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Seeking Truth
21 May 2026

Introduction

We looked at conspiracy theories some time ago.  This is the other side of that question.  Some people are clearly misled into believing all kinds of wrong, irrational and dangerous ideas - but how do we avoid such mistakes?  If we are seeking truth, where do we look?  Where should we look?  How can we test the things we are told?

It's easy to get tied up in words here.  First year philosophy students may be set, 'What is truth?' as an essay title, in the same way that they might be set 'What is freedom?' - not in the expectation of a plausible answer, but to help them achieve a little more intellectual humility and awareness of the limits of their current understanding, and as a way to shake some of their certainties.  Some important related words here are 'truth', 'knowledge' and 'reality'.  The branch of philosophy which deals with these topics is called 'Epistemology'.  It's a  massive subject, and I would like to completely avoid it if possible.

The practical problem we face is the obvious one: how do we go about seeking truth, in a world filled with so many lies?  This has always been a challenge, but in a world so influenced by social media and AI, distinguishing what can be trusted - and when it can be trusted - is even more difficult.  I constantly hear simple advice; many people have told me, "You can't trust the BBC."  But who can we trust?  And how do we go about checking claims and sources which seem legitimate?

Who - what sources of information - do you trust, and why?

Background

Trust, of course, is not a binary thing.  You can trust someone to know the latest football results, but not to give you an unbiased account of the latest Parliamentary debate - or vice versa.  You can trust their intentions, if not all of their information.  You can trust that the facts are accurate, as far as possible, but not that they are complete.  You want to know all the relevant information - but who defines what is relevant?  In talking about trust, we probably need to talk about the boundaries of that trust - on which subjects, to what extent?  What assumptions and biases need to be allowed for, in interpreting what we are told?  And what are our own assumptions and biases, shaping how we interpret the information we receive?

Sandy writes, "Our multi-lingual daughter was working for the Goethe Institute in Zaporozhia Ukraine teaching German language and German culture in 2014 at the time of the coup in Kiev. I asked her if she could clarify what was happening there. Her answer was that she read the German news, the Ukrainian news and the Russian news and after that she knew less than she had before. So where do we get information?"

Listening to contradictory information is difficult.  But it becomes less difficult when you know you are listening to a perspective, not to objective fact.  All truth is partial; all views (all helpful views!) are from a particular perspective.  Picasso painted faces from multiple perspectives, but these images look nothing like a real human face - wonderful art, perhaps, but not much use if you are searching for a missing person.

And a lack of knowledge can, itself, be knowledge.  Socrates claimed to know nothing, and was the wisest man on earth because he was the only one who knew he knew nothing; everyone else was fooled by the ideas they thought they knew and understood.  At least, that's the story, and as a parable I think it is still useful.  As the old saying goes: someone with a watch knows the time; someone with two watches is never sure.  It is often helpful to have an idea of the time; but, sometimes, it pays to have an idea of how uncertain you really are about the precise time.

I recently had a conversation about the news coverage of the Brexit debate; I was asked, "Why weren't we told the facts?"  But we were told the facts: informed people wrote detailed articles, citing sources and backed up with references.  Sometimes, they went on live TV and participated in debates.  The facts were all there, for anyone interested in looking.  But, unsurprisingly, the facts were not enough, and the loudest voices won.  The people with the greatest financial backing were able to pay for most of the advertising, and they were the ones who had the loudest  voice and the greatest impact.

The question in my mind - a question, at least - is: what can we do to help build a society in which the next vital decision is not made simply on the basis of who can spend more and shout loudest?

Discussion Notes

Mark's initial concern: to have a meaningful discussion, you need an agreed basis on which to talk, and that is increasingly difficult to find.  We, as a society, don't share an agreed source of authority - we don't believe the experts, but we don't have a better alternative.

There are some experts that people (many people?) do trust, but the deeper problem is with experts who have agendas - and even more so when they have agendas but don't acknowledge them.  And we like experts who challenge the status quo and received wisdom, but it's almost impossible for the public to distinguish between an expert challenging the status quo on the basis of their specialist knowledge and experience, and an expert in one field using that status to challenge the status quo in an area they know nothing about.  (Like, maybe, an evolutionary biologist talking about morality and religion?)

And many people do reject experts simply because they work in the field and therefore they are part of 'the system'.  Michael Gove did a public rejection of 'experts', which seemed to hit a nerve with many members of the public.  Similarly, the BBC dragged in Nigel Lawson (not an expert!) into climate change debates because 'we need to have balance'.  (See 'Further Thoughts on the BBC' below.)

Trust is harder, more difficult, in cyber space - where 'nobody knows you are a dog.'

No-one has perfect knowledge, but we value truth.  There is a tension here.

We have to recognise that some of us have more truth on some subjects than others.  Opinions are not all equally valid, because some opinions have a stronger basis in reality.

We struggle to define truth.  It was suggested that, in practice, it can be roughly understood as what we can all agree on - but, at times, what everyone agrees on is discovered to be false.

We need to distinguish between the data and the interpretation, between the data and theories about the data.  We have all this data, but how does it fit together?  The truth must be in there, but it is often hard to tease out.

The data says the climate is changing, but there are valid questions about the reasons for this.  There are other major and long term ecological issues which can be sidelined by the climate change argument.  Steve is not sure that all the work to combat climate change is worth doing, and thinks some of it is a distraction from other more important issues.

Moving away from an oil based economy seems a smart move, whatever you think about climate change.

It's a complicated topic, and inevitably simplified for the public.  Steve thinks this is why people are not trusting the story, but if the experts are in agreement about the large story, surely they are the ones who should be listened to?  The common challenge is that "they get paid to research this, so of course they say it's a problem," but the climate scientists would much rather be working on something with more potential for new discoveries and career development.  While a lot of money is being devoted to the area, it is spread among a lot of people and projects, so nobody doing the work is there because they are motivated by the money; they focus on the climate science because they believe the subject is important.

[At this point, we lost the video connection.]

Further Thoughts on the BBC

It seems clear that the BBC is not an entirely unbiased source of information - but, then, neither is GB News.  Nobody and nothing is unbiased, so we need to understand the nature of the bias in order to adjust for it.  There are two regular complaints made about the BBC: it is selective in its news coverage, and it is desperate to appear fair.

It is selective.  This is a complaint which can validly be made against any news source, and it boils down to this criticism: the corporation does not share my values and priorities.  Things I consider to be unimportant are given air time, while things I consider to be important are given less time, banished from the prime-time slots, or ignored completely.  The basic answer to this must be: make a noise, explain why other people should care about the things which are important to you, encourage others to say they agree with you.

It tries too hard to be fair.  Presumably this is a policy designed, in part, to distinguish the BBC from other news sources which push a clear message, but it means that the BBC is committed to a operating a very simplistic version of balance.  In a well-publicised speech, Emily Maitlis said that many journalists now self-censor in order to appear balanced and avoid backlash, and production teams aim to provide a false impression of balance.  "It might take our producers five minutes to find 60 economists who feared Brexit and five hours to find a sole voice who espoused it.  But by the time we went on air we simply had one of each; we presented this unequal effort to our audience as balance. It wasn't."