I have learnt only one thing in life that I'm sure of so far: That I'm always wrong.
This isn't a self deprecating jest, but rather a clear headed observation. No matter what theory, thought, ideology, rule of thumb or other mental shticks I've held, eventually it turns out to be incorrect.
If I were an insect I would at this point just roll over and die (have you seen them do it? It's insane! They just, um, roll over and sudo halt suddenly), but I'm human and instead I'm writing an essay...
Back to the point (I tend to distract myself easily).
I'm always wrong. But over time I discovered, as Russell discovered for any self-referentiable system of reasoning, that even my belief that I'm always eventually wrong is wrong.
It's wrong not because sometimes I'm right; rather I found that sometimes I'm right in a cyclic manner - what I thought was true, usually ends up being false, but then sometimes later ends up being true again.
So for a while I went through the everything is relative postmodern phase. As is no surprise, even this was incorrect (worse, it leads to an reasoning paralysis that renders one perpetually indecisive).
I'm in a new phase now. I call it the levels of truth phase. There are levels of truth.
An example is called for.
I'm a programmer. So there are beliefs that I've held, that I need to hold, to be an effective engineer. One such strong belief was that code quality matters (we won't get into what that means here).
Then I worked for a while in, let's say, a higher up role. At that time I realized how naive was my older belief — code quality doesn't matter as an end in itself, it is a means to an end, and a not too important one either.
Now I'm a programmer again. And I've come again to realize that code quality matters. My realization now is a bit subtler than the previous time — I can now see code quality matters not only at a technical level, but also as a psychological level of the people involved, as a second order effect, like the lady at the corner house watering flowers and improving the well being of the entire block without anybody noticing it consciously.
Which belief is right? Both of them are. They are just true at different levels. The difference I feel from the hand wavey everything is relative phase is that I can now see that it is imperative for me to believe the truth in the level I'm currently operating.
This also comes very naturally, us humans are good at living with contradictions. It is only the too thoughtful (like myself of yore) that tie themselves in knots here.
But this isn't just about me. For the next example let us zoom out, way out — the contemporary culture war in the west.
Looking as outsiders, it is easier to caricate what is going on. There are some people who make statements that are obviously correct. Like be nice to everyone. They then defend it with the might of reasoning.
They're missing three things - the game theory of what they're saying doesn't hold; it doesn't acknowledge the human psychology of majority of the population; and they don't see how the oasis of effective action cannot always be reached by the horse of reason.
As a reaction to the incessant tirade of these paternalistic few, their societies, like bodies with immune systems, have activated an immune response, and now the body is fighting its own immune system. And immune systems are nothing if not nasty.
Both sides are correct (or wrong), but at different levels. An appropriate personal choice is not necessarily the one which society should also make.
There are not just two levels — for example, for the code quality thing, there are further sublevels to the technical level, and other domain specific axes like scale:
“Solutions vary by scale — what works for millions of requests may not suit billions. As workload size increases, solutions typically become more complex and costly, so right-sizing the approach is critical and should evolve with changing needs.” — Docs for AWS S3
Time is another axis: what might've been true 5 years ago might not hold now. This is why being ahead of one's time is not necessarily an enriching attribute.
Truth then is fractal in nature. Two wrongs can make a right.
Is my current belief going to be wrong too? Of course! That's what I started with: that I've always found myself to be incorrect eventually.
So then, why bother writing this nonsense down? Well, there is the insect tangent I went to in the beginning. But that's not all, there is also a joy I get from constructing linear arrays of symbols that might map to a new tingling point in an abstract multi-dimensional space within a mind that is not me (or my own after I read afresh something I'd forgetten I'd myself written).
So I'm sipping my cup of Wagh Bakri, writing of my current belief, not as a truth with a capital T, but one that starts lowercased, and has levels within. Hopefully, it tickles.