Monday, September 9, 2024

To Tell the Truth

It is impossible to know what someone is thinking. Even under severe torture, or after giving threats of death, you can never know if someone has told the fullness of their thoughts. That is the one thing science cannot determine.

Psychoanalysis claims to be able to tell someone’s thoughts through interrogation or counselling. However, this is only conjecture based on the beliefs of the interrogator/counselor. Their own thoughts filter what they hear to then produce what they claim to be the thoughts of another.

The legal system cannot produce truth from a person. The best they can accomplish is to get corroboration on what they believe to be the truth, not the actual truth.

You. Yourself. The only one who knows what you truly think is you.

Most of what we encounter from others is what they want us to think that they think. Consequently, we then start playing the game of “Catch Me If You Can” so we can find them telling untruths. “Ah, I knew it couldn’t be true,” we exclaim joyfully. But even then, you only find that what they said may, or may not, have been true. But you still do not know the truth; only that some of what was spoken was not true.

Can we humans find a way to communicate with complete transparency? As long as there are consequences for “bad” behavior, I don’t think we will ever get there.

There are a set of rare humans which have a “defect” which causes them to have no filter on their words. It’s considered a defect, because “normal” people would never say such things. We see this behavior modeled for us by entertainment with characters like Kramer and Sheldon, who say things that make others blush, or worse. As these characters spew their “truth” it appears they have no remorse whatsoever for being critical or brutally honest with their comments.

How is it, that the rest of society has condoned lying, or “embellishing/altering” the truth so as to not be offensive? Civilized people would never point out that a woman’s nose was too big, or someone’s intelligence was below par. At least, not publicly or to the person’s face. Yet, we applaud the TV characters for being bold enough to “speak the truth.”

 I believe it is a misnomer to label the new technology of the day as “artificial intelligence” when our real intelligence is also artificial. Instead of working on human evolution to get to a place of complete honesty, we invent a way for an app to tell the lies for us so we don’t have to.

Just some random thoughts for your consideration.

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