Truth

Context

• Truth has been the subject of Epistemology and philosophers for thousands of years.
• The original Western Philosophical traditions starting with Thales looked for Truth from the natural philosophy of reality.
• By the time of Plato the search for truth had turned into the anthropomorphic search for human Knowledge. A very different subject.

Problem

• Tim Rice captured the heart of the problem in Jesus Christ Superstar:

 [JESUS]
 I look for truth, and find that I get damned
 [PILATE]
 But what is truth? Is truth unchanging law?
 We both have truths - are mine the same as yours?

• The challenges of human efforts at discovering truth are summarized on the page General_Theory_of_Living_Systems#Problems.
• Human Knowledge or understanding is a poor measure of truth values.
• There was a time when we would believe that photographs or videos were factual, but "now that everything can be fakes, how will we know what's real?"

Solution

1. Go back to the original Greek philosophers and seek Information that is in concert with reality irrespective of any human endeavor.
2. Focus on Information and not on human knowledge.
3. For Identity Proofing the best source of Truth is reporting Information on an Audit of the processes that where used to build Assurance.
4. Joshua Rothman, Afterimage (2018-11-12) New Yorker p. 34ff