TruthBear Blog
No facts, only beliefs
TruthBear's mission is to provide people with high quality information that they can trust. This naturally raises the question - how does TruthBear determine facts?
The answer is that it doesn't. TruthBear won't directly tell you that you're wrong. Instead, what it can do is show you what your friends and people that you trust believe, and where those beliefs conflict with yours. You can decide whether you want to change what you believe or not - TruthBear just lets you have that information.
In fact, TruthBear's position is that there is an underlying reality, but that we don't have direct access to it. There is no Oracle that will tell us what the underlying reality is. Instead, we observe, and form beliefs on the basis of our observations, and if there is a strong consensus around a particular belief, then we call that a fact. Everybody knows the sky is blue, but that strong agreement is a separate thing from the underlying reality that the sky is blue.
What makes this work is that the wisdom of crowds tends to pull us towards underlying reality. Happily, often the thing that everybody believes is actually true. That's great! It makes things a lot simpler when everybody agrees, and we don't need to draw a distinction between the consensus and the underlying reality.
TruthBear exists for the things we don't all agree about. It can tell you what the range of beliefs are, and provide the materials that the most credible people on each side of an issue based their opinions on.
This approach contrasts with prediction markets. Because they need markets to cleanly resolve to settle bets made on them, they need an authoritative arbiter of whether an event happened or not. TruthBear doesn't need this because it never needs to finally settle anything, which allows it to work on close-ended empirical questions as well as moral ones, which must necessarily remain open.
So what does TruthBear do when beliefs diverge, despite the presence of an underlying reality? It depends. In the example above, the consequences of someone believing the sky is green are relatively benign - their photos might look odd, and they might draw some puzzled looks if they expound on this view.
There are topics where being wrong has more severe consequences. Someone who didn't believe in gravity might find themselves rudely disabused of that notion.
But most topics lie somewhere between these two extremes. As an example, most economists believe that when inflation is high, the central bank must combat this by raising interest rates to reduce aggregate demand. (I'm not an economist so I apologize if I am butchering your field here). However, in the 2020s, Turkey responded to high levels of inflation by cutting interest rates. This spurred further inflation, and in the end, a tangible reduction in quality of life in Turkey. Eventually Turkey did raise interest rates - to a brutal 50%! Earlier recognition of the correct response would have led to an easier remediation.
What TruthBear offers in this situation is an immutable record of who thought what when. When the outcome later causes beliefs to converge, we can see who was right early. People can disagree in good faith, but knowing there will be a record everyone can see provides a powerful incentive for people to avoid foot-dragging and convenient untruths.
The other thing TruthBear does is to make information available. You can see what people on other sides of topics you care about think. You can see what they are looking at to form their opinions.
Importantly, you can also see when someone you trust changes their mind. For me, one of my motivations for building TruthBear is that I might be wrong about everything. My friend Steve assures me that this is definitely the case. If I am, I want to stop being wrong as quickly as possible. Seeing that the most credible people in my network think different things from me is a good indication that I might be wrong. Seeing someone who normally agrees with me change their mind is one of the strongest signals that perhaps I should revisit that issue. That's a real improvement. Right now, if I read something wrong, it's vanishingly unlikely I see a later correction - I just believe the wrong thing forever.
So TruthBear doesn't force its users to be open-minded, but because it offers these capabilities that aren't available elsewhere, we think there will be a selection effect where our users will have above average open-mindedness. This should mean that osmosis of beliefs is possible on TruthBear - where there is a divergence, we can hope for a reconvergence on underlying reality. It's not guaranteed though - if a group dogmatically sticks to a wrong view that is consequential, they will at least have a full record of why they got a negative outcome, and maybe that can inform over time.
So, to recap. TruthBear doesn't have an Oracle. It doesn't even have facts - we don't claim to have the authority to tell you what is true. Instead, its worldview is driven by the formation of consensus. That gives an easier way for people to find out where they might be wrong. It also provides good information from people they trust as they re-evaluate their views. None of this is forced on our users of course, but we hope it's a useful tool for people who want to understand the world as accurately and correctly as possible.
Aside: As well as being unusually open-minded, our users will also be smarter and more beautiful than average. It's like Lake Wobegon in here. All these are reasons we think you are an excellent candidate to join when we start public trials - email me.
I love hearing your good ideas. If you think something here is unclear or just plain wrong, you can help make TruthBear better by telling me: ed@truthbear.org.