Sunday, February 28, 2016

Authenticity of Information

In the pursuit of knowledge, and deeper understanding of life and the world around us, there comes many a times a situation where we need to stop and think about validity of things.

Whether it is a new scientific knowledge, or a philosophical viewpoint, or an explanation about certain events, the information that we get needs authentication. 

Laws of nature as discovered by scientists from time to time, create a stir in the minds of the curious. They are often validated through experiments and observations, and independently verified by many sources. 

Everything is made of Atoms. Speed of Light is constant. Some of angles within a triangle is 180 degrees. Fermat's Last Theorem. Godel's incompleteness Theorem. Theories, Theorems, Conjectures, proofs and disproofs. Often times we are never a direct participant in any of these. It is mostly hearsay. I have personally never seen an atom, whether through my nakes eye, nor through a cloud chamber, nor observed particles in a collider. 

The validity of most of the information seems to be from its use and application. We are able to do several things as a result of using these theories. Hence we conclude these must be true. As long as we have a framework in which we can test and validate information, we are comfortable, and with our faculty of thinking using Logic as its main tool we are able to navigate true and false in this ever changing world.

Then there are those strange situations, where we do not have the luxury of observation and experimentation. Where was I before I was born, what is death, where will I go after I die? We are stuck here.

Many theories exist, many religions have been created for this purpose, many texts, scriptures, philosophies.. but how do we authenticate such information? How do we travel those mysteries, if we get stuck at the very begin at this apparent inability to accept or reject?

This leads us to a very interesting process of finding out, what is Authentication? Does authenticity really exist? A deep questioning will reveal that we simply 'trust', 'believe' or 'accept' every single piece of information. No single piece of information can ever be authenticated to the absolute extent. All information is built one on top of the other, and as we go deeper and deeper, each begins to fall apart from the real of authenticity and move into assumptions, and belief. Be it the Atomic theory , or Gravitational Waves.

The only self evident truth being that 'I exist', all other information can never ever be verified. This startling revelation will allow us to travel thoughts and ideas which otherwise appear not to have the ability to be authenticated and probe this world deeper and ultimately realize the truth.  This liberates us from the need for authentication and also from the clutches of a single reality.