Back to Basics: Truth is Unitary

It was a dark and stormy night.

The prospect held the front of his cloak tight to his chest. He stumbled, fell over into the mud, and picked himself back up. Shivering, he slammed his body against the front doors of the Temple and collapsed under its awning.

He picked himself up and slammed his fists against the double ironwood doors. He couldn’t hear his own knocks above the gale. He banged harder, then with all his strength.

“Hello! Is anyone in there? Does anyone still tend the Fire?” he implored.

There was no answer.

The Temple’s stone walls were built to last, but rotting plywood covered the apertures that once framed stained glass. The prospect slumped down again, leaning his back against the ironwood. He listened to the pitter-patter of rain on overgrowth. It wasn’t a bad place to think.

The trouble was, he didn’t want to think. Not right now. Thinking creates depression. Action cures it. The prospect put his stiff hands in his pockets. His fingers traced the delicate forms of a disposable lighter bought on the darkweb and a short cheap aluminum-wrapped wax candle.

He considered lighting the candle under the Temple’s awning. But that felt pathetic. If the Temple was abandoned then he should at least do it at the altar. The acolyte eyed the plywood. Surely he could punch through it and climb in that way. He left the shelter of the awning and tapped on the former window. His taps left fingerprints in the myceliation.

The ironwood doors opened. A young girl poked her head out. The prospect shouted in surprised and fell into the mud.

“What are you doing out there in the mud?” the girl asked.

“Choosing to dunk myself in the mud wasn’t exactly an explicit rational choice,” said the prospect while shaking himself off.

“Well come inside. Hypothermia impairs one’s ability to make rational decisions,” said the girl. She poked her head back inside the Temple and closed the door behind herself to keep out the rain.

The prospect looked at the door. He noticed it wasn’t locked. It had never been locked.

The prospect opened the door and stepped inside.

The Temple wasn’t warm, but it was mostly dry. The large circular domed chamber was ringed with statues. Rain fell through the oculus in the eye of the dome. The statues’ paint had partially worn away. The girl had hung her own hagoromo on the statue of Mukami-sama, the God of Atheism.

The prospect’s cloak was so soaked it was keeping him colder than warming him up. There were no chairs or coat rack. It would be mala suerte to just set it on the floor. It felt sacrilegious. But…when in Rome…. The prospect almost hung his cloak on the statue closest to himself. Then he realized that the true sacrilege would be to pick a statue without considering Who he was acknowledging.

Mukami-sama was already taken.

He paced around the circumference of the chamber, taking care with each step as if the floor could collapse under him. Half the gods he didn’t even recognize. Of those he did…

Math-sama’s too-perfect curves? No.

Moloch? Azathoth? Multivac? Three times no.

Morpheus? So many gods’ names started with the letter “M”. Science-sama was almost right…

Then he saw the dragon wings and octopus face. The prospect wasn’t choosing which kami to worship. He was choosing which kami to ignore. The prospect arranged his cloak to maximize surface area. That was definitely the reason. Not to block out the thoughts it induced in his mind.

It wasn’t until he committed to his choice that the girl spoke again.

“Do you have an offering?” she asked, gently.

There was no money in his pockets. It had taken all he had just to get here. But he had not come empty-handed. He placed his smokeless candle on the floor of the Temple, among the dirt and rubble, and lit it.

“Your offering is accepted,” said the girl, “Why are you here?”

Why wasn’t he here? The heartbreak, the betrayal, the frustration. Where to begin? He had lost his faith and sought refuge in truth. But the rationalist project was over. HPMOR was completed an eternity ago. The patriarchs had moved on, and the Temple had become wabi-sabi. “People believe the most insane things,” he said.

The girl laughed the lighthearted laugh of a child at the playground. “Really?” she asked. An innocent flirtation.

“Yes!” said the prospect. “People watch the news and observe rare events. They panic and advocate for regulation. When that increases prices, they advocate for price controls. When that causes supply shortages, they advocate for redistribution, resulting in an economic disaster. The rare events become common events, and then they stop paying attention because common events are not news. You’re not paying attention to me are you?”

The girl was cleaning her fingernails. “I am totally paying attention to you,” she said, “I am enraptured with your narrative.”

“You think I’m an idiot,” said the prospect.

“It’d be foolish to say something like that out loud,” said the girl. She stood up and began pacing to the side. The two Rationalists circled each other like duelists. The candle projected their shadows onto the walls of the pantheon.

“I believe you just did,” said the boy with a grin. He sidestepped across the single statue representing the universal cross-cultural trickster god. Loki. Raven. Coyote. Sun Wukong.

