Reductionism and truthiness #

• The healthy human temperature is 98.6º F. -  Man marries woman.
• The world is flat.

All of these have been believed to be THE absolute truth.  #

All of them are not quite right, and definitely not absolute. They are highly synthesized, simplified narrative truths. 

Solitary simple “truths” are easy to pin down to an easy answer. It’s easy to remember and hard to misunderstand. They springboard to the next part of the decision-making process easily, and define an easy, statistically relevant cause and effect. Isn’t easy supposed to be better?

According to some points of view, it also provides clarity: alternative answers can’t be right, because we have the answer.

However, it does not account for change. It doesn’t account for nuances that offset instances to create an overall balance that makes the single metric less meaningful. It makes it too easy to dismiss the outliers — to dismiss the quality of truth for narrative truth. It makes it easy to pretend, simply, that those outliers do not exist; or deviate so far outside the norm that they are potential threats to our understanding of reality. Even when we don’t acknowledge the outlier, its existence still creates cognitive dissonance.

Accepted narrative truth is ultimately one of those stabilities people lean into — like the sun always rises in the east, but without the triangulated, critical-thinking methods that assure us that where the sun rises has a quality of truth. In the quality of truth, the data has been checked broadly; the bet is really good that the information can be depended on and downstream processes using it will be consistent. We can see them coming at a distance, because they leverage the right answers and are clearly signaled.

In narrative truth, the downstream processes aren't consistent. We can clearly define right and wrong, good and evil, truth and lie, but somehow they aren't always working out. At that point, there is a choice: stick to narrative truth, or work towards the quality of truth. It's ultimately a decision whether to have a low or high adhesion to reality.

In narrative truth and low reality adhesion, if information doesn’t fit, it's monstrous. The truth/reality aspect prioritizes the singular, clearly-enunciated answer. That monstrousness is the key to the dissonance our horror genre builds from: reality isn't what we think it is.

It’s easier to see the mismatched as not-human. If the scan says two hearts: not human. If the body temperature stays at 96 degrees for weeks and months on end: crazy if it's "just" experience, broken sensors, or not-human. If two men want to marry: not-human. If the world is an orb: crazy, not-human (or, back then, "demonic").

It’s hard to find large systems have been built that exclude outliers without adding negative connotations to the label. Redlining, personality tests, organized religions, and more tend to bulwark their narrative correctness with a supporting narrative of ‘wrongness’. It’s like the system is afraid of being wrong, so instead of taking a logical approach to the information, they resort to politics. It’s not out of the realm of possibility, because systems are made, maintained, and shifted by people. 

Reductionism doesn’t work, not in clear-cut right/wrongs, not as a starting point, and not when it comes to understanding people. 

This model isn’t about reductionism, but about adding a stratospheric layer to how we look at people. To balance the whole, every aspect of the whole has to be included, in balance, with wiggle room in the system.

Truth is broad #

Truth tends to be seen, at least today in this particular culture, as a singular outcome of a binary state. A thing, once true, is the only possible truth. 

That’s not how the universe works. Light is both a particle and a wave. We haven't understood enough yet to be so absolutist in our approach.

Truth can be multivariate. It’s wiggly and broad and nuanced. It’s a reminder that the universe is constantly moving, and we’re still learning. 

The quality of truth is something we hone in on; it’s most easily ascertained as a part of network. Why? Because the perception of truth relies on a single access point. The quality of truth tries to balance with all the possible access points that could be added to at any moment. The quality of truth is highly intertwingled.

Truthiness does not stake a claim and say forevermore. It sits and mumbles, “this is good enough for now*.”

*pending further information