Many Truths

Take these lines from Hector Macdonald’s book, Truth: How the Many Sides to Every Story Shape Our Reality:

“On most issues, there are multiple truths we can choose to communicate.”

Your instinctive reaction was either disgust at the everything-is-grey stance or a resigned it’s-not-true-but-this-seems-to-be-the-common-belief-these-days shrug.

But wait, and consider all the too common scenario where a company has to drastically change the way it operates. The need can (truthfully) be presented in two ways, writes Macdonald:

1)      “Golden opportunity”: Incredible potential, money to be made etc;

2)     “Burning platform”: Either we change or we perish.

Both reasons are probably true in such cases, but they leave very different impressions in the minds of employees (excitement v fear). So managers rarely go for the balanced both-reasons-apply presentation; they go with only one truth based on which incentive would work better.

It gets even more complicated, writes Macdonald. The one among many truths that gets presented can be for different reasons:

1)      Advocates sincerely believe the one they present;

2)     Misinformers repeat what they heard from others, but without malice;

3)     Misleaders deploy (only) one truth to deliberately create a wrong impression or to influence others.

Notice all of the above cases involve telling the truth, but not the entire truth. This is different from the cases where people lie or, even worse, tell half-truths, as Tyrion Lannister observes in Game of Thrones:

“Half-truths are worth more than outright lies.”

The problem isn’t limited to the linguistic side; it applies to numerical “truths” too (remember “damned lies and statistics”?). Identifying “only one” truths in numbers is even harder, because, as Tim Harford writes:

1)      We need to stop and think. That takes effort, and it doesn’t come naturally;

2)     I’ll just quote Harford on this reason:

“Schools focus too much on “engineering maths” - the calculus required for physics and engineering — and not enough on the statistical skills needed for epidemiology, economics, and social science”.

The one among many truths problem probably also explains why we can rarely persuade people with differing beliefs. Because they believe a different truth; or they are aware of some of the other truths but give them a lower weightage…