What is Truth

When Pontius Pilate asked Yeshua, 'What is Truth?', he was met with silence. Two thousand years later, we still wait for the answer.

Visionary Leaders and organisations of the present and future will use data and AI to make decisions that will shape our destiny.

Our future could hold endless possibilities for self-expression in a beautiful garden of a planet, and undreamed of adventures as we forge benevolent galactic civilisations across the cosmos.

We need leaders and organisations that are virtuous and possess a Visionary Strategy centred on a guiding principle that resonates universally. They will inspire and guide humanity to become hyper-advanced in technology and ethics, making us worthy to multiply across the cosmos.

In a democracy, we are the ones who grant the responsibility and privilege for leaders to serve. So in order to get the right leaders, we need to develop the wisdom to discern right from wrong ourselves. We need to be able to discuss and agree on what is true and false.

Powerful AI is becoming cheap and widely accessible. Ill-intentioned agents are already able to incite hate across entire nations with misinformation campaigns, and misguided leaders can already misuse AI to monitor and control individual freedoms.

Without genuine transparency from leaders and institutions, public trust in evidence may erode, and thus in Truth itself.

Now, more than ever, we need a guiding star. One that unites individuals, communities, and societies.

Perhaps this time, instead of waiting for an answer, we should seek to understand the deep nature of the question, ‘What is Truth?’

The problem with decision-making

At the heart of data-driven strategy, scientific endeavour and much of our daily decisions, lies the act of making and testing propositions or hypotheses.

Unfortunately, humans have a host of intrinsic and extrinsic pitfalls that impede clear judgement. This includes cognitive biases, emotional and psychological fallacies, memory distortions, and social and environmental factors.

On a more metaphysical level, we take our ontological paradigm at face value, overlooking the fact the world is experienced subjectively from limited objective sense data.

Science acknowledges its own limitations through the principle of falsifiability, aiming for truth asymptotically, but never quite touching it.

So in order to assess whether a hypothesis is true, first we need to acknowledge that every question takes place within a domain of reality, which always has two facets: perception and its respective world. To understand Truth, we will need to reconcile both.

The elusive pursuit of truth

We use various methods to assess how accurately our perception reflects reality. Each method has its own limitations, so we often combine and triangulate multiple perspectives to get a more reliable approximation.

For instance, when data models accurately correspond with the reality of the world or system in question, we say they are true by a certain confidence level.

But all models have uncertainties, and more fundamentally, we can never capture complete data about all facts.

For instance we cannot see beyond the edge of the observable universe, and even if we did, we could never compute all facts down to the quantum level. This is a fundamental limitation that prevents us from creating a perfect map of reality from which to assess truth through correspondence.

Well, if we cannot capture and model data to infinite depth, radius and complexity, then we can try to establish truth by assessing the internal coherence and harmony of data models based on how they align with the internal consistency of the system. This should allow us to assess truth based on a subset that is within our reach.

But this presupposes uniformity and non-contradiction of the system. What if new dynamics that reveal more fundamental truths emerge in more or less complex domains that we do not have access to?

At this point we may throw in the towel and resort to simply being pragmatic, and say that truth is whatever has practical value. But this view will always be relative unless it is grounded in a transcendental principle of utility and absolute frame of reference.

And if that was not enough, truth is a semantic notion, and so will always be inherently self-contradictory via language, as proved by Gödel's incompleteness theorems.

The pursuit of truth, then, is not only about correspondence with reality but also about the methodologies we employ and the motivations that drive us. And even with more information, a complete or perfect understanding of truth always remains elusive, meaning that the pursuit of truth is always an approximation exercise.

This leads us to the radical realisation that it is virtually impossible to find the Truth within the paradigm of contingent domains.

Indeed we wrestle with Truth in the dark, so how do we move beyond paradigms?

A change of direction

Astronauts often describe a transformative 'overview effect' upon seeing the Earth from space, a profound shift that re-contextualises their understanding of the world.

Systems theory teaches us that in order to see new connections and become aware of our limitations, we need to transcend the paradigm of our current domain by lifting our perspective.

In the realm of data, it equates to broadening our range of analysis, sharpening its resolution, visualising intricate associations, engaging in transparent communication, or moving to a completely new paradigm.

An elevated perspective exposes foundational truths that render previous beliefs relative. It makes contingent truths collapse into more fundamental ones, outlining an iterative path, a nested hierarchical progression towards ‘the Truth’.

Truth, then, is something we discover and not something anyone within contingent domains can ever claim ownership of.

And if contingency is based on relativism, perhaps Gödel’s incompleteness theorems are not a bug in the system arising from self-referencial contradictions, but rather, they highlight an intrinsic aspect about existence, where the appearance of diversity arises out of unity through a self-referential mechanism.

This realisation humbles us and settles the question of who defines Truth, redirecting attention toward introspective self-effort with a devotional attitude, leading to an expansion of identity, much like a small seed growing into a mighty tree where birds come and nest.

Throughout history, individuals who proposed paradigm shifts have often been deemed a threat to their cultures and even put to death because people often feel threatened when the perception of their own existence is challenged.

Wisdom as grounding

In order to actualise an inspiring vision for the future, we need deep and rigid foundations that give us the stability to synchronise technologies, and the confidence to move forward.

When we ground our perception of the world in more enduring truths that do not change, as opposed to relative truths that are contingent upon movable perspectives, we are grounded in wisdom.

When our decisions are based on an accurate view of reality, we diminish the gap between expectations and outcomes, and that enables us to take bolder steps forward.

When we take bold steps grounded in wisdom, we build our house on a foundation as solid as a rock, capable of withstanding adversities, helping us grow and reach for the stars.

Serving the Truth

In a future where misinformation and tyranny could prevail, grounding ourselves in unwavering principles via a unified frame of reference protects us from risks and adversities.

With humility, we acknowledge that even an elevated and integrated perspective is still contingent by definition and that we may never be able to capture and compute all facts.

Thus we conclude that wisdom lies in surrendering our will to Truth as a guiding principle, always making choices oriented upwards to the guiding star that elevates our perspective and gives us peace.

This surrender allows Truth to shine in us, transforming us not necessarily into who we think we should be, but rather revealing who we really are.