Why do I care about truth? I mean real truth. Why does it bother me if it doesn't seem to bother anyone else. There must be some psychological explanation for my absurd and obviously pathetic tendency to obsess over what is really true.
To be clear, I'm not obsessed about FINDING the truth, I'm not counting on that. But I am obsessed about truth in the sense that I have a very hard time accepting things (as truth) that are in fact not true, or at least very difficult for me to conceive of as genuinely being true.
In statistical hypothesis testing, we don't try to find the truth, we select a null hypothesis which we disprove based on the observed data, i.e. empirical evidence. That doesn't give us the big picture of TRUTH per se, but it gives us reasonable confidence that the null hypothesis is not true, or that the opposite is true.
I get it - I've often found myself, during discussion, having to find a balance between "what you just said doesn't follow logically/empirically" and "i see your opinion, but i have another opinion".
I guess this is just another example of the balance between Striving for Truth and Quality of Life (e.g. ignorance is bliss).
Looking for a married bachelor?
ReplyDeletePining for the four-sided triangle?
Wishing God really could create a rock He couldn't lift?
Me neither.
Derech agav: the last person I knew who obsessed over finding the Truth was never seen again. True story.
To be clear, I'm not obsessed about FINDING the truth, I'm not counting on that. But I am obsessed about truth in the sense that I have a very hard time accepting things (as truth) that are in fact not true, or at least very difficult for me to conceive of as genuinely being true.
ReplyDeleteIn statistical hypothesis testing, we don't try to find the truth, we select a null hypothesis which we disprove based on the observed data, i.e. empirical evidence. That doesn't give us the big picture of TRUTH per se, but it gives us reasonable confidence that the null hypothesis is not true, or that the opposite is true.
I get it - I've often found myself, during discussion, having to find a balance between "what you just said doesn't follow logically/empirically" and "i see your opinion, but i have another opinion".
ReplyDeleteI guess this is just another example of the balance between Striving for Truth and Quality of Life (e.g. ignorance is bliss).