3.3 TRUTH

I discovered there are at least two categories of truth. The first I would call 'general truth' which is knowledge which is available or verifiable to anyone. This is the stuff of science but also includes anything you personally know and could verify to someone else.

The second category is 'personal truth' which although it is no less rigorous to you personally you could not verify it to anyone else. Such may be an event in your history which affected you deeply but apart from your account it is not verifiable to or by anyone else.

The distinction is important in order to know what to exclude when talking about discovering truth. It is the former that I am interested in pursuing in this blog. I am being careful about definitions here in order to maintain 'clear thinking', its a natural part of engineering.

Talking about engineering we may now make a few interesting observations. While science is a search for truth of the general kind, engineering is more concerned with the application of those truths. Science deals with observations, hypotheses, experiments and theories, while engineering deals with application, test, verification and sometimes formal certification.

Engineering gets going where science leaves off ie with truth or verified, reliable knowledge. That is how we got from the Wright Brothers to the Moon in just 66 years. Scientists may hold a theory and have a few failures or negative observations awaiting future verification or falsification. They might even loose a few lab rats but by the time engineers get the knowledge, failure is not an option.
 So truth is more the stuff of engineering than science really.

Have a nice day..

3.2 TRUTH

I discovered truth to be quite a big subject so this is just an intro..

But Faith! you may well ask how did that get into this picture.. (see 2.2). Its like this, when you don't know everything, (always true), and you are about to act or do something based on what you do know, what do you call the bit you don't know? But you sincerely or reasonably believe it to be 'true'.

Take the act of going to sit in a holiday deck chair with your sunnies, hat and cold refreshing whatever it is you are about to drink. You do not know it won't collapse under you and dump you on the floor, covered with your drink! You could do a structural integrity inspection and verification procedure, but no one does.. why? Because you have a series of very reliable observations (facts) which tell you the chance of structural failure is acceptably small. That trust in the unknown is what I choose to call 'faith'. It has nothing to do with religion and is based on two key factors..

1. many supporting observations (facts) 
2. an imperative to act (necessary to my life).

I would suggest anyone taking a flight in a helicopter is exercising a good deal of faith. In this context my definition of a fact is simply a verifiable observation.

This 'rational' faith is therefore exercised by everyone all the time, even Richard Dawkins! I am of necessity separating faith and belief at this point as an essential step in understanding truth. So in these terms 'religious faith' is an oxymoron.. it would be implying faith in something I believe, which is more than saying 'may or may not be true', it's not required to be true. Which leads us to categories of truth, next time.

Have a nice day..

3.1 TRUTH

Oh dear I've used the 'G' word in the title.. Well this whole blog is about taking a holistic view of reality.. exclude nothing.. accept that the human brain is a quantum computer.. capable of engaging the whole of reality. Just take a scientific approach.

Truth.. why truth? Well asking questions and thinking critically are fairly obvious requirements for good science but telling the truth is surely axiomatic or given.. well not exaclty. Today 'scientific' reports may be:

1. 'BOUGHT' by vested commercial interests.. eg oil & coal industry reports 'minimizing' the effects of CO2 emissions.. tobaco industry reports 'minimizing' cancer due to smoking etc.. 
2. 'ORDERED' to serve a political agenda.. like NAZI anti-semitic and racially motivated propaganda..
3. Just plain 'BIASED' to gain status or an edge over a rival in this very competitive field.
4. Or 'FRAUDULENT'. There are a few spectacular cases.. The Piltdown scull, Hagel's embryo's etc.

Another reason to explicitly include 'tell the truth' is the move away from the use of the word itself, due to the connotations of 'absolutism' such as expressed by religious extremists. 'Absolute' truth implies knowing everything, which is impossible but the term itself gives us an essential boundary condition on the meaning of truth. The opposite boundary condition is of course pure 'belief' bereft of supporting 'facts' or 'observations'.

If we now allow a continuous scale from 'belief' through to 'absolute truth' one obvious variable is the number of supporting observations or 'facts' which goes from zero to everything. So the portion we call 'truth' rises, but what do we call the other part which falls representing 'belief'? My answer is FAITH! So we may write..

TRUTH = FACTS + FAITH

(where FACTS >> FAITH and FAITH > 0) 

(>> means very much greater than)
If FAITH = 0 then the truth becomes 'absolute'.. 

If FACTS = 0  the truth becomes  'belief'..
Note: It is more of a relationship and not intended to be quantitative.

Have a nice day..

2.1 - Lets get moving - SCIENCE

Ok I should have guessed.. Buzz Lightyear is a very popular character. So the former title was basically buried in a mass of other 'Infinities and Beyonds'.. But I like Buzz because he has the humility to accept reality, he is just a toy.

With only 500 words per post I just realized this whole thing is done in short bites.. easier to read I guess. To put you in the picture this whole blog is about the basis of a much larger work.. "The God Law".

Science, in my humble opinion is :

1. ASK QUESTIONS (no exclusions)
2. THINK CRITICALLY
3. TELL THE TRUTH

I would also say that anyone who has thought through a problem, gathered some facts by making observations, done tests etc, has done science. You only need a tertiary qualification in it to get paid for doing it. But we are going to use this word a lot so its vital you understand what I am talking about.

Have a really nice day..

1.1 - Start Here

My name is Mike..

I am a semi retired engineer from Australia and this is more than just my story.. its something I desperately want to say to the whole world. Something I wish someone else had said but they havn't.. so here goes.

Life is full of mystery.. some questions have answers and some don't or on closer inspection have deeply implied contradictions which are not comprehensible to our way of thinking. Take infinity.. ok on the surface something which just goes on with no end? Well if that is not difficult enough what about the fact that we can show or prove mathematically that some infinities are bigger than others! I'd say it is clear that any claim to understanding infinity is bollocks.. but we are aware of the concept.. and it is the only solution to any number n divided by 0. There are heaps of examples but I won't bore you with that now.

Most people have some difficulty with mathematics and even in disciplines which rely on it heavily like engineering and even physics you don't have to be a natural genius at it to get what you need from it and use it. I decided early on in my high school education to "ASK QUESTIONS".. stop the teacher and help them achieve their goal to teach effectively.. I ended up liking maths! But I am saying this because I don't want to put anyone off just because I am of necessity going to have to include some math based stuff.

Where am I going with this.. where else.. Infinity and Beyond! I seriously want to talk about what we actually know about the biggest questions we can ask.. and my journey over the past 41 years doing that. Please stay tuned.