Truth and trust edit
© Ed Gerck, 2006-7, licensed under the GFDL†
Truth is subjective. Wait. No! Subjective truth is a pleonasm.
Why?
Because, subjectively, we usually think that we are right. And what someone calls "truth" is what that person considers to be right. So, this is a full pleonasm.
What? You do not agree? That is not what you think is true? Well, it does not matter! This is the truth.
So many dialogues follow the last sentence...
Truth is what people usually say as "that is the truth" -- meaning their truth. In particular, it is well-known that two different people living the same moment will have different, albeit still truthful, recollections.
No wonder people have a hard time making truth be intersubjective (e.g., acceptable by two people in a dialogue), or even attempting the yet elusive task of making truth objective.
- Intersubjective: for example, a medical diagnosis is intersubjective. Different physicians examining the same patient may arrive at a different diagnosis, indicating quite different illnesses.
Further, as we can often see, the more one tries to explain about truth and/or assert what is true, the further one usually departs from consensus. The reason is that truth is subjective and subjectivity is truth; as each person affirms their own subjectivity more, they become more defensive, more inwardly drawn, and their positions move farther apart from a middle position.
However, how about "logical truth"? As Tarski defined, "Snow is white is true iff Snow is white.". This definition is useful to make truth intersubjective. "Logical truth is that which is true *because it works." And, what works might be independently verified.
With a bit more work, can we make truth objective? That is, if an assertion is intersubjectively true for more and more people, will it eventually become objective?
The short answer is yes.
Here begins the long answer.
Markets are such a construction. The value of commodities are driven by what the market actors intersubjectively believe to be true — even it does not reveal itself to be true when seen in 20/20 vision from the future.
Yes, "Observed reality (Wirklichkeit) depends on what we trust."
Here, trust must not be understood solely as a feeling or emotion, but as something essentially communicable. "Trust is that which I know that I know that I know." — in other words, trust is that which "I know that I know" (meaning that I know and can recall at will) and "I know" (meaning that it is operational and can be used).
In this sense, trust cannot be self-referenced. "Trust me" becomes an early-warning sign. To trust an assertion, or a computer record, or someone, you cannot just look at what it says about itself, or herself. Trust Requires Corroboration by Independent Channels. A decision to trust someone — or a source of a communication, or the name on a certificate, in short, a record — must be based on factors outside the assertion of trustworthiness that the record's system makes for itself.
Trust is qualified
Trust is not open-ended. Trust is qualified. You always trust 100%, but the extent of what you trust varies. For example, it is always possible to trust anyone on nothing. You trust A because you rely on A on "matters of X". Most probably, you don't rely on A on "matters of Y". For example, you may rely on a surgeon for an open heart surgery, but probably not for cooking a dinner for your visitors (even if the latter is simpler and has less of a fatal risk).
So, even though you always trust 100%, trust decays and increases, as you reduce or increase the extent of what you trust — not the intensity.
Trust is dynamic. Thus, trust must be defined with some notion of epoch, some date and time.
"Distrust is trust." Distrust is not the absence of trust (which I call atrust). Distrust is the trust that something or someone cannot be trusted in some qualified way.
"It is better to distrust a truth than to trust a falsity."
This sentence speaks for itself. Trusting what is false may be difficult to perceive and correct. Only after I am convinced (subjectively) that something is true regarding "matters of X" should I trust it to that extent. Otherwise, it is better to wait. It is always possible to accept it later.
Even if I have excellent reasoning abilities, it may be difficult to perceive and correct a falsity once it is trusted.
For example, Albert Einstein preferred to "fudge" his own cosmological equation for years (adding an ad hoc cosmological constant) in order to forecast a stable universe according to his philosophical beliefs, rather than accepting the result of singularities and a big-bang solution as predicted by his original equation (see Wheeler et. al., Gravitation, ISBN-13: 978-0716703440). But, finally, when confronted with astronomic data measured by Hubble (the Hubble), he conceded. As a further example, even though black-holes were predicted and described by Einstein's equations by other scientists, Einstein preferred to write a paper proving that black-holes did not exist (using what we know today to be a contrived example). That statement on black-holes was never retracted, even though the authors of the black-hole theory were literally next door.
Objectivity has a bad name today. There seems to be nothing that is objective.
Why?
"Observed reality (Wirklichkeit) depends on what we trust."
Objectivity is based on trust, which varies subjectively and intersubjectively.
In the 1500s, a native group in South America refused to see and acknowledge the presence of Europeans when their ships appeared in the horizon, even after the Europeans set foot on a beach where the natives were and walked among them. The natives had a firm belief (the trust) that nothing existed beyond the horizon, so no one could possibly come from there.
Therefore, if an assertion is intersubjectively true for more and more people, it WILL eventually become objective.
Objective yes ... but it doesn't mean that it is true.
Galileo Galilei, rejected the objective truth, at his time, that the Sun revolves around the Earth. It was objective truth, as anyone could see when the Sun would go from East to West, but it was not the truth for Galileo.
The individual retains the power of choice. Truth is subjective, after all. I mean, subjective truth is a pleonasm. Well, you know what I mean.
References
- Ed Gerck, "Trust Points", in Digital Certificates: Applied Internet Security by J. Feghhi, J. Feghhi and P. Williams, Addison-Wesley (1998), ISBN 0-20-130980-7.
- Ed Gerck, in Financial Cryptography: 5th International Conference, FC 2001, Grand Cayman, British West Indies, (Ed.) Paul F. Syverson, Springer (2002), ISBN 3540440798.
- Ed Gerck, Trust as Qualified Reliance on Information, Part I, The COOK Report on Internet, Volume X, No. 10, January 2002, ISSN 1071 - 6327.
- original discussion paper online at Toward Real-World Models of Trust