This post is very long and probably not worth the time of HN's readership. On this thread[1], there's an explanation of why it is like this: "The Simple Truth"

This post is very long and probably not worth the time of HN's readership. On this thread[1], there's an explanation of why it is like this: "The Simple Truth" was generated by an exercise of this discipline to describe "truth" on a lower level of organization, without invoking terms like "accurate", "correct", "represent", "reflect", "semantic", "believe", "knowledge", "map", or "real". And a summary: The only way you can be sure your mental map accurately represents reality is by allowing a reality-controlled process to draw your mental map. A sheep-activated pebble-tosser is a reality-controlled process that makes accurate bucket numbers. The human eye is a reality-controlled process that makes accurate visual cortex images. Natural human patterns of thought like essentialism and magical thinking are NOT reality-controlled processes and they don't draw accurate mental maps. Each part of your mental map is called a "belief". The parts of your mental map that portray reality accurately are called "true beliefs". Q: How do you know there is such a thing as "reality", and your mental map isn't all there is? A: Because sometimes your mental map leads you to make confident predictions, and they still get violated, and the prediction-violating thingy deserves its own name: reality. [1] http://lesswrong.com/lw/66u/rewriting_the_sequences/4cj6 http://lesswrong.com/lw/66u/rewriting_the_sequences/4cj6