A friend tells me they seem to have a gut feeling about most things, even about non-obvious things, to which I reply with immense confidence that maybe they hold opinions too strongly. Maybe they believe their opinions are not opinions but just facts. As I say this, I start to wonder what differentiates facts from opinions, and we start throwing arguments about the sincerity of the ideas we believe in.

After a little back and forth, I reply to her with almost tiredness: Honestly, there are rarely things that I wholeheartedly believe in. I am always open to the idea of a new perspective. I account this to how many times I have been wrong about stuff.

To this, she jokingly replies, "Well, I account my gut feeling to exactly how many times I have been right about stuff."

We start to see some sort of conclusion to our discussion: Facts are merely rings of layered experiences. What seems true to your heart might just be the opposite of what resonates with the world around you.

This is the exact place where I plug in physics for you. For a very long period of time, I used to have this doubt where I was not very sure that trees are not moving backward and it is just me in the train moving forward. I had the sense that it's me who reaches from place A to place B, and not the trees. But while experiencing the movement, I had my fair share of doubt, and I felt this inability where I would not be sure if someone asked me to prove it.

You see, doubt leads to experiments, experiments lead to better data, and better data leads to a better conclusion.

For something like the above, I seem very confident now. I have mathematics to prove it, and a general experience of 25 years, which seems to help me hold my ground. I also feel people rarely ask me this question, which also makes me believe that, hey, maybe I am right about it.

Although, I would assume that's how the flat-earthers, or the people who believed the sun revolves around the Earth, must have felt. Someone doubted it, took some action to resolve their doubts, and eventually ended up discovering a new truth, or facts.

So maybe facts are lies backed by data. Maybe that's what truth is.

There must have been people who never got to know that the Earth was never flat, which also puts me in doubt. Maybe I might be the person who never gets to know that it's the trees that actually move backward.

This sounds like a pretty rudimentary example, and maybe not a perfect fit. But what I am trying to put forward is that you might end up living your whole life believing in a false god.

To all of this, this friend of mine replies that maybe it is better to believe in a false god than to believe in nothing. And it seems like a pretty horrible way to live when you are not even sure about believing in nothing. You are not even a doubter with conviction. You seem to be just not sure of anything.

All of this sounds like sad news reaching my ears, but it's not the first time I have heard sad and bad news.

I think knowing and believing something wholeheartedly is the best thing that can happen to you. It kind of lets you sleep at night and make honest progress toward what you believe in.

I don't have strong beliefs and opinions about most things. I think I might have some, but I am not good at defending them.

What I have a fair amount of faith in is the second-best idea to the above: elimination. Knowing that something doesn't work for you is a small step toward finding out what works for you. I have, in general, tried to do that.

Although I would be lying if I said there are no urges to know the pattern, or at least to know that there are no patterns.

The surety of the moon being the moon is the surety of it not being other things. And the surety of it not being a star is also an increase in the probability of it being the moon.

I think, overall, it is more about being able to forgive yourself for being wrong about something. And that too, being wrong about it for a very long period of time.

I also think what is in our control is how long we take, once we know we are wrong, to accept it. That is something that can be improved.

As time, of all things, is a limited resource.

I am not sure if I was able to convey clearly the core idea of this article. Courage in general seems to be the answer to all this, although it doesn't appear in the whole article not even once till now, it's the acceptance of uncertainty and the acknowledgment of consequences.

-r