There is no such thing as truth
There are only stories. And everyone has their own version. For example, when talking about why the sun rises, over the ages there have been many many different stories people believed to be true.
The Greeks and the Aztecs thought the sun to be a God, and offered it sacrifices to ensure it rose each morning. Ptolemy thought the Earth was the center of the universe, orbited by the Sun. The Sun rose and fell around the Earth. Kepler had another idea: the Sun was the center of the universe, and the Earth orbited it.
Anyway, the point is I’ve just outlined for you three different theories about why the Sun rises each day – three different “stories”. Which one is “true” depends on you, and what you believe. I can’t make you believe “truth”, you’ve got to come to your own ideas of what is “true”.
Truth is subjective
How you come to land on what you believe is true depends on you: your upbringing, your learning, “gut instinct”, or how you even feel on that day. There’s a range of different alternatives.
You can believe:
- What people you respect believe;
- What people in authority tell you;
- History / lore / legend however it comes to you (academic, or through family/community connections). This includes religion.
- Evidence, scientific theory and scientific method.
Honestly, its up to you. But you will also be judged for the reasons you make decisions about what is true.
If “truth” comes from crystals or spirits, that might sway a certain type of audience. But it will hold no sway for people who believe science.
Different audiences with alternative ideas of truth rarely interact because it becomes difficult for them to find common ground on meaningful topics. Culture clash, generation gaps are from groups who believe different truths.
And people who believe the same things cluster together. They even read the same papers. People who speak “truth” from different perspectives are “marketers” speaking in “comm speak”, because they fundamentally don’t believe their spoken basis of truth. And it shows.
But you can subjectively agree to objective standards…
My “truth” has to have an evidence base.
Its a hangover from the renaissance and economics, statistics and science training, but I believe in the scientific method. Theory needs to be internally consistent – the sun is not a god, it’s a big ball of hydrogen turning itself into helium.
Also, I believe and will be persuaded by evidence, not history nor lore. Take the Treaty of Waitangi – did it create a partnership between, Maori and the Crown, or was it a transfer of sovereignty for British citizenship. Honestly, for me, I couldn’t what a truckload of dead people believed then.
The right to bear arms made sense to the American’s in 1776. Not so much now.
History isn’t evidence – it’s story. I care about what is intended or meant now. I believe in economics informed by measurement. Statistics based around internally consistent theory.
Is colonisation true? Don’t care. The better question is what’s happening now and what needs to change to make people’s lives better? Where abouts is the need and how might the need be best addressed?
What I count as evidence rans the whole gambit from “anecdote” to “double blind randomised controlled trials”, reflecting how much confidence I have in its evidential weighting.
Data driven stories
Data driven stories take the reader through a visual evidence-based from of story-telling. They use data, evidence, visuals, media to “walk the reader through” a story that reflects their truth. Great examples are:
I want to be able to story-tell like that. With a statistics, economics and programming background, I’m well on my way, but I’ve got to become an expert at D3, Bootstrap visualisation technologies.
Here’s my first attempt:
https://visualise.jameshogan.nz/D3Play/
More on the way