TRUTH and the Description of Reality

  The concept of information may be related to specific facts. For example, to the following sentence: >There is a large stone lying in front of our house.< Such a fact is relatively easy to verify and to reach collective consensus about, in which we must agree: is something lying in front of the house? is it our house? is it a stone? is it a large stone?  However, the concept of information may also be related to entire intersubjective realities, which are formed by facts and conventional entities, such as the state or money. Information also serves to describe complex problems, which consist of many facts and which fall within the boundaries of many intersubjective realities—for example, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Such problems are complex issues, in which speaking about truth is—mildly speaking—an extremely difficult undertaking.
  Unlike facts, which are simple statements (simple information), intersubjective realities and complex issues are forms of information encompassing very broad content. When speaking about truth, it is worth distinguishing between these two kinds of information.
  The verification of facts has been mastered by humanity almost perfectly, thanks to methods developed by scientists—classification of minerals, measuring weight and volume, or determining geographical location.
  However, the verification of truth in relation to complex information—in which different facts and intersubjective realities are combined, and in which different points of view must be taken into account—still poses major problems for us. 
  The main task of the informational model I am designing—IAI—is precisely the discovery of broad-context truth, which will allow every person to reach more complex truths and will create a communicative space enabling the achievement of rapid social consensus on difficult and important issues for us.

While working on IAI, I also came to the conclusion that these two factors determine whether something is true.
For the purposes of the project, I defined the concept of Broad Synthetic Truth [SST], which is intended to indicate what structure a description of reality must contain so that we can all find the truth about the problem being described within it.

I would distinguish two problems with a truthful description of reality:
  – is it complete, that is, more precisely speaking, does the description contain all necessary data from all essential scientific aspects, and does it take into account all known points of view on the problem being described.
Of course, in the future new data, points of view, or new aspects may appear that will change our truth, and this must constantly be remembered.
  – is it based on reliable data? We are constantly expanding our data sets and correcting their interpretations, which is why there are no final truths. Yet at the present moment we must rely on the data we currently possess, and they should be as reliable as possible, that is, recognized as true.
  In this sense, I reduce truth to comprehensiveness and to taking into account all the reliable data known to us. 
   If we reduce our description to the point of view of only one social group [limiting the discussion of the problem to benefits and threats only for that group], this will already be untruth.
  Likewise, it will be untrue to present reality in only one aspect, for example in terms of economic profit, but without the aspect of environmental harm.
  I will not elaborate on taking into account all the data we possess and on their reliability, because from the scientific point of view this is obvious.

Since the essential feature of information is not the representation of reality in accordance with truth, but above all the creation of new realities by associating different elements, then the distinction between consciously and unconsciously missing the truth—that is, the moral evaluation—does not make sense. In evaluating the value of information itself, it changes little, because regardless of the informer’s intention, in both cases he simply misses the truth. 

  However, in a situation of confrontation between many intersubjective realities, it will matter whether, as a collective, we base our decisions on: belief in horoscopes, or calculation of economic costs, or perhaps on an assessment of the harmfulness to the environment and to human health. In such a situation, it also matters whether someone is consciously using a collective belief in horoscopes to manipulate public opinion, even though they know that the consequences of such reasoning will be catastrophic for the environment, or whether they are simply not aware of the consequences of making decisions based on belief in fiction. In these two cases—perhaps—different actions will have to be taken in order to prevent many people from being misled.

The IAI project is a proposal for collective cooperation—using a new technique for the search for synthetic truth (SST) and the latest information technologies.
I would like people to cooperate in it who want to describe specific (separated) fragments of reality on the basis of facts. What fragments of reality are these? They are the ailments of contemporary societies, such as the populist offensive in the West or the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

It will not be easy to create such a mechanism of self-repair, or rather of self-evolution, and to ensure its continuity and maximum effectiveness, that is, rapid and accurate exchange of information in a multilevel structure. One person, or even a few people, will not cope with such a task.
Many willing participants will be needed who will want to cooperate on this project.

Just as in Copernicus’s time printing did not enable him to disseminate the truth immediately about the structure of the Solar System, so today social media will rather not help us analyze scientific research and draw logical conclusions.
  For that purpose, it is necessary to build an information network that will enable the understanding of complex truths by everyone, or at least by most people. Copernicus had no possibility of building such an information network, which is why his discovery penetrated collective consciousness over several centuries, but we have such technical and organizational possibilities. Everything depends only on the priorities we as a society set for ourselves.

The effectiveness of the populists’ simplification of reality is visible in politics all over the world.
   Understanding the full truth about reality requires a great deal of effort, and in truth almost none of us, individually, is capable of reaching that truth. I believe that if we do not create a platform that facilitates understanding of synthetic truth, then the populist simplified reality will completely dominate our information networks.

Faster revision of our stories through improving our information network is the idea that guides the IAI project.

Perhaps Google’s mission, which reads:

“to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”
[„uporządkować światowe zasoby informacji i uczynić je powszechnie dostępnymi i użytecznymi”]

is not in fact naive.
  On its website, Google divides this mission into three aspects: the organization of the world’s information, universal accessibility, and usefulness.
 As we sometimes say, “the devil is in the details” [“the devil is in the details”], and in this case that detail is the way the company organizes information. Simply making an enormous amount of information available is far too little for it to be universally useful, as Yuval Noah Harari notes.
I think what is needed for this is somewhat deeper reflection – when can such an enormous amount of information become useful to every human being?

Perhaps the IAI project is a concept for implementing this mission in practice?

The creation of a Synthetic Collective Intellect should be based on cooperation among many opinion-forming centers. Unfortunately, the technique itself of developing Integrated Active Information does not guarantee the emergence of a properly functioning information technology of SCI.
Everything will depend on the people who work on it and on the organizational structures and rules of cooperation they create.