The consequences of claiming truth
Some people do say “this is the truth” and “this is a lie”. They shouldn’t. It is irrational [1] and exceedingly dangerous.
For example, Mao Zedong claimed to know truth and 45 million people died. Joseph Stalin claimed to have the truth and 9 million people died. Adolf Hitler claimed truth and 21 million people died. Then there is Cambodia, Cuba, Venezuela, etc. Even the Church brought us the Inquisition. The Chinese Uyghurs Muslims are being asked to accept some truths today (or face genocide) from the CCP and CCP Chairman Xi Jinping. No one should be allowed to claim truth. It kills reason. It kills people.
The reason: Who would decide the truth? The government? The Church? An expert? Your boss? How did they decide “the truth”? That last question is pretty important, don’t you think?
Why would anyone want to surrender their agency to another? A rational person will not.
An analogy –
You are a tennis player. You claim to be the best. But that assertion is your hypothesis. At this point, it is a subjective truth only—a belief. This assertion is not however, absolute truth. I hope you can agree. The only way to prove your hypothesis is to test it. So you play another great player. You win. You did not PROVE that you are the best player. All you did is DISPROVE the superiority of the other player, because they lost to you. That is, you cannot prove truth; you can only disprove.
So, you keep playing. After every match you win. It looks increasing like you are the best. Maybe you beat every great player in America. That makes you the best player among the known players. This is objective truth. Unfortunately, there is always the player you do not know about. So you keep looking and taking on all comers. That is the pursuit of truth. That reason and rationality.
NOTE also: Experts did not decide you were the best player. You did. Who decides truth is the process of reason. Few do it well now. Just like tennis.
- Claiming a truth as absolute truth is the definition of irrationality. A lie is different. A lie you can know absolutely. Data can disprove, but data cannot prove. This is because other plausible beliefs might also exist to explain the data observed. See the requirement for truth here.
