The Experience of Serving Truth

Imagine someone living their entire life in a virtual reality. In the future, it may be possible to simply put on a set of glasses that provide a completely alternative sensory experience of sights and sounds. In this new virtual world, the person might experience virtual people that they relate to.... people who practically worship the participant, giving them all their hearts desires, making them the center of this virtual world.

The scenario is not so far-fetched. We already have first person video games that are played in similar ways. Or imagine a person who might choose to medicate their lives away into a virtual reality created by the euphoria of drugs administered via a perpetual IV.

In both of these scenarios, the person has chosen their reality. In both cases, the participants aren't hurting anyone. So what is it about these possibilities that bothers us? Why do we feel like these virtual players are wasting a life that has been given to them? After all, the life they would have lived in this world would have paled in comparison to the life they get fed to them via technology or meds.

What is it about our experiences that demands to serve truth? If God is truth, what does this say about how we might be wired?

Complexity and Truth

Here's a new aphorism that I'm still "testing the waters" on:

"The truth is kind of like computer security. You can never have it in its ideal. You can only hope to have enough complexity to earn its rewards."

In computer security (my vocation), you can never really reach the ideal of creating the perfect security system that keeps the bad guys out. Instead, the best you can do is make the system complex enough that it becomes too much trouble for the hacker to break in.

So it is with home security. Locked doors can't keep the bad guys out. They can only make it too risky for the bad guys to bother. I'm calling this riskiness complexity.

This doesn't mean that the ideal shouldn't exist. I don't think a security system (whether computer, or home) designer would be worth his/her salt if he/she didn't have the ideal to shoot for. The ideal serves a purpose as a goal. But in an imperfect world, it is rarely, dare I say never, achieved.

What are the rewards of truth that I speak of? Truth equips the "knower". To know the truth that a tornado is coming, rewards the truth-holder with the option to take cover.

I ask this question though: Does ALL truth reward?

The second thing that I'm battling with this aphorism is Occam's Razor. Occam's Razor says that the truth is usually the simplest explanation of an event. If such a statement is true, than how can I say that we can only hope to have enough complexity to earn truth's benefits?

Today I have demonstrated that I have more questions than I have answers.