Lost truth

by Jon Sullivan - 2024-09-02 - Jonism

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I used to be 100% invested in a system of belief that perfectly explained life the universe and everything. I now find it very much lacking.

When I was young I went out of my way to suck in all knowledge in an egotistical and dubious attempt to find and understand some ultimate truth. I studied all religions and philosophies. I read great literature and experienced great art. I worked on understanding science and pseudo-science. I worked on drawing out patterns between disparate domains. Before the Internet I was addicted to libraries. Pretty quickly my cosmology settled into patterns that completely explained everything, and gave my life meaning and foundation. This cosmology could be summed up as - Logic is truth, the scientific method is the test harness, God is of the gaps, and life neither has nor needs meaning.

Many people reading this will counter that such an "understanding" fails to explain topics like love, beauty, aesthetics, morality. But I've found love is just chemical, beauty etc gets sciency in many fields of science, and the Greeks tied morality to logic thousands of years ago. It's not a cosmology for everyone. But it worked just fine for me my whole life. Or....... It did..... But now, at 61, I find that while it works great as a wireframe model, it lacks once you start to add a bunch of detail I'd always ignored. Perhaps, I now worry, it requires that you look at all non-sciency things through a lens which can only returns sciency results. Where I live now..... the people I gather with now..... the world I perceive now..... It's not sciency. The science lens now fails to focus on either my objective or subjective reality. Such thinking is often the domain of cults and morons, which is worrisome.

While sociologists may label me an idiot, I have so far failed to reconcile logic/science with "peace light love joy". At the same time I've had to conclude that any cosmology that fails to embrace peace light love joy becomes a system that ignores too many gaps. Even if science and logic can explain all emotions and human interactions and social structures, it ignores the subjective benefits and use cases. Science ignores, and philosophy only tortures, the question of what my best life is. Humanity is a three body problem science typically solves with spherical chickens.

My favorite science joke that pokes fun at the failures of science - "A farmer has some chickens who don't lay any eggs. The farmer calls a physicist to help. The physicist does some calculations and says 'I have a solution but it only works for spherical chickens in a vacuum.'". That's silly, on purpose, but it calls out a major weakness in the scientific method, which strips away detail to strengthen the methodology. It enforces a large sample size to reduce outliers. It rarely gets the required peer review, meaning it can drift far from the objective, leaving science to include plenty of bullshit. It measures an aggregate, turning a too complex three body problem into a possibly invalid two body problem.

I have come to believe that most of humanity's problems could be solved by universal kindness. I have come to believe that all morality must derive from compassion. I have come to believe that all laws should require total equality. I have come to believe that while science has incredible value and power, it leads us away from what is best in life. And at 61 I find science, while succeeding at "why", has swerved too far from the "how" of attaining a best life. At 61 I find I don't give a shit what cosmology gets me there, but living my best life is the goal.

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