Don't Believe The Truth - Double Indeminty

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

Which path would you inspire society to engage?

  • A double dangerous challenge to seek real truth
  • A mountain of deception accepted by faith
  • Third alternative (explain pls) ?
0 voters

Once upon a What If…
It was discovered that believing in the actual real truth was a far worse thing for everyone than believing in a particular alternative, a particular deception.

Discovering that believing the truth is a bad thing is an extremely serious problem for 3 basic reasons;
1) A person cannot simply decide to believe otherwise once convinced of something without physiological memory alteration or death of the believers.
2) Any fundamental deception requires a mountain of other deceptions to maintain that one.
3) The very notion that a particular deception is the better thing for society to believe leaves social leaders in a position to have to isolate and/or kill off those who do not believe the deception.

According to the record, Moses (and I’m sure very many others) at least observed, if not experimented with, what happens when a group of people come to believe in the truth of their real situation. The conclusion has always been that they die out as a group. But then it was also observed that every time a man attempted to make a flying machine, he failed and often died.

Of course such an observation of truth-consequences presupposes that the observer knows what the actual truth is. How else could he know that is what the groups believed? But what if the observer was actually right whether he actually knew that real truth or not. What if it really is true that regardless of what the real truth is, any group believing it actually does result in their extinction?

Believe it or not, that has been the history of homosapian; influential people believing the particular truth that a deception is a better thing to believe than real truth. Once that notion enters their mind, they act accordingly and seek out what they believe to be a “better” deception for the population. And they become a hardcore, self-defensive Ego for society (a Cult), often silencing or killing off dissenters.

Such defensive social egos (religions and ideologies) create a self-perpetuating mindset and paradigm. They isolate themselves from any hope of correcting any error in their prior assessment of truth or its consequences. Contemporary Science isolates itself from alternative explanations so as to maintain a more unified public image. But what if the real truth offers solutions that Science or other religions don’t allow themselves to see? What if their self-defense mechanism merely keeps them in denial of not merely the particular consequences they fear, but also from the particular resolutions that were available?

It seems that believing that the truth is dangerous, is itself dangerous. But which is more dangerous?

How could anyone answer that without pursuing real truth beyond any questioning and thus heading down a one way path of belief and potential annihilation? Even worse is the fact that most such groups of people will not find the true end of that road and thus whether they die out or not doesn’t actually prove anything. Thus such an experiment would have to continue until the actual real truth-finder managed to prove to those who hadn’t found it what the end result absolutely must be. That situation would require that the winning (or losing) group not only discover the real consequence of knowing the real truth, but also discover a means to clearly communicate their results in a more substantial way (before they died or got killed off by the deceivers) than the others making such attempts - doubling the challenge.

On one hand, it is advised to accept upon faith that the real truth is not a good idea to know.
On the other hand, it is advised to enter a contest for the search of the real truth that also requires superior communication skills. Even if one were to find the real truth and find it to be a good thing to believe, he would still have to find a means to communicate beyond the ability of others to confuse his message just so as to counteract the notion that deception was a better idea.

So which path would you inspire society to engage?

  1. A double dangerous challenge to seek real truth
  2. A mountain of deception accepted by faith
  3. Third alternative?
2

This seems [to me] to be another thread in which we discuss the truth about truth before we discuss the truth about something in particular out in the world.

3

Emm… I’m uncertain whether I understand that statement, but the issue is not about any particular truth other than the consequences of some fundamental or significant truth. But I’m not sure what you meant by “the truth about truth”. :confusion-scratchheadyellow:

4

He means you are discussing truth in general, in the abstract, rather than a particular truth, a concrete example of truth and how we might weigh in on the issues you raise in that context.

5

Well, I guess that I could give a fictitious example;

What if…

People believing that “no ones knows the truth” happens, for whatever reason, to lead to social decay, disease, and annihilation?

Now, the question becomes whether you;

  1. A double dangerous challenge to seek real truth - promote to seek out whether that “no ones knows the truth” is indeed a fact, confirm it.
  2. A mountain of deception accepted by faith - promote the faith, accept that someone knows truth even though they don’t.
  3. Third alternative? - ??
6

I’m extremely curious, so I’d want to know the ‘truth’, or verify the lack thereof.

As for an alternate - couldn’t you choose to be deceived, and when people find new ‘truth’, have global brainwashing to incorporate the new information into the deception?

7

But not everything is beyond knowing truthfully. And a greater danger might be, “what if people believing that ‘only X knows the truth’ happens, for whatever reason, to lead to social decay, disease and annihilation?”

Isn’t the next obvious question then, “the truth about what?”

That’s what everyone will be talking about in the course of actual day to day human interaction. Why? Because that is where the consequences of what X believes is true will begin to unfold.

8

Part of the “double indemnity” issue is that by promoting the deception, the promoters blind themselves from finding “new truth”, hence the war between the Catholic and the scientist or philosopher. In effect, the promoters of the deception have locked themselves into the “No more truth shall be known than what is already revealed”. But in addition, deceptions tend to bring misguided perception of new truths that are actually based on the complex confusion from so many prior deceptions spawned by the effort to hide the one deeper truth. Thus the “new truth” is likely to be false.

9

That is a part of the risk. Neither direction is risk free.

Anything related to life, including who has been lying and about what.
What if by discovering who has been lying, society and homosapian gets destroyed?
Socialist governments have “Official Secrets” laws solely for that purpose.

And then those people will get attacked by the supporters of the deception and those supporters will be thinking that they are doing it all for good reason.

10

Indeed, you can’t lie about some things because an answer is only a point of view.

If Jim murdered Joe and you knew it you would be lying if you said he did not. But suppose you lied because you loved Jim and Joe is perceived as someone who sold drugs to your children—one of whom died from an overdose. Is it a lie to say Joe deserved to die?

And if the discussion shifts to executing Jim for murdering Joe is it a lie to say that execution is immoral?

And there are many important aspects of human interaction whereby telling the truth or telling a lie is always problematic.

Thus “official secrets” laws are seen by some as a necessary aspect of preserving socialism—a good thing. It might be a lie to say they do not exist when they do but if capitalism is perceived as evil and socialism as good, having them may be deemed necessary until the “enemies of the state” are vanquished. Is this a lie?

Yes, this is, in fact, how things often unfold in a world where we cannot clearly establish objectively what is true in regards to means and ends.