In the time of the WIFI and the warfighter being placed in harms way, the human is subjected to making a decision of choice between a)good and b) bad. As Albus and Mystel indicated in their book "Engineering of Mind" this choice evolves out of "thought' -- see page 116. However, due to the evolution of the individual it would appear that bad is excited by fear and good is exited by trust. As in the case of GPS this bias appears to be overcome. This in spite of the fact that one cannot "see" the satellites that produce GPS and yield WIFI in the process.
Not sure what you're asking, but nevertheless, questioning some of the assumptions. Seems to me that we "trust" GPS, even if we can't see the satellites, just as we trust our engine controls when driving a car. We trust that the algorithms are doing their job, such that if enough satellites are not in range to be able to establish a position, or if engine sensors were not working properly to be able to control engine functions, we would be given a warning that system operation has been compromised. It's not exactly blind trust. In these and just about any other examples, we also assume that the system is designed to "fail safe," should it fail.
Also, not sure what you mean by "GPS yields WIFI." The common use of the term WiFi refers to IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN. How does this relate to GPS? Nor do I understand how "warfighter" comes in play here.
As to the main question, indeed, what is truth? Has been asked many times. My not-too-inspired answer would be, something that can be independently verified. Otherwise, it's faith.
Perhaps the attached figure will help to clarify my question. In doing so, it will also serve as a stepping stone to clarify my use of the notion of "GPS" and the use of the term "WIFI" -- please consider my use of these should be construct as "meta" terms as opposite to how we define them in the engineering world.
In am grateful to you for having introduced the terms in your answer; Specifically the term "faith". I have much more to discuss with you, provided you are so willing? Thank you for sharing your time with me to consider my request to continue. Take care, Al
Al, you probably asked one of the most complex possible questions. Truth is a matter of belief, value, norm or conception depending on the context. The simplest way to exemplify the truth question are math axioms. They have never been proved, never got questioned - just accepted and believed to be true. Are they really true? Nobody knows and nobody feels nervous about it.
Some times humans make innocent mistakes, like the way in which Newton theory was accepted for decades, and then later Einstein's theory of relativity surfed the lack of truth in Newton's theory. However to our days, as long as we consider events moving at speeds ways lower than the speed of light, Newton's theory is still a close enough paradigm, or a particular case of Einstein's theory, sought to be true. As a lesson of this state of facts Einstein was both careful and humble when stating that "as long as the opposite is not proven the speed of light in vacuum shall be considered "c" and invariant in different inertial systems." In other words Einstein left a small door to question the truth of his own theory...
I would also suggest to make a difference between the truthfulness of an outcome and the truthfulness of the provider. For example, when one consumes some food that person definitely takes as true the fact that the food is not poisoned. Yet it is not obvious at all that the food consumer considers everything that the CEO of the food plant may say or write to be the full truth. In fact in this example, the truthfulness of the CEO may also be irrelevant.
I doubt that any lack of truth causes or triggers fear. Sometime the lack of truth is intentional and has the purpose of demonstrating that an idea is absurd or mistaken or even used for humor purposes.
As a last comment, if there were "absolute truth" then risk assessment and risk management would be redundant. I doubt that any of us can point out any non-past situation or unaccomplished matter in which risks absolutely do not exist.
Dan--thank --- the total results of my informal and formal research on the subject boils done to that given in the attachments -- My simple answer (past, present, and future) is best capture in the totally worded picture. Thank you for you eloquent answer
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