Cloudscape

There are no sane people. There are just insane people and people who are insane in an abnormal way. Almost everyone holds beliefs that they are certain to be true, but for some people these beliefs are shared with a large percentage of the population, and for some people these beliefs are shared with a smaller percentage. In other words, for some people the insanity is collective, for some people it is individual. We are almost all insane, but some are more original in their insanity than others. Some people think of their own delusions, others just copy them from others. The only difference is in the source of their inspiration. Most people's insanity is to adapt to others' insanity and blindly believe them to be right; other people's insanity is to blindly believe themselves to be right.
Almost everyone thinks they know the truth and that whoever thinks otherwise is wrong, with exceptions only in the very, very few open minds there are in the world. Generally, the more intellectual someone is, the more they are attached to their own opinions. If we attach any value to our beliefs, I believe it should be because of the beauty of the patterns of our thoughts, not because we think they are true. The truth can never fully be achieved but only approached. It is something which lies outside of ourselves, and in that we are perhaps too small too understand it. I believe that nothing is ever fully true or false, and that the truth is always somewhere in between. Thus, we can approach the truth as closely as possible, but never actually reach it. It is the asymptote of the function of knowledge. The truth is something infinitely subtle and nuanced, and while we may come closer and closer to it, we cannot fully reach it unless we could see its infinitely many nuances.

The truth is a target that lies at an infinite distance. Novice sailors find that when they as they try to attach a target, they have to readjust their course the closer they get to it. But the truth lies infinitely far. We can move towards it in as straight a line as possible, but we can never aim straight towards it because it is too far. Our aim can never be perfect, and the least we deviate from it will eventually lead us away from the truth. The closer we get to it, the greater this deviation becomes, so that again and again, we have to readjust our view.

This is illustrated by the model of the atom: at first, it was thought the atom was a solid sphere (Dalton); then, it was thought that that there were negative electrons floating on the positive nucleus (Thomson); then, it was thought that there was actually a lot of space in between electrons and protons (Rutherford); yet later, there turned out to be neutrons in the nucleus as well; yet later, it turned out the electrons weren't orbiting the nucleus in a circle but rather in a wavelike motion; yet later, the protons and neutrons appeared not to be solid but be composed of quarks, elementary particles; and yet later, these elementary particles all appeared not to be solid either, because they were actually really localized by the interference of energy waves. Right now, many scientists still live in the delusion that yes, they know the truth and that this is the end of it.

Will it ever end? Will we ever see that we are not, as we have deluded ourselves since the beginnings of time, Omniscient?
Someone who is deluded is always convinced of the truth of their delusions, and this conviction is by far a more criterion in defining delusions than their falsehood. If I believe that I might be involved in a mind control conspiracy, this is perfectly reasonable, as history has shown that it is possible; however, if I am certain that I am involved in such conspiracy, then I am insane. The irony is that this would make most people insane, were it not for the fact that a third criterion of a delusion is that it is not held by a culture.
I do not think I am so different. Even I like to feel that I know something, even if whatever it is I think to know is at most an approximation of the truth -- still infinitely far from the complete truth, but so too infinitely far from complete falsehood. Everything has some kernel of truth, and yet is not perfectly true.