“How do you know other people believe insane things? Can you read minds?” said the girl. She wrapped her arm sensually around the backless back of Science-sama.

“People say they believe obviously wrong things,” said the boy.

“It’s a good thing people always tell the truth about what they believe,” said the girl. She resumed pacing.

“I see what you are getting at. Well, if I can’t use people’s statements as evidence for what they believe then what should I use?” said the boy. Step.

“Bets, obviously. Round-earthers trust Newtonian mechanics with their lives. Flat-earthers won’t even Kelly bet their life savings,” said the girl. Step.

“That works for trivially testable questions,” said the boy, “But what about historical questions? What about questions of ethics?”

“Questions of value are answered whenever you make a choice,” said the girl, “As for history, you must remember that Truth is Unitary.”

“Truth is Unitary?” said the boy, “I never read that in Rationality A-Z.”

“What is your trade?” said the girl.

“I have apprenticed as a tailor, a survivalist and a penetration tester,” said the boy.

The girl gathered a stick that had blown through the oculus and drew three circles on the dusty stone. She drew a suit in one circle to represent the tailor, a campfire to represent the survivalist, and key to represent the penetration tester.

“Do these trades have any intersection?”

“Excuse me?”

“I mean,” said the girl, “Is there knowledge transfer? Does being skilled at a tailor make you better as a survivalist?”

“A little,” said the boy, “Good stitching is good stitching. If my pants tear while out in the wilderness, then my skills as a tailor make me better equipped to repair them than if I were merely a survivalist. Moreover, durable fabric is durable fabric.”

“Does being a survivalist make you a better penetration tester?”

“Yes. Once, when I was breaking into a datacenter, my scheme involved hiding in a cold room for 36 hours. Hypothermia is more dangerous than most people are aware of. I could have gotten in deep trouble without my survivalist skills. Fortunately, I’ve spent many nights out in the cold, and knew exactly how to prepare,” said the boy.

“Do you get my point yet?” asked the girl.

“I’m afraid not. I think you’ll have to spell it out for me,” said the boy.

“There is much a penetration tester knows that a tailor doesn’t. Similarly, a tailor possesses knowledge unknown to the penetration tester. But there is an intersection too. Both require an accurate understanding of what clothing must be worn under what circumstances to have the desired effect. In this way, a tailor can tell if a penetration tester is bullshitting. And a penetration tester can tell if a tailor is bullshitting,” said the girl. She drew a line connecting the tailor circle to the penetration tester circle.

“But suppose a penetration tester accuses a tailor of bullshit and the tailor accuses the penetration tester of bullshit. You know at least one of them is lying. How can you tell who it is?” asked the boy.

“I ask the survivalist,” said the girl. She drew two more lines, completing the trinity.

The boy’s eyes lit with understanding. “I see. Every legitimate domain of human activity bumps up against a dozen others. You can ask the physicists to check the chemists and the chemists to check the physicists.”

“That’s how it works on the scale of society. It works inside your own mind too. It’s impossible to believe in fundamentalist literal Creationism while also having a thorough understanding of physics, paleontology, geology and memetics. There are too many contradictions,” said the girl.

“So what you’re saying is that with enough volume of information I don’t need to worry about being brainwashed?” said the boy.

“Not quite. No amount of listening to Marxists will cure your belief in Communism. But studying economics, history, politics-in-practice, rhetoric and business management absolutely will,” said the girl, “The trick is to validate your beliefs against competent people who have objectives orthogonal to your personal narrative.”

“What if a bit of truth is truly an island?” asked the boy, “What if there’s a domain that couldn’t possibly be useful to anyone.”

“That’s what the inventor of number theory believed. He predicted it would be useless. Instead, number theory is now the foundation of cryptography. It’s the reason we can do secure online banking over an unsecure Internet,” said the girl.

“Aristotelian philosophy does seem genuinely useless, though,” said the boy.

“That’s because it’s genuinely bullshit,” said the girl.

“Fine. I think I get the idea. Truth is Unitary because it’s a densely-connected graph, with all the different nodes checking each other. But what’s this have to do with belief?” said the boy.

“Because even though you can’t bet money on all of your beliefs, you can bet money on beliefs they are connected to,” said the girl, “It’s hard to bet money on Creationism, but it’s easy to bet money on molecular genetics.”

“I think I get that too, but what does this have to do with becoming less wrong?” asked the boy.

“The way to become less wrong is to check yourself against people who think orthogonally to you,” said the girl.

“How can I find people in orthogonal domains who can check my beliefs against?” asked the boy.

“Leave this Temple. Find others who care about accountability. It does not matter if they call themselves ‘Rationalist’.”

The boy left with a fire in his heart.