassed by the ‘eye’ construct that we can get to the truth of them. 

The quality of truth for eyes is not brown-ness, because eyes can exist that do not have brown irises. It’s not circular pupils, because eyes can exist that do not have circular pupils — or even pupils, period. It’s not even sight, because eyes exist that don’t transmit visual information to the brain. 

The truth of eyes is that they are the physical manifestation of the possibility to include visual based information of happenings. Everything we know about eyes after that are permutations of the truth, predicated on perception and narrative.

And because of the fuzzy nature of our language around the idea of “truth”, the word can be used to reference what is strongly held opinion of a lower-strata facet of reality. Someone can literally stand on a metaphorical hill to state, loudly and to the point of violence to eradicate what no longer meshes with their sense of reality, that all eyes see. That any construct that does not see is not an eye. 

Removing all the data that states otherwise is a way to force reality to reflect a wish state. It does not change reality. It does not change  the quality of truth. It is gaslighting, on a massive scale. It is incorporating garbage-in by simply not accepting that what doesn’t meet their outcome.

It changes the question and the test, the accepted definition of truth, and introduces new and alternative states of reality. It is fundamentally, informationally violent.  It would snuff out the sun to prove darkness is the only relevant option if it had the technology available, and damn the consequences. 

I acknowledge that focusing on the narrative of truth, combined with violence, is the primary tool to alter the perception of truth. However, reality is a state that really won’t budge. The reality of a sunless world would still cause the death of everyone, including those intent on forcing perception to only include that which would conform with their narrative of truth. So the quality of truth must, by way of understanding, conform to the fullness of reality. Otherwise, at its most egregious mistakes, death knocks. 

Even in a world where the accepted truth is that all eyes see, eyes will still be born without function, or lose function through time or accident. Functioning eyes will still see different qualities in the visual spectrum based on their construct, variable across species. Eyes will still function even if they are not constructed the same way as human eyes, as with cats and flies. 

It is only by adhering to the fulsomeness of reality, unaltered by manipulation, that we get to the quality of truth. The quality of truth is rarified. The perception of truth is an every-minute occurrence. The narrative of truth shapes our perceptions, and can lead to the quality of truth, or the failure of our adherence to reality. 

So, find patterns. Think critically. Replicate findings and epiphanies with others, as broadly and diversely as possible. Pay attention to willful and unwitting leading. Triangulate. Learn to recognize and ignore/shun/remove the bad actors from the information mix.

To find peace in the world, adhere to reality instead of narrative. For in the end we are information beings; and where garbage goes into our information, garbage comes out.