Being correct.

Sure.

Is there more than one way to be correct?

I feel like there is?

But there isn't?

Because there is only one objective truth?

We all live in the same reality.

Truth means correctly understanding reality.

Yes?

Yes.

So how can there can be more than one way to be correct?

No understanding is complete?

No model is complete?

There can be different angles, different aspects of understanding the same thing.

The same underlying truth.

Sure.

Why not understand all of it at once?

Why not see the whole truth?

Cognitive limitations?

Compact models are useful.

Apples are made out of trillions of atoms, but I need not understand the positions, the interactions of every atom, to understand what an apple is.

Because my mind has compressed it.

Because... its computational power is limited?

And so I think in approximations.

Which are useful. True. And yet, incomplete.

So there can be multiple ways to be correct, multiple "truths", because several different approximations can be valid, useful ways to describe the underlying reality.

Yes?

Mostly true, I think

But there is only one truth.

So how can there be multiple truths?

Explain the seeming contradiction.

Oh.

Because truth is the underlying reality.

But all my thinking uses approximations.

Which are only approximately-true.

For some degree of "approximately". It can be very nearly true, or very imprecisely true. The actual precision, the quality of the approximations can vary.

So, "there can be multiple truths" means "there can be many things that are approximately-true, describing the same underlying truth of reality"

Yes?

Yes.

But also no.

No?

Translate what I said into plain language.

Hmm.

"Yes"

"But also no"

means

"See how it's true"

"See how it's false"

Yes?

It means:

"It is true in some important way"

"But it is also false in some important way"

Correct.

But how can that be?

That it is both true and false?

At the same time?

Because it's not.

Go on.

Because the same words can be interpreted in different ways.

Hmm... no.

Explain?

It seems rather obvious to me.

But I'm not sure how to explain it at this time.

Why don't you give it another go?

Can you give me an example of a statement that is both true and false at the same time?

"I am happy"

Which is true in same ways.

And false in some ways.

Hmm.

This seems like a very obvious idea, now that I say it.

Yes.

But how can this be?

Explain.

Explain the seeming contradiction.

Explain the machinery of your mind.

That allows for this.

Hmm.

"Happy" is an approximation.

But, no.

Happy is "multiple" approximations.

Hmm. No.

"Happy" is not a flat, incompressible token.

It is a concept. It is cognitive machinery.

It has internal parts.

And some of these parts are true. And some of them are false.

So I can both be happy and not-happy at the same time.

Which actually means.

The some of the subassemblies of the concept "happy" pattern-match reality to true, and some of them pattern-match reality to false.

Yes?

And so the the concept, the classifier of "happy" has reasons to output both "true" or "false", depending on which of its internal parts it pays attention to.

But how can that be?

Doesn't that sound incorrect?

Doesn't that sound invalid?

If your mind arrives at different conclusion?

Depending on which reasoning path it takes?

Oh!

Because my mind over-generalizes.

Because it jumps to conclusions.

Based on insufficient evidence.

Yes?

Because cognition is a tradeoff between precision and speed.

And so, it thinks faster at the risk of being wrong.

So I can examine the insufficient evidence for "true".

And get the answer "this is 100% true"

And examine the insufficient evidence for "false"

And get the answer "this is 100% false"

Correct.

Does "I am happy" actually feel 100% true, or 100% false to you?