What's wrong with the red pill?

I agree with the sentiment of Lynch's fourth truism. If truth is good, then we should care about it for its own sake. But when analyzing this truism, he sets out to prove that we do indeed care about it for its own sake, which shook me a little--I didn't think that was the point.

Starting with his floating tank/Matrix experiment, I don't buy that there would be an across-the-board rejection of such an "untrue" existence. (In the Matrix, don't most of the people approached actually take the red pill? And then there's that one character who took a blue pill and was actively working to get back into virtual reality.) Lynch is correct to say that those whose lives are filled with tragedy and poverty would be inclined to choose the virtual world, but even one individual wouldn't make the same decision at different times. (My attitude is a little more resilient when I'm hopped up on caffeine and taking on the world, versus after being woken up very early in the morning after little sleep.) In a country where most people can't locate Indonesia on a map, I'm just not convinced that everyone is intrinsically motivated to pursue truth. It's not a given.

But that's not even the question here: According to his truism, it doesn't matter whether or not we do care about truth for its own sake--just about whether or not we should.

Theoretically, it makes sense that truth is worth caring about (if it's "good"). But later on, he rejects the idea that there is only One Truth. And that leads me to ask, how do you choose between multiple truths if multiple truths exist? As has been already addressed in other posts, virtual reality is, while an "untrue" simulation of one's previous existence, it can also be looked at as another existence entirely--another set of truths. Is it possible for those two contradictory truths to run parallel to each other? (This is where if I knew a little bit more about physics I'd say something about light being both a particle and a wave, but that's about all I know). If it's impossible to believe both truths (since they contradict; either your world is the real world or your world is virtual), but when both truths can exist, disregarding one would be disregarding the notion of an objective, all-encompassing set of truths, how do you reconcile that?

Matt McGuire