Pretty much everything under the umbrella of spiritually, for one. Beliefs about what a family should look like. What someone believes is right for their children. What someone believes are appropriate boundaries or limitations for engagement with others. Most things in life aren’t black and white, and it’s ok if we don’t all have the same definitions/goals/beliefs. In fact, battling to push beliefs as universal ideals have created a significant amount of harm historically.

I think of ML models such as deep nets are a good metaphor for this, sometimes the weights converge in roughly the same spots every time if left to train long enough. Most of the time, they don’t - the data is too complex, or there are unknowns. The patterns it picks up are valid, but they’re a byproduct of their journey. They get stuck in local minima and sometimes it takes awhile to get out of that space, sometimes they never do. One model may be more “right” than another.. but only if we can agree on the metric that we use to assess that, which usually there is not a single one or it’s measuring the wrong thing, or our target variable is flawed. Especially when it comes to encoding, which is what humans are doing every day.

Most probability density functions are simplified estimates based on limited observations. You can use something like a KDE to more accurately model distributions, but they’re highly sensitive to the data they’ve observed. Universal truth is more rare than not.

Even gravity, which we had a mathematical equation for on earth, was proven to be only valid… on earth. And the “true” model is more sophisticated when you looked outside of earth - which is when the theory of relativity was created. We are all estimating reality through our own observations and those that we collect from others. It’s unreasonable to assume we all have or should have identical encodings.

Reply to this note

Please Login to reply.

Discussion

When we say "right" or "true" we can sometimes mean something factual (it rained yesterday), or something moral (it's wrong to murder), but other times we are talking about the right strategy, or the right mental model.

I like the humility (is that the right word?) in your description of this. But when people say "my truth" and "your truth" I think sometimes they are allowing themselves to be content with a local minima (philosophically) because it feels good to them rather than seeking the truth in a more universal sense. Like your example of gravity, there are layers or contexts to truth where a mental model works within boundaries, but needs to expand when more contexts are considered.

Are we, as humans, seeking a good-enough mental model and retreating to a context where that model bears fruit, or are we reaching for greater understanding of the universe, and staying "on the road" toward the truth as much as we are able to?

SO much of this resonates with me. And I can say, personally, I hope I’m striving for a greater understanding. But I often think of the symbol of a unalome, and the way it represents the “path to transcendence” in Buddhism - it’s not a straight line. And neither is getting out of local minima. I hope, as humans, we collectively strive for more. But I can only control myself, and trying to judge others by where they appear to be on that journey is fruitless.