32nd Annual Great American Think-Off
Congratulations to all four finalists!
Read the winning essays below
The four finalists for the 2025 Great American Think-Off were (in alphabetical order): David Eckel of Clayton, NC; David Lose of Eden Prairie, MN; Jay Sieling of Miltona, MN; and Pavirthra Manu Krishnan of Troy, MI.
At the 32nd annual Think-Off debate held in New York Mills, MN, on Saturday, June 14, 2025, David Lose successfully argued that there are many truths, winning the gold medal and the title of America’s Greatest Thinker for 2025. Lose defeated Pavithra Krishnan in final round of debate, and Krishnan went home with the silver medal. David Eckel and Jay Sieling both earned bronze medals. Each of the four finalists also won a $500 prize and an all-expense-paid weekend in New York Mills.
Read the 2025 Think-Off Finalists’ award-winning essays below!
David Lose
Eden Prairie, MN
Gold Medal Winner | America’s Greatest Thinker
There are many truths.
Every fiber in my body wants to believe there is only one truth. Among other things, a single truth provides a reassuring sense of order as, absent any ultimate standard by which to adjudicate competing claims, it feels all too easy to fall into a chaotic relativism. In this sense, a solitary, trustworthy sense of truth seems indispensable to a meaningful, even intelligible, life.
But, as much as I yearn for the comfort of an ultimate truth, I’m just not sure there is one. If there were, wouldn’t we have established it by now, offering a universally agreed upon version of reality?
Moreover, I think insisting on a single truth has contributed significantly to the level of violence and misery in the world. How many wars are fought, or voices silenced, in the name of truth?
Yet for all the violence, a variety of perspectives remain.
Are we, therefore, stuck between the opposite poles of a fervent commitment to universal truth and a despairing resignation to