What is the TRUTH to you in your own words.

[vybbrent]

EXPLAIN what truth is.

[workin4alivin]

that's deep.  too deep for me at this moment, and that's my truth right now.

[cloudsoup]

the truth is what happens when no one is looking or listening.

[Cuppycake]

Truth is relative. Everyone has their own version of the truth based on personal experiences and perspective. Everyone's truth is different but that doesn't make any of them less true.

[vybbrent]

do agree that being "truthful' goes with telling how one feels?

[Cuppycake]

do agree that being "truthful' goes with telling how one feels?

Of course it does. Each person bases their conclusion of what the truth is based on the faculty of tools and wisdom they have in their possession even if they tools are of limited means. Many people of today choose to borrow the truth of other people rather then concocting their on truth.  Such as in the case of religion.  The events and visitors described in the bible of those that lived so long ago are based on the tools and knowledge base they had to work with. They chose to deify the visitors where as today rather then calling them angels and such we might would be more inclined to call them aliens.   

[vybbrent]

Ok.piont well proven, but what if how they feel is wrong with a capital W

[jsirgo5]

well to me the truth is simple live love and have a good time and if feels pure to you then its true

[vybbrent]

ok.. i like that but what if your living and loving a lie....is your feelings still true?....i dont think so...wbu?

[Abrupt]

I suppose it depends upon which description of truth you mean.  There is truth in sincerity and also truth in actuality.  I generally refer to the later when meaning truth but have used the other as well.

To clarify there have been quite a few studies involving memory reliability and decay over time.  One particular case study that comes to mind involved a nature hike with the participants instructed ahead of time that it was an experiment to see how many details of the hike they could remember after a period of time.  They were all wearing head cams to record what they saw.  Unknown to them this was actually a study of how the mind might perceive events that related more towards a paranoid basis.  Along the trail they were travelling a false crash scene was placed with a man in a military uniform standing near it.  As they approached it the person leading the hike explained that there was a crash here and the military came and was keeping them away from the site and that they shouldn't get near it and just needed to keep going as the military didn't want anyone around it.  After the hike was over the camera data was taken and they were instructed that they would be contacted later to see what they could remember (I think the period of time was one month but it could have been as long as three months).  

After the appropriate time, they were later asked what they remembered.  Some of them remembered approximately what they saw, with varying degrees of detail.  Interestingly, some of them remembered an alien crash site and US military soldiers pointing weapons at them and other such fantastic events.  They were debriefed under a lie detection system and although as elaborate as some of their memories were, it was determined they were not 'lying'.  One woman remembered "one of the soldiers" pointing a weapon at one of the other hikers and her getting between the hiker and the soldier to protect him.  In fact there was only one man at the fake crash site and he didn't have a weapon and the recording of the woman's head cam revealed that she had never even seen the man nor did she attempt to protect any other hiker.  She wasn't 'lying' though, she was truthfully telling what she remembered.

The general conclusion of the study seemed to suggest that in a rather short time after any event, that the brain would rewrite the data it had regarding the matter and then store it into long term memory (possibly altering it more even then).  It further suggested that eye witness testimony after any length of time rapidly decreased in reliability.

Now to get back to my original statement, the actual truth was that they took a nature hike by a man standing by what looked to be some sort of wreckage.  What some of them remembered and later revealed truthfully as what happened was far from the actual truth even if they were sincere in telling it.