What Important Truths do very few people agree with you on? — A Foray to Discover Truths
These are thoughts from people I know as well as the best answers I could find on the web. This is a question that I came across years ago when I read Peter Thiel’s Zero to One. Since then, this question has been lingering on my mind. The intention of this is to get you thinking and started on the path to discover your own truths. These are golden answers and could be too heavy to process at once, so take your time.
Please note that this is unedited content to ensure that the meaning trying to be conveyed is intact.
A few templates of answering this yourself:
Most people believe its great to work for x, but the truth is the opposite of x.
Most people believe the next great technology is x, but the truth is the opposite of x.
Or personally:
Most people believe its great to spend their free time doing x, but the truth is the opposite of x.
Most people believe its great to be good friends with x, but the truth is the opposite of x.
Most important truth is to be happy and content. Have to learn to strike a balance between how much we need and if some or lots extra will increase your happiness quotient.
The problem is we live in a rat race where the more you achieve the happier you ought to become. And that’s far from the truth.
Most people believe that success is a competition, but the truth is each person’s success is independent, so why don’t we work together!
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. …In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”
― Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda
One obvious one is the existence of a supreme power, some refer to that as god. Others don’t. Another is on the concept of work life balance and how work should never be allowed to supersede other things in life.
I don’t believe that my truth can be anyone else’s truth
In the context of technology, it’s how much people don’t appreciate the technology
They have the perception that it’s easy to do just because it’s easy to use
When the truth is, the more easy and intuitive technology is, the more clever and complex it is and the background
On a more philosophical context, I think how people confuse science / facts with systems of believes like religion is something that I usually don’t agree on with people
Where I usually find conflicts into how people “believe” instead of rationalize
Not sure really, it changes
I’d say maybe that people believe that who you are doesn’t really change, which is in part true but also very reductionistic. It’s like saying the water at one end of a stream is the same as the water that ends up in the ocean. Yes, it’s the same water, but it’s picked up stones, and moss and dirt and stuff and it’s been nourished and tarnished along the way. I think people evolve and change whilst also being who they are.
Most people believe; you must understand something in your life to accept it, truth is, acceptance is understanding.
Most believe opposites attract truth is they rarely last.
People believe similarity holds a marriage…It’s ability to love enough to be flexible.
Change is the only constant thing in life. Get flexible or Get stuck
There are no foolproof rules for life or success each one has to be their own navigator
Discipline usually helps but success also meets those who are not
Last truth .. usually no free lunch
umm i don’t get the question
Guess for most things, truth is only relative, if I were to say one thing that I believe that most peers don’t, is that I truly think money can only bring so much happiness and I would not want a job that only pays well. But again that’s subjective
But if I were to name one ‘truth’ that most people don’t agree with me on it’d probably be the ridiculousness of organised religion.
Your ego/self is mainly an illusion that you demarcate as your own because of the boundary of where your bag of skin ends and the rest of the world starts. A person’s psychological sense of self is derived from the external phenomena. I guess this reflects across two things: mimetic desire and the extended mind suppositions
I struggle with this because of the part “the truth is” is hard to find. There aren’t that many “truths” I find.
I mean my definition of truth means that it is irrefutable and that therefore people should/would not have options or beliefs on it
I guess I can say that the truth is that there are very few truths, we can probably count them on our fingers but very few ‘average’ people would agree at first. Although I’m sure it is easy to convince them.
Bad habits persist because they have a significant purpose, they serve as a temporary “feel good” emotional, mental, or physical state.
Unconsciously, an elaborate system is created to support the functioning of a bad habit. A system is in place.
Most people will not know there is a powerful system in place and will not know that they created it. How they created this system will be a mystery to them.
I claim that the thinking and decision making processes of precisely “how” they created this self-destructive system of a bad habit will be used repetitively in all facets of their lives, bringing about failure whether it is in business or in relationships.
But by changing this self destructive system into a self and life enhancing system (transforming a bad habit into a good habit), a person’s life will change for the better.
When approached with the attitude of learning to function more effectively as a person, changing a bad habit into a good habit is stress free.
That humans are just like any other animal.
For that matter, every human is as useless as me, and I’m about as useful as the pig in the gutter.
If humanity is wiped out this second, the universe doesn’t break a sweat.
Time waste, good, bad, kind, cruel, purpose, goal, success, failure are all human constructs.
The Universe/nature/evolution is a like a force without any purpose. It just is.
So..may the Force be with you.
Gambling regulation has limited Internet innovation. Americans see gambling as a tax on the poor and uneducated. In the past this has largely been the case, with the main applications of gambling being gaming, sports betting, and the lottery.
The stock market provides immense value because it is a huge, publicly accessible casino — this is in contrast to the belief that it provides immense value despite being a casino. The world hasn’t seen the innovations that would be birthed by an Internet with unrestricted gambling. This would lead to money finding its way into increasingly intelligent hands.
