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blockchains and the monopoly on truth — maanav's thoughts

maanav.writeas.com · 830 words · saved by 1 readers

Observation and logic: We think some things are true because we can verify them ourselves. We “know” that gravity exists because when we drop something we can watch it fall. We know that a mathematical theorem is true because we can verify a proof for it. For the most part, this approach to learning involves using our five senses and logic to verify some knowledge as true. Language: There are some things that seem impossible to verify but we still think are true. I think language has been our best solution yet to convey and learn these “truths”. We can’t live through historical events again to verify them, for example, and so our knowledge of the “truth” of history is based on what we read in text, see in images, and hear from others. This is inherently trustful. I don’t think language is necessarily bad; there are many things that are only true because most people believe it to be true, and language enables this. For example, money isn’t valuable in itself but we learn to believe that

blockchains and the monopoly on truth August 18, 2024 Historically, I think humans have had two sources of forming our understanding of “truth”: Observation and logic: We think some things are true because we can verify them ourselves. We “know” that gravity exists because when we drop something we can watch it fall. We know that a mathematical theorem is true because we can verify a proof for it. For the most part, this approach to learning involves using our five senses and logic to verify some knowledge as true. Language: There are some things that seem impossible to verify but we still thi

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