Wondering about the approach to truth weighting

[Shoomie]

To be honest, i've just coded a few years in python and C#, never had my hand on AI code-wise since the step is currently so large.
But i've been following David for a while, and gotten intrigued from this.

Regarding the agent swarm, what is the current vision for how the concept of truth is handled, since it is such an integral part of a functional system?
Has anyone conceritzed an approach for how to abstract the various concepts of truth in a way that is digitally usable in an agent system, and verify this, to be able to put weight on different degrees and kinds of truthfullness to achieve set goals?

Just thinking from a strictly logical and usable perspective, not wanting this to derail in some blabber about politics and whatnot.

[daveshap]

This is a nontrivial task and the TLDR is that you need to keep lots of metadata. Here's the high level:

• Truth is a level 5 emergent property of information and intelligence (in the same domain as other narratives such as religion, science, philosophy, democracy, etc)
• As narrative, truth only exists by virtue of several ingredients: SHARED BELIEFS, SHARED INTERPRETATIONS, SHARED VALUES, and SHARED EVIDENCE
• The simplest rhetorical definition of truth is "the narrative you choose to believe"
• Which is why "truth" varies so widely between epistemic tribes.

I've consulted with several researchers and startups on this topic (e.g. using AI to find "truth" and change narratives) and the key thing is identifying epistemic tribes. Fortunately, because AI has read so much already, it's pretty good at identifying and characterizing epistemic tribes as well as narratives.

[Shoomie]

Great answer, love the compactness of it.

But on the topic of epistemic tribes, do you believe it would ever be possible to identify absolute/transcendent truths that are viable to be instated as baselines for all future general intelligence applications?
And if so, is it believed that the set of such truths are even finite, or at least has such qualities that a very small set can propagate throughout the rest of the system with the effect of undeniably enhancing it for long-term sustainability?

[daveshap]

Yes, the formula is:

• Evidence + Interpretation = Belief
• Truth = Belief + Consensus