11 September 2007


Am I seeking the truth? I guess everybody is. Everybody wants to know what the truth is. Now what exactly is truth? What is the essence of truth? Is it something that can be measured? Is it something that is absolute? Or is it something that is relative, something that is different depending on the person?

If a tree falls in the forest, if nobody heard it, did it happen?

If you say that it did happen, then how do you know? How do you know that a certain claim is the truth if there is no proof?

Proof is something that people seek for nowadays. And proof is also something that people try to produce, for purposes that are sometimes dubious.

When one applies for a job, one submits one’s credentials. Proof that he is capable of the job. When one creates a hypothesis, one tests it for proof, proof that the hypothesis is true or not.

Now a crucial thing to consider is how far or how near the truth is from the hypothesis. One makes a good hypothesis if the distance between truth and the hypothesis is small. But, no matter how good a person is in estimating, one cannot produce a Null Hypothesis that is completely true. If one estimates the average age of a certain age group, by eyeballing it, it will always be off. It can be close, say, the Null Hypothesis may say that the mean is 50, but in reality, if one measures the whole population, it may be 49.9999 or 50.0001. It will always be off. That is just the reality of truth.

There is a certain paradox in this world. The fact that the population is very large for anything that we want to measure which is significant for society. We all want to know the truth, yet we cannot gain it by measuring everybody. That simply is not possible. Thus, one relies on samples, a small part of the population, and then extrapolates from the analysis that are gathered from the sample, what the truth with regard to the whole population is. However, even with sophisticated formulae and all statistical analyses that are available out there, one cannot measure the real truth. It simply is not possible.

So what exactly is truth? Is it something that humans can attain?

(Entrance to La Mitad del Mundo, from my La Mitad del Mundo Series.)

1 comment:

  1. truth... naalala ko ang lektyur mo. hindi ko lang naalala kung paano ka nagdiskas nung semantics. idiskas ko ng konti bukas. at feel ko kapag tinanong ako tungkol sa meaning e mapapanganga na lang ako. hehehe.