What is “the truth” really for?
You don’t want a drill. You want a hole in the wall. So what do you really want when you seek “the truth”?
You can gather raw facts, but there are infinite facts, so you select and filter and interpret them. Like cotton plants or sheep’s wool, facts are processed before they’re used. Is that seeking the truth? Or just material for a story?
Maybe you’re preparing for arguments. You want facts as weapons to defend your viewpoint and attack theirs. Facts can win a battle but not a war.
Maybe you’re making a big decision. You want to feel well-informed and certain. But that’s an emotional state unrelated to the facts. You’ll ignore a mountain of evidence if you hear one good story against it or just feel yourself leaning the other way. Most emotions can’t be persuaded.
You need to feel good about your choices. Emotion decides. Facts rationalize. You’ll find whatever truth is useful.
Ask yourself why you want the truth. What do you plan to do with it? What’s the real outcome?
This only applies if you define truth as strangely and restricted as you have - i.e. as absolute, necessary, unchanging "fact." But facts are relational, dynamic. What once was might not still be. Why wouldn't truth also be allowed to change?
But even still, facts and truth are NOT (necessarily) the same thing!! Just because something is a fact doesn't mean it is true. A man was born at 8:47 am on June 6, 1980. That's a fact, but what is TRUE about it? It doesn't become true until something is revealed by it. For example: that he is
a Gemini; that he is now 46 years old; that he is Gen X; that he couldn't have killed his neighbor because the DNA of the killer at the scene reveal he must be at least 60 years old, etc.
Truth is not just a fact or even a collection of facts. It is the RELATION revealed by fact(s). It's what the facts MEAN in relation to each other. It has nothing to do with being absolute, unchanging, objective, free from social convention, etc.. That the man is a Gemini, for example, is true - but the Zodiac itself is a social construction. That doesn't matter - it is still truth.
That one chess player checkmated his opponent is a fact. That that chess player won the game is TRUE. It doesn't matter that chess is a game with arbitrary rules.
To address your question: people want the truth because they want to know what the facts mean. What they imply. A fact in itself doesn't reveal anything. Thus, it's not useful. A fact only becomes useful when there is truth.
For example, that the pool is open right now is a FACT. That we could go to the pool right now to cool off is TRUE.
That's why I say not "useful, not true," but useful IF true.