The Mean, Median and Mode of Truth - Quest of Truth

“I want to know the mean, median and mode of Truth!” – One of my friends on a social networking site had this strange wish to know the Mean, Median and Mode of Truth! No idea what made him desire something like that, but I thought I would help him quench his “thirst” for “truth”. Now, to begin with, before proceeding to find the mean, median or mode of truth, let us start by understanding what exactly “truth” is, what it means or what does it represent.


By definition itself, "truth" is absolute. If you look up the definitions, you will find them as, "the true or actual state of a matter"; "conformity with fact or reality"; "a verified or indisputable fact, proposition, principle, or the like"... etc.
Truth is synonymous with: fact, veracity, sincerity, candor, frankness, precision, exactness.

Hence, the mean of something so precise or exact has to be nothing else than itself. Since, any deviations (even infinitesimal ones), by definition, cannot be considered as truth. If you want to assign a numerical value to truth, say “1”. Then by definition, truth is “1”. Anything except “1” isn’t truth, if truth=1, then it can have a value of 1 and only one, and cannot be 0 or 2 or 0.0009453657.

So, you take your "n" number of 1's and find their mean, median or whatsoever, your result, by definition will be always 1.

This should convince him, I thought. But I was wrong! I get a reply that, "practically there is nothing absolute, it has some deviations. It can be some distribution..."
So, here goes some other approach on it:
By its definition itself, as presented above, truth is absolute. Any deviations will render it as false, or half truth, or misleading, which is quite obvious, as if you do not want to lie or make a false statement to someone, and also not to tell that someone the truth, then you make deviations in the truth, to mislead the person. Hence, it has one and only one absolute value. So, even now if one argues truth has “deviations”, then such deviations will not be “truth”. Now, for the claim that practically "nothing is absolute”. If that is so, then according to the very statement, the word or the idea of something "absolute" itself isn't absolute! Of course, there "may" be nothing absolute in the universe, including "nothing" itself! Now that’s a paradox, isn’t it?! But then, "Truth" is more of a human value more than a natural phenomenon. A “fact” can be claimed as a natural phenomenon. So said, let me quote the old saying, "Truth is stranger than fiction". The following example might put some light on the interpretation of “truth”.

Now, consider a glass filled exactly up to half with water. You may claim that now truth has two values. i.e., "half empty" or "half full". But such a statement does not make truth non absolute, as truth is somewhat like an operator. If you just say the word “truth”, then it won’t mean much. You can rightfully ask, "Truth about what?!" Now, the truth about the water is it fills half of the total area of the glass. The truth about the "empty" other half is that it is not filled by water, or if you see it in a different way, "it is filled with air".

Now, the truth about the glass, you may say. The truth about the glass is that half of its volume is filled by water, and the other half by air. So that is the truth about the glass interpreted in a proper way.

By the way, by definition, a "probability" of an event is not a “truth” (more correctly, a “fact”, but let me stick to the noun “truth”) until that particular event actually takes place. Until then it is just a probability. I believe my friend has confused the concept of truth to probability. Practically, the nature itself is probabilistic. There are several probabilities behind an event. When one of the probabilities actually "happens" or "takes place", then it becomes a “truth”.

I believe this should be sufficient for defending the “absoluteness” of “truth”. Do you agree with this? If you have any objections or counter theory, please let me know :)

- Pralekha

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