# Truth-Seeking Modes

Source: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2024/08/17/truth-seeking-modes
Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Truth-Seeking-Modes?index=0x66c1263a30617566bf767f98b0769210b41810aa88fd4cf8fda24ee5b64c3f2769029203
Submitted by misha on 2024-08-17 UTC, 1 upvote, 0 comments

## Summary

This post argues that the healthiest way to relate to a truth-seeking impulse is as an infinite game, where the aim is to keep playing rather than reach a definitive "winning" answer. The author says trivial truths may have win conditions, but interesting truths cannot be won and can only be healthily engaged because they keep producing new salient novelty. A healthy relationship to a suspected truth is described as a dynamic equilibrium among three forces, with every unbalanced configuration counted as unhealthy. The author ties this to an earlier idea from a newsletter on cozytech, "individually delusional, collectively rational," and suggests the arrangement shows a less deluded disposition emerging from more deluded parts, which the author calls a reliable gestalt subjectivity built from unreliable component subjectivities.

## Article

Been on a Venn diagram kick lately, since being primed to think in Venns by Harris campaign. This one summarizes an idea I’ve long been noodling on: The healthiest way to relate to a truth-seeking impulse is as an infinite game, where the goal is to continue playing, not arrive at a dispositive “winning” right answer. Trivial truths might have such win conditions, but no interesting truth can be “won.” It can only be healthily related to, because it will produce an inexhaustible supply of salient novelty.

A “healthy relationship” to a suspected truth is, I think, a dynamic equilibrium at the intersection of the three forces illustrated above. And every unbalanced configuration is unhealthy. This is the second such dynamic equilibrium Venn I’ve made recently. Yesterday I had one in my newsletter about cozytech. There I characterized it as “individually delusional, collectively rational.” I think that’s true here as well. The ring of six 1/3 and 2/3 subsets is a buffet of delusion traps. But the center is healthy.

There is something deeper going on here and I think the n=3 case is just the simplest stable dynamic equilibrium emergence of a less deluded disposition from a bunch of more deluded ones. It’s building a reliable gestalt subjectivity out of unreliable component subjectivities. The self as complex engineered artifact.