In physics, truth is assumed to be permanent and independent of the frame. In life, truth is rather relative and can even be temporary. Sometimes, we have the feeling that any argument can be used to motivate an action. We try to stick to truth but when it is discovered as not being the truth, people get blamed and can be tagged as liars, with sometimes putting them in unfair situations (break-up, divorce, trial, jail, death).
In physics, a truth is established by the act of finding a repeatable experiment that leads to the same outcome of a phenomenon in 100% of the attempts. This is known as Karl Popper definition of truth. Unfortunately, this principle does not stand quantum and/or social experiments, since those are probabilistic. This may call most ambitious among us for a revision of Karl Popper’s principle for the quantum era.
In this page, our goal is much smaller. The purpose is to narrow down a list of some tentative list of “popular truths” on which people sometimes rely for driving their lives, beyond the so-called hard sciences (mathematics, physics, neurology, maybe chemistry).
So let’s start with writing few popular truths and see how they will evolve with time/readings.
(1) Life pasts fast. Life is short.
The more we do things, the quicker the life. Feeling of time passing faster and faster increases with age. One has to do things when they come, so that we don’t miss out. To the extreme, this can lead to the famous fear of missing out – FOMO, that leads to acute anxiety.
(2) The only thing that we know is that we know nothing (Plato).
This inspires modesty, but this also leads to relativism, where existence of truth is somehow denied.
(3) Nobody knows what love is.
Pretty accurate. Is it about having intense feelings? Or diffuse long-standing ones? Or feeling the warm in the heart even for one-self?
(4) We always crave for what we don’t have/own.
Researcher looks for a permanent position. Single-person looks for a couple. Low-wage person looks for higher income. Person without kids wants to have kids. Person with kids wants to do something else than taking care of them.
(5) People react to 3 languages (equivalently can be in 3 different states): action, emotions or cold logic.
(6) What has to happen, happens.
Whatever we do, or decision we take, destiny cannot be changed. The random noise of daily life is not leading to substantial change. But this would be a denial of chaos (i.e., high sensitivity to initial conditions), which does have physical reality.