[Day Tripper]

Originally Posted by Red Slinger

Arguing what is true and what is not true is a slippery slope. Descartes argued it much better than I could have but I'll try to paraphrase: you can't really know anything for certain that you see or hear or touch or smell. For all you know you're dreaming or living in someone elses fantasy. The only thing you can know for certain is that you are conscious of thinking. This is where the "Cogito Ergo Sum" or "I think therefore I am" comes from, although my explanation is sloppy at best.

Russell pointed out that even cogito ergo sum is going too far, because "I" might not be the same "I" from one moment to the next. Rather, the best one can say is that "sense data are being perceived". These sense data certainly exist, but what they represent is not 100% certain. Later in the same book (I think it was Problems of Philosophy), he argues that an objective reality is the simplest and most plausible explanation, but by no means a certain one. This I agree with. I can't be 100% certain of anything but the perception of sense-data, but I can have varying degrees of certainty about different things. I don't think this is the time or place to get into the details of it, though.

Obviously, this is an extreme example but I think it fits the conversation. 1000 years ago it was "true" that the Earth was flat. 1000 years ago it was true that God created everything.

A thousand years ago it was true that the Earth was not flat...we just came to a conclusion that was false based on a lack of available information. Semantics aside...if you think about it, "the Earth is flat" is approximately true on small enough scales. I'd liken the statement "The Earth is flat" to something like "invariant mass is equal to actual mass at v>0", which was an assumption made by Newton and falsified by Einstein. The statement is approximately true at low velocity but way off at very high velocity. Nevertheless, Newton's laws are still used to calculate spacecraft trajectories because the scales involved are suitable. Likewise, the flat earth approximation is made when building a house. I should mention though that Eratosthenes worked out that the Earth was round more than two thousand years ago. I suppose this information must have been lost for some time.

1000 years from now maybe we'll discover that God farted and caused the Big Bang.

This hypothesis has already been conceived by Seth MacFarlane and presented in Family Guy.

I guess my point is (besides working in a fart reference) is that I'm not comfortable talking about what's true and what's not true with any degree of certainty.

I wouldn't say that I'm not comfortable talking about what's true with any degree of certainty. I have a high (but not perfect) degree of certainty that the sun will rise tomorrow, but a much lower degree of certainty that it will rain between 38-42 mm tonight.

So I guess that a better way to put my statement is this: If someone were to withhold information or an explanation which is more likely/plausible than one I currently hold, for fear of "rocking the boat" or whatever else, that would upset me.