Music is not advancing at the pace afforded by technology. The most efficient way to produce cutting-edge music is to use complicated software tools. There is not enough incentive for the engineers who are equipped to use those tools effectively to be spending time writing music, when they could be working on difficult problems. This is a corollary to an argument I gave about games. We should be skeptical of a popular musician who says they are writing bleeding-edge music with a guitar, just as we would be skeptical if we found out Google was running COBOL.
This slow advancement in music has probably been the case for a very long time. The last monopoly on music was arguably The Beatles, a fractious group of drug addicts. If you are truly brilliant, you probably shouldn’t be spending the majority of your time writing music.
The absolute most weight that you can gain from eating a 5 pound chocolate cake is 5 pounds. In fact, much of that 5 pounds will be either metabolized into energy or excreted as waste, leaving much less than 5 pounds of resulting weight gain. It’s amazing how many people disagree with this.
Most people intuitively understand that the future doesn’t exist but for some reason they really struggle with the fact that the past doesn’t exist either. Like the future, there has never been a direct witnessing of the past. People don’t witness the past; we witness memory in the present. Looking at a memory (or even a photo) is not perceiving the past any more than speculation is perceiving the future. Memory and speculation are mentally constructed phenomena happening in the present. There is not a past or future that actually exists in reality. Actions in the present effect the present, and time is a belief.
This is not mere philosophy; but actuality. And once this is understood its the same as realizing that there never was a Santa Claus. But like Santa, time can still be a useful lie when you need an easy explanation of events to those who still believe.
There is no such thing as “unnatural”. Everything manifests due to natural processes acting upon natural resources. There is never any element of unnaturality that is entered into the equation. Human intent and action are not unnatural, they are natural processes just like bees making honey or beavers making dams. Human dams are just as natural as beaver dams. Nuclear waste is as natural as honey. That doesn’t mean that it’s healthy any more than the natural element Arsenic is. It just means that it belongs to nature the same as all human creations do. Everything belongs to nature, including us. We don’t have the power to separate ourselves from nature any more than bees and beavers do. The fact that we think we do is why we are such a blight on this planet. But thought is natural too.
The essence of contrarian thinking involves developing a variant perception (Steinhardt) and developing that perception into a more formed thesis by exploring its implications and how they fit with reality. As Iain Mcgilchrist has demonstrated, gestalt perception and analysis involve very different cognitive processes, although they are complementary and there should be an interplay between them.
If you were to ask me the question, I would say that I believe on a multidecadal horizon, our concerns ought to be much less regarding putative anthropogenic global warming, and much more about the effects of multidecadal ocean cooling cycles, the effect of a grand solar minimum (with possible links to volcanic activity, and operating via the effect on the earth’so albedo) — cold is much more challenging to life than warmth.
I would say also that concerns regarding the prospect of continuing productivity and wage stagnation in the developed world are mistaken, and arise from a linear conception of the world that does not appreciate that economic processes have an ebb and flow over longer periods.
You, me, and everyone around us do no have Free Will.
Bare with me here.
If you believe in science, you believe in causality — every single event happens exactly the way it does because of a specific group of causes that made it happen. For example, when you flip a coin and it lands on Heads, it’s because of the way you used your finger muscles and the other environment conditions. So theoretically, if you knew the physical conditions the coin was flipped to the finest detail, you’d have been able to leverage the laws of physics to determine that it would land on Heads.
Now, if every event has a complete predictive set of causes, these causes also have their own set of causes, and then they have their own causes, and so on. This is called Determinism and our entire study of sciences depends on it. Now this is super logical and easy to grasp when you talk about visual chain reactions like domino blocks falling, weather patterns and the growth of plants, but for some reason it’s really hard for us as humans to believe that we’re also the same. That’s because feel as is we have choice and free will. We feel as if we are “making our minds” and we really really feel we’re in control. But let’s remember that it’s just that — a feeling. And feelings can sometimes be wrong.
If you agree that the entire universe is ruled by the laws of physics and if you believe in Determinism, and if you believe that your brain and body are also a part of the universe, than you logically understand that your brain and mind are no different from the domino blocks or the weather patterns. Every single thought or idea you feel are direct results of previous conditions. There’s no decision point, there’s no fork in the road, there’s is just one step after another. Fully deterministic. Just like everything around you.
Free Will is an illusion. It’s probably the greatest illusion that evolution has ever pulled. It’s a wonderful thing, pretty hilarious actually. All that is left for you to do, is to enjoy the ride :)
The highest and best use of design is cover for arbitrage. And since you cannot speak of arbitrage (in polite company, and because it will disappear if you do) many of the successes we attribute to “design” are in fact due to the fact that someone found, successfully took advantage of, and hid an arbitrage.
And enough successes ARE due to design that we are even more likely to totally miss the above.
