The Types of Truth

Part II

Truth

Many things that are true are unpopular;

many things that are popular are untrue.

The Types of Truth

You're pursuing truth, health, and wealth, in that order. That's actually the right priority order. For example, you'd never want to do something that's untrue to make money or sacrifice your long-term health for wealth. Learn to determine what is true. Pursue health because, without that, you have really nothing else. Then wealth is important, but it's third—though it's important to have that third.

Most people do social diligence; only a few do technical diligence.

Is something true if others think it’s true? Or is it true regardless of what people think?

Distinguishing social consensus from truth is really important because they're not the same. Often we will say, “Oh, that is true,” because there is a social consensus.

You can position facts at two poles: political facts and technical facts. A political fact is true if enough other people believe it to be true; for example, who the president is or where the border of a country is. That's actually a psychological phenomenon. If you can install software to enough people's brains, you can change those truths. That is social consensus.

Then, on the other side, some things are purely technical. A technical fact is the result of an equation or the diameter of a virus under an electron microscope—the result of physical constants. What people think does not change technical truth. Physical facts are independent of any human being. An alien would come to the same conclusions.

Determining the type of evidence people accept is as important as knowing their incentives.

Some take data, but many accept only popularity.

In theory, we could all just trust computer science. In practice, those who can't code will fall back on trusting in a computer scientist. Decentralizing truth-finding means enabling as many people as possible to do the math themselves.