Truth

It's not true because it's beautiful, it's beautiful because it's true

Is it important to you that your beliefs are objectively true? Or do you care more about whether they are emotionally satisfying? Or whether they conform to the norms of your in-group?

"All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them." -Galileo Galilei

The importance of truth can be found under trust, lying, misinformation, critical thinking, reality, and science. An analysis of the fractal nature of objective truth is on the Gödel page.

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened." -Sir Winston Churchill

How can you tell whether you are honestly pursuing truth or falling victim to cognitive biases or logical fallacies? These are discussed on the science and critical thinking pages.

"Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

This short video is a good example of the argument that subjective reality takes priority over the objective, and uses the placebo effect as an example. However, there is still an objective reality in the brain that produces that experience from the action of neurons, and the placebo effect doesn't just make you "feel" better, it produces chemical changes in the body. Otherwise there would be nothing to feel! Plus, it has been shown that honest placebos are often just as effective, implying that it may not be necessary to believe our myths literally for their metanarrative to still be powerful.

The fact that our experience of subjective reality can be changed by our beliefs is not evidence that reality itself is subjective, but that is the conclusion many people draw from it.

Is there an objective reality outside of our beliefts?

This video presents a more rationalist perspective.

Is There Objective Truth? Or Is Reality Subjective, Or a Social Construct?

Peterson, Harris, and Objective Morality

Since metaculture has the application of science to questions of morality as one of its core tenets, addressing what is meant by "objective morality" and how one might determine it is a useful exercise.

The first video below has a long response to Sam Harris's Moral Landscape and rejecting the notion of "objective" morality. It is unfortunate that he and Jordan Peterson have been linked by their various appearances together, and that Harris's criticisms of Islam have been used to support racist politics and policies. He has otherwise been a leading voice regarding the scientific approach to spiritual subjects like morality and meditation, offering a version of atheism that is significantly more open-minded than your Hitchens or Dawkins. The idea that science can be applied to questions of morality should be strongly considered.

The utilitarian ethics of metaculture avoids these criticisms by recognizing the subjective nature of self-reporting happiness and measuring it on the aggregate instead of the individual level. We can know statistically whether one society or culture is happier than another, and whether changes to various policies or beliefs have an impact on that measure. It doesn't claim an objective morality, but rather one that can be improved over time with study and comparison. If an "objective" morality exists it can only be approached and never reached, and each moral grey area must be considered individually--no simple rules apply universally (see Gödel).

It also takes a perspective that fundamentally opposes war and the use of power to enforce ideology, and that all religions and cultures should be embraced. The argument could be made that certain passages in the Quran form a generating equation that create a pattern of violence, and significant text could be dedicated to supporting that argument. However, it is inherently divisive and against the spirit of universalism that metaculture is striving for. But even if there was strong evidence to support such a view (not saying there is), there would be absolutely no implication that discrimination or violence could ever be an acceptable response to it.

So, instead of the perspective that "Western culture is objectively better than others because we invented science and democracy" it's more like "Science allows people of all cultures to discover their shared humanity and speak about it with a common language. Let's use this to adopt a universal system of ethics so we don't kill each other, and we can solve global problems like climate change together." It's looking at the same set of facts from a different perspective.

Jordan Peterson & The Meaning of Life - Philosophy Tube

Since a good part of the above video uses Sam Harris to make Jordan Peterson's philosophy intelligible, here's the video being referenced.

Science can answer moral questions - Sam Harris

Beauty is Truth and Vice Versa

If Beauty is Truth and Truth Beauty, then Fractals represent the essence of both.

Keats's Ode on a Grecian Urn

Objectively Good Music

Kamasi Washington - Truth

Lizzo - Truth Hurts