Whispered Words - Part 1 - Introduction and Assumptions

They whisper words
into my ears,
One speaks of truth
and one speaks of my fears.
- VAST from the song Three Doors

Which leads to some interesting discussion points which will take a while to fully explore. Thus, I have decided in my less than infinite wisdom to take a week and touch on all of them.

Firstly: There's some assumptions that need to be made.
Secondly: These Are Just For You
Thirdly: Your Fears Aren't Truth
Fourthly: Truth And Fears Overlap
and Finally: Neither Of These Can Be Trusted


So to Begin, Lets make some assumptions. These must all stand on their own or not at all.

1) There are Two Points of View. For Simplicities sake picture the cartoon angel and demon sitting on your shoulder, only make them both voices and don't imbue them with either a sense of divine goodness or infernal evil. Name one Truth and the other one Fear. Now, at this stage, you don't know which is which.

2) These will sometimes conflict. Otherwise only one would be required. This seems logical, but we need to put it down so that it can be disputed or agreed to.

2.5) These will also sometimes come into line with each other. Truth is neutral, that's accepted almost universally. So we can assume that at times Truth and Fear will say the same thing.

3) These can at times be blocked out. They're only whispering, you can ignore that.

3.5) You will still know that they are there and you can't always ignore them. It's happening in your ear - that can get very annoying and you will notice it.

4) Both Truth and Fear are impartial. Logically Truth is impartial, but why does Fear get this status? This is a necessity. If Fear wasn't impartial, he wouldn't be speaking of MY fears, he would be simply speaking of fears. This is a subtle but important distinction.

5) This is the last assumption. They may not always speak, but they will always be ready to speak. At all times there will be at least one foreseeable 'pessim' (a word of my own creation. n, a single pessimistic view) or a potential downside to any action that you do or don't make. And at all times there will be truths that are clear. Therefore there is no occasion when neither of them can vocalise their viewpoint.


There follow some corollaries that also can be made from these.

a) Fear will seem to have the louder voice. I'm going to move into audio nerd speak here because it's the way I understand things, but it can be applied anywhere. Fear is speaking of my fears and nothing else (point 4) therefore what he is saying will come into line with what I am thinking. This doubles an identical signal which raises the output noticeably (by 3dB, but that's irrelevant).

b) Truth will at times agree with Fear, but Fear will not agree with Truth. (to make this point, we have to make an assumption about the nature of Fear outside of this discussion. Fear is Irrational. I'll discuss this some other time maybe.) Truth is completely impartial and so at times when Fear comes into line with Truth, Truth will echo this (point 2.5). At this point though, because there is agreement, Fear will always be able to go further, something that Truth will never do; this is called the worst case scenario. Because Fear is Irrational, he will always take the opportunity.

c) They are always there. If they are always ready to speak (point 5) then they will have to have been there to gather the available data. This requires their presence at all times.

d) You have some measure of power over them. You can chose not to listen to them (point 3) and if they are impartial (point 4) then they can't provide their views. All they can do is make more noise until you decide to listen.

Come back Tomorrow for the first consequence.