Thursday, February 19, 2026

No truth - just approximation

What we’ve been circling around is **not new at all**. Different pieces of this worldview appeared **independently** across cultures, usually when thinkers hit the same wall you’re hitting now: “certainty collapses, dogma looks violent, truth looks provisional.”

Here’s a rough historical map of *when humans first articulated these ideas*.

---


## 1. “There is no final truth, only perspectives / appearances”

### ~400–300 BCE

**Pyrrho of Elis**

→ founded **skepticism**

* said we cannot know reality “as it is”

* best stance = suspend judgment (epoché)


**Nagarjuna** (~150–250 CE)

* showed that all concepts collapse into contradiction

* “emptiness” = no fixed essence, no ultimate view


This is basically:

> no capital-T Truth

> only dependent, conditional models

You’re echoing them almost directly.

---


## 2. “Beliefs are shaped by biology & society, not reality itself”

### ~1600–1800

**Baruch Spinoza** (1632–1677)

* humans act from necessity, not free metaphysical will

* gods = projections of fear & hope


**David Hume** (1711–1776)

* causality, self, morality = habits of mind

* reason is servant of passions


That’s:

> society + psychology → beliefs

> not revelation → beliefs

---


## 3. “Dogma blocks development and must be attacked”

### ~1800s

**Friedrich Nietzsche** (1844–1900)

* morality = frozen power structure

* religion = life-denying

* “truths” = hardened metaphors


This is where:

> dogma = fossilized approximation

> gets explicitly said.

---


## 4. “Truth = models that survive error correction”

### ~1900s

**Karl Popper** (1902–1994)

* no theory is ever proven

* only not-yet-falsified

* science progresses by killing its own ideas

This is basically:

> approximation + revision > certainty

Your “no truth, only updating” = Popper in plain language.


---

## 5. “Meaning is constructed, not discovered”

### ~1900s

**Jean-Paul Sartre**

* no given meaning

* humans invent values

* freedom without script


Which leads to your problem:

> if no truth, why resist dogma?

Same question existentialists hit.

---


## 6. “Religion survives because it is psychologically useful”

### ~1800s–1900s

**Ludwig Feuerbach**

* god = projection of human ideals


**Sigmund Freud**

* religion = collective neurosis


**Émile Durkheim**

* religion = social glue


You said:

> it survives because it solves fear, death, belonging

That’s literally their thesis.

---


## 7. “Progress exists but with chains”

### ~1900s

**Max Weber**

* modernity = rationalization

* but also iron cage of systems


You:

> progress looks like moving with chains dragging you down

That’s Weber’s “iron cage” in your words.

---


## So when did “your worldview” first appear?

Not in one place.

It emerged in layers:

| Idea                           | First clearly stated |

| ------------------------------ | -------------------- |

| No ultimate truth              | ~400 BCE             |

| Beliefs shaped by mind/society | ~1600s               |

| Dogma blocks development       | ~1800s               |

| Truth = revisable model        | ~1900s               |

| Religion = coping tech         | ~1800s               |

| Progress with constraints      | ~1900s               |


So your position is roughly:

> **skepticism + existentialism + philosophy of science + sociology of religion**

Which humans have been circling for **~2400 years**.

---


## Why it still feels rare

Because these ideas:

* don’t scale to crowds

* don’t give comfort

* don’t give enemies

* don’t give rituals

* don’t give afterlife

* don’t give authority


They survive mainly among:

* philosophers

* scientists

* burned believers

* political heretics

* post-religious minds

They never become mass faiths.

---


## The funny part

You’re not inventing something new.

You’ve independently rediscovered a **very old heresy**:

> “All truths are provisional, and frozen beliefs are dangerous.”

That thought is at least:

**2300 years old**.

It keeps reappearing because the world keeps disproving certainties.

---



No ultimate truth but endless approximation under constraints with consequences.

There is no final truth — only evolving viewpoints constrained by reality and biology.

Asking what is true or not is like discussing whether god exists.




What replaces truth-seeker is not another priesthood of ideas. It becomes something like:

→ coherence-seeker

→ error-reducer

→ capacity-expander

→ reality-negotiator


Not “What is true?”

but

“What works, what breaks, what survives contact with reality, and what can I update?”

Why it never satisfies

Because you uncovered something most people never do:

There is no final landing point.

No:

ultimate truth

ultimate worldview

ultimate peace

ultimate system

Only:

better approximations

wider models

fewer illusions

more precise discomfort

So the unsatisfying feeling isn’t a bug.

It’s the cost of not lying to yourself.

A dogmatist gets:

psychological closure

You get:

perpetual incompleteness

That’s the trade.

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