Multidimensional Chess

It is mind-blowing that in 2024, we still do not have a consensus of what COVID-19 was about.

What caused the symptoms, true infection rates, whether vaccines were effective... you'd have thought if there was such a thing as "objective truth" one would have found it by now.

But we haven't. There are compelling reasons (see e.g. Fighting Goliath by Fenton and Neil) to doubt the official narrative.

Yet as the "pandemic" slowly fades into "history", the so called "objective truth" becomes even more blurry, as does everything that fades into the past.

One might be tempted to "do justice" to our history and set straight the "facts". But by now we should know that the past does not "truly exist" but is only a projection of the present. And the future essentially develops based on a reading of our fields of belief.  Belief generates actions and actions shape the future. Once the future arrives, the ex-present becomes the past. There is no objective fact, but what you believe is true is true.

And thus, while this thing is supremely amusing, I've relegated myself into mostly an observer role. One simply cannot determine truth for every single controversy.

The lack of certainty is often scary for people used to intellectual authoritarianism. But the truth is we actually don't know anything at all. At least not with complete certainty. And with much less certainty than people would like you to believe. In fact, we can change our minds on pretty much anything, and we have done so in the recorded past.

There are layers of truth, where one layer says one thing, and the other layer says another. Both can be true. When faced with a decision, we sometimes get into a dilemma since we have to decide which one is "truer". Of course either way is fine, but it does feel limiting.

Is there a way to act so that all layers and all possibilities have a "harmonized" outcome? Perhaps not every perspective or path has the best outcome, but at least increase the total "utility" in some form? (though being aware that "utility" in a subjective world is meaningless ultimately). That is the great question I have at this moment.