Language is hard. Communication is harder. When someone receives a communication, they interpret it through their own understanding and world view and the message that’s ultimately received may bear only a passing resemblance to the one that was intended. Ideally, we’re all working to get better at communicating what we actually intend, since the burden is on the communicator to be understood, not the receiver to interpret.
With this in mind, I’m writing this as something of a preemptive “disambiguation” of some terms I intend to use in future blog posts with two intentions in mind:
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I want to be clear with myself what these words mean and how I should use them, so that hopefully I do not make the mistake of using them in the wrong way such that other people are less likely to understand me.
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I want to be clear with everyone else how I am intending to use these words, for the same reason as above.
In the end my goal is to “think in public” about the world in a way that helps me understand it better. With any luck, that might also help some other people understand it better, or at least understand me better.
Defining “Ground Truth”
When I use the term “ground truth” I am referring to to what other people might call “objective reality.” These are the things we, as a society, “know.” Usually through direct observation, measurement, and empirical evidence.
The earth is round. This is ground truth. Some people “believe” otherwise. Beliefs are derived from ground truth, but they do not influence ground truth. Our ability to understand ground truth is imperfect, and we may be wrong about some parts of it, but the preponderance of credible sources currently agree.
Often, but not always, it is possible for you to demonstrate ground truth through your own observation or empirical measurement. Eratosthenes of Cyrene demonstrated the earth was round in 240 B.C. using shadows, an experiment you can run yourself with an afternoon’s lazy drive in the car.
Defining “Belief”
When I use the term “belief” I am referring to the entire host of things which a person might hold to be either true or false, but which cannot be empirically proven. These are the things you might “know” which are not ground truth.
Beliefs are often based on our understanding of ground truth, but sometimes they’re not. There are things people believe to their core that have no basis in our shared objective reality. Where people (myself included) get themselves into trouble is conflating the things we happen to believe with truth. I absolutely believe all of the things that I believe happen to be true. I also acknowledge the statistical likelihood of that is approximately zero.
The closer you can get your beliefs to ground truth, the more valuable your insights become. To yourself and to others. I only know of one way to do this, which is to take a cherished belief and really investigate it. Tear it down to its core and figure out why you believe it. Where did you learn the subset of things that made you believe that particular thing? Do they still hold up relative to the other things you know or believe? Beware of cognitive dissonance.
Defining “Principles”
When I say “my principles” what I really mean are the rules by which I live my life. They are not fundamental ground truth, although in many cases my intention is that they are reflective of it. They’re decisions I’ve made about what’s important, turned into systems.
Principles are like an operating system. They’re decisions made in advance about what’s important, what matters, and how to respond to various stimuli.
Being vegetarian or vegan is a principle. It comes from a person’s understanding of ground truth, their beliefs, and is ultimately codified in the pre-made decision about what they will or won’t eat.
Other Terms
I’m avoiding defining a few things: ideas, values. Probably others. I think for purposes of the kinds of things I’m intending to talk about what constitutes an idea won’t matter, and values are just a specific subspecies of beliefs. There are some academic senses where the distinction matters, but I don’t think it will here.
This should be enough of a shared lexicon to get where I’m trying to go, or at least to be able to define new terms along the way as necessary.