How much of what you believe to be reality, or the truth, is based in actual fact?

Question

How much is based upon assumptions derived from what one may call coincidence?

Answer 1

"'Reality' should always be in quotes." - (attributed to)Buckminster Fuller

From Bucky's Synergetics:

We are in an age that assumes the narrowing trends of specialization to be logical, natural, and desirable. Consequently, society expects all earnestly responsible communication to be crisply brief. . . . In the meantime, humanity has been deprived of comprehensive understanding. Specialization has bred feelings of isolation, futility, and confusion in individuals. It has also resulted in the individual's leaving responsibility for thinking and social action to others. Specialization breeds biases that ultimately aggregate as international and ideological discord, which, in turn, leads to war.

Lack of knowledge concerning all the factors and the failure to include them in our integral imposes false conclusions.

There is an inherently minimum set of essential concepts and current information, cognizance of which could lead to our operating our planet Earth to the lasting satisfaction and health of all humanity.

We must start with scientific fundamentals, and that means with the data of experiments and not with assumed axioms predicated only upon the misleading nature of that which only superficially seems to be obvious. It is the consensus of great scientists that science is the attempt to set in order the facts of experience.

The word generalization in literature usually means covering too much territory too thinly to be persuasive, let alone convincing. In science, however, a generalization means a principle that has been found to hold true in every special case. ... The principle of leverage is a scientific generalization.



The physical is inherently entropic, giving off energy in ever more disorderly ways. The metaphysical is antientropic, methodically marshalling energy. Life is antientropic. It is spontaneously inquisitive. It sorts out and endeavors to understand.

We are now synergetically forced to conclude that all phenomena are metaphysical; wherefore, as many have long suspected — like it or not — 'life is but a dream.'

The wellspring of reality is the family of weightless generalized principles.

It is essential to release humanity from the false fixations of yesterday, which seem now to bind it to a rationale of action leading only to extinction.

Answer 2

Everything we believe is based on assumption.  If we knew it to be fact, we wouldn't have to believe, we'd know.  However, even the facts we know are assumptions.  We assumed the teacher was telling us the truth when she told us about George Washington being the first president of the United States. That is something we can't know for certain, since we weren't alive at the time. Many people trust the media for information.  They don't realize that newspapers and TV only reports a very small percentage of what really goes on in the world, and when they do, they only scratch the surface.  We always assume we know more than we actually do.

Answer 3

What do you mean by actual fact? Scientific?

No what I believe to be fact or true is based on my assumptions and experiences. I don't rely on science nor religion to tell me what is true and what is not.

This is my life and I define my truths, and hence this is my reality.

Answer 4

Nothing is based in actual fact except nothing.

Answer 5

no truth that refers to the real world is immutable

Answer 6

math theories are based on axioms, I believe in few axioms and axiomatic schemas(=infinity many axioms)...and thats all what I need to describe whole(math) world...sazy axioms are facts

Answer 7

Truth is individual. No one individuals "truth" matches that of another on every level. I am sure there are people out there who just assume that what they see can be taken as fact i.e. anyone who believes everything they read in the newspaper.

Answer 8

I call it...

...like I "see" it...

Answer 9

What is reality? Is it the things we see, feel and touch? What is Truth? Is it what we are told? What is Actual Fact?

We know that water is H2O, we know that our body needs it and it is actual fact.  But what drives the atoms to join, much so does the body join?  Much so we interact and join with others in learning to join with other sentient beings be it celestial, extraterrestrial, seen, unseen, born, unborn, waiting to be born, the ten directions of the endless space, to the vast fathom of complexity, to the most simple of existence.

Reality?  What is real might not be true, and what is truth might not be absolute truth.  And certainly it is not coincidence.  Everything our mind can and cannot grasp is constant, and it doesn't need to be recognized and comprehend if we can't.  It exist for the very same reason each and everyone of us sentient beings exist.  

We exist because we are transcending to a higher state of consciousness.  There is no high nor low, there is nothing yet having, it is empty yet full.  Ever expanding ever evolving ever constant.