Truth part 2 -- what is truth?

Soon after I started skipping grades I had one of the many, many arguments that I've had with student teachers throughout my years. This particular young woman distributed a "True/False" test, but instead of a list of statements that could be marked true or false there were a list of questions, with question marks after them, something along the lines of:
Whiskey has a higher alcohol content than beer? True False

I objected that the choices weren't valid: questions framed in such a way could be answered yes or no, but that true and false applied to statements, and there were no statements on the test.

I might not have been such a jerk about this if the "teacher" hadn't tried to fun of me for correctly pronouncing "liquor" and "liqueur" in an early incident, causing me to a) question her age b) question her upbringing as a source for her ignorance and c) carry a grudge that expressed itself with all the vigor of a vindictive 11 year old.

In any event, Pontious Pilate cavalierly tossed off "what is truth?" and I'll just as cavalierly answer that truth is a statement that corresponds, as closely as currently possible, with all that is known of the objective universe.

The best method that we have at the moment for discovering truth is the scientific method: observe, hypothesize, predict, experiment. Like any field or method, there are fine details involved at each of the stages, and lay people are often mistaken about how to use the scientific method or how to interpret results.

The key feature to the scientific method, at least in my mind, is the fact that all parts of the scientific method are viewed in context and iterative, leaving the door open for correction at a later date. This is absolutely vital. I was once accused of being closed minded by a management type when (of course) the results of my team's experiments weren't what this VP wanted them to be. "I'm not close minded," I said, "I just only open my mind in the presence of evidence about my methodology or my results. Your single, biased opinion is one tiny, biased data point."

Since all of our interaction with the objective world (yeah, yeah, either it is there or it isn't, haven't seen a good argument for assuming that it isn't there) takes place through subjective interpretation, the scientific method (and associated ways of using it such as heterophenomenology) provides as much of a reality check as we can get, and being in touch with reality is pretty much the most objective definition of sanity that I can think of. Truth is something which we must always attempt to approach.

So when I talk about AGR (attenuated grasp of reality), I'm talking about having a declared position or action contrary to the current state of some truth. As an example: you send someone a letter stating X. That person then writes a bunch of people saying, "Pompotous said Y!" This is most likely AGR because "Pompotous said Y!" appears to be false statement. Evidence might be gathered showing that X and Y, whatever they may be, are functionally or semantically identical, but that's something that the Pompotous normally does to other people, not something that normally happens to himself.