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.

Theories, theories and more theories ..

Was this world created, or did it evolve? Did humans evolve or were they designed? Is matter a particle or a wave? After Higgs-boson, what? Does the Sun have an awareness? Is the body Intelligent? What is the world made off? Are there higher dimensions?

Humans are destined to questions. Thoughts that probe, thoughts that lead, thoughts that open up a pathway to knowledge. We as humans are more than anything, knowledge seekers. Of course like the rest of the beautiful living kingdom, We are born, eat, procreate and sleep, and die. but we also seek. Somehow what we know, what we understand and what we experience doesn't seem to be enough. We do not take this to be a WYSIWYG world, we want more than what we see.

When we question What is it that we see? what is it that we experience? it boils down to our faculty of the senses. We experience life through our sensations, perceptions and representations of these perceptions. But what dominates is an interpretation of these perceptions, an explanation into the happenings, causal connections and a theory for everything. Our lives are bundles of interpretations. 

Conflicts arise when we have more than one theory, more than one explanation for what we observe. Not a single field of human experience is an exception to multiple views, Politics, Medicine, Science, the Arts, Economics, Philosophy, Religion and Entertainment, you name it you will see it. When multiple explanations confront each other there is a contest, a bitterness and unhappy oppositions. The more we look at something, the more open ended the questions become. With no clear distinction of right or wrong, no black and white answers, humanity progresses towards an increasing entropy. The more we structure our knowledge, we discover more unstructured material.

Will there be an end to this quest of understanding? will there be an end to theorizing? Will we understand it all?

Theories and explanations are for that faculty called intellect. A need for meaning and reason behind everything is for that faculty called the mind. When one transcends both the mind and the intellect, the necessity for knowledge, and theory and explanation for what we experience, ceases. 

The way to transcend the mind is to look for it. Look at the thoughts, thoughts disappear, look for the one who experiences and that experience-r disappears. Having rid of the thoughts and the mind and the individual to experience, all this craving for understanding appears amusing and leads to a joyful experience of life.