WHAT IS DEMONSTRABLY TRUE? BADASS QUESTIONS FOR SAM HARRIS

RIGBY

Sam Harris is one of the most important thinkers of our time. He has opened many doors towards the important and everlasting "battle of ideas" with his books, talks, podcast, and Twitter battles, (I'm looking at you Ben...). This surge of discussion in philosophy/value/science has filled me with hope and joy for a future where thought/conversation is valued equal to action and persuasion.

I recently listened to four episodes of the podcast, "What is Technology", "What is True" (parts 1 and 2 Jordan <3), "Reality and Imagination" and "Forbidden Knowledge". I can't emphasize enough how much I recommend this priceless podcast, that I believe is equal to taking a university course in most of what is discussed.

The most interesting question, and the underlying bedrock of many of his discussions is "What is True?". This was highlighted in the Jordan interview mostly because there was a clash between their different respective notions of truth. If I understood correctly, I didn't really pick a side (surprising given my love of Jordan) but I agree with both of them, things are true enough - and things are also observably absolutely true i.e. science and rationality.

Like in music, a C major chord is a truth in that its quality is major - we can muddy that quality as soon as I place the chord in relationship to other chords. This is exemplified by asking students to determine whether a piece of music is in a major, minor, or other quality. It's easy to tell when the chord stands alone, but in context, it's much harder to tell.

I believe that this perfectly summarizes the Jordan/Sam argument - they were both right, but were arguing at a cross purpose. Jordan seemed to be talking about an evolutionary perspective of truth which he summarizes as "true enough" which is in many cases like the relationships of many truths. As where Sam was focused on scientific, provable truth - which is also of equal importance. He seems to be on a mission in which science can bring us to a Star Trek-ian future.

But what about the person who smokes? Or eats a doughnut? The facts are that both those things are bad for you, yet, its not enough to persuade you to stop. Well, then, what is true has to be more than just a set of rational facts, rather it stems from a concrete understanding of how to survive and avoid pain, to the complex intermingling of other truths that have smaller non-immediate effects.

The c major chord in a song, which is actually in a minor mode.

Jordan expresses this idea through dominance hierarchies - true enough.

That conversation was the active drama of Science vs Art, and I believe it is time to start including certain artistic truths into the argument.

Is love best understood by observing the chemical reactions of the brain, or by watching Mimi and Rodolfo fall apart in La Boheme?

Is envy best understood through analysis, or through Othello?

Just the way we have defended science, justifiably so, for the past 500 years, I think that Jordan is defending Art in a way that is lost to the west. The rabbit hole of pure rationality is such; the truth of the world is a combination of facts that produce the opportunity to take the best path possible towards progress.

Progress to whom? For whom? To where? How? Using what energy?

Science shows us what to do - Art shows us how to go about it, and also where we can go.

The point I'm getting at is, facts are not enough. That in itself is a daunting and terrible truth. So even if everybody knows what is demonstrably true - it will not be true in that way for everyone. I want to emphasize that I am not in favour of relativism or post-modernism, I believe that objective science and rationality should be the fundamentals of behaviour - but I also believe in the unpredictability of people. And life. Again, the blurring lines of truth happen in the complex relationships to all the moving parts of society.

This brings me to the technology discussion.

This was a great discussion, I listened to it twice. Towards the end, they lost me a bit for the very reasons above. Yes, we are all being manipulated - BUT, we are also manipulating all the time. It's a mechanism of interaction. This whole article I'm writing is predicated on the notion of trying to persuade you of my point of view, as was the podcast for Sam. The distinction is, who is persuading us towards the betterment of our lives, and who is not?

What is true?

Unfortunately, any filtering system put in place will only turn into, given enough time, another perversion of manipulation. In other words - there is no real escape. We cannot construct society in a such a way that people will always be the most informed possible for two reasons;

1) They don't care enough.

The reality is, people share blog posts halfway through reading them, or not at all because they actually don't care - they want to show that they care.

2) What is true for one person is the net benefit and net negative of all their collective decisions.

I don't disagree that we should find ways of improving these social media networks - they are far from the best vehicles of truth for people, and I was particularly excited by some of Tristan Harris' observations, but they serve other purposes. The answer I think lies deeper.

Education.

I wrote an earlier post where we have all the worlds information available at our fingertips. Let's encourage people to access it, and accept that not everyone will. Facebook cannot be a vehicle of showing whats demonstrably true because people don't agree on what is.

If you have two mammoth intellects like Jordan and Sam disagreeing - how can the rest of us plebs know (no offense)?

Maybe the answer lies in limits. Anyone can spout an opinion with no consequence. Put a dislike button on Facebook - instead of coping out with the niceties of emojis.

A final point in my morning ramblings - persuasive tactics are not equal to totalitarianism. We do not need to re-evaluate our values because I can do what I want in my society - you are still free if you are addicted to twitter. Think of the matrix - Neo is the one who decides to get out of it, while Cypher decides to go back in - choice. It's there for all of us.

Enter Art.

Art is the inspiration through which humanity thrives. It is able to transmit values of supreme importance through vehicles that everybody can understand, rather than recreate and rebuild society and institutions. We will do that naturally if the philosophical bedrock is sound - and that is controlled by the artists.

What I mean is that we created our modern world by a sort of beautiful accident - which involved the theories of Einsteins, the music of Bach, the art of Picasso, the brilliance of Hobbs and Jefferson - the cumulative effect creating a better institution than the one we had before, because we unknowingly inherited values that made us better.

So Sam,

What is the artist's role in providing philosophical framework for people in society?

and

Would you say that artists such as Beethoven, Bach, Puccini Wagner and Verdi discovered and shared truths in their music?

I would love to discuss these ideas with you anytime - I think Art, Music, and culture are not properly discussed, yet there is not one person you know who does not listen to a song, or in other words, a person who identifies or alligns their values with said artist. When someone says, "I like Radiohead" or "I like Bach", he really means, "I align myself with the values of Radiohead". So then, does that mean we can measure peoples values by measuring the most famous artists? Say Bieber? Kendrick? Arcade Fire?

What does that ultimately mean?

It's true, I guess.