I am exploring what I think is a fundamental question in epistemology: What does it mean to say something is true? I want to approach this through the lens of cybernetic constructivism. I’ll start with a question about pi, which feels fitting given that I wrote this on March 14.

What is pi? For most purposes, 3.14 is a very accurate value. But pi is an irrational number. It goes on forever. Should a truthist spend a lifetime reciting its digits? Where should they stop and say, “This is pi.”

That question is the crux of viability. A correspondence theory of truth has no stopping rule. It’s committed, in principle, to the full expansion. But nobody does that, because it doesn’t prove viable for any actual purpose. For most engineering calculations, 3.14 works. More decimal places work for orbital mechanics. The stopping point is always set by the task at hand, not by some ideal of complete accuracy.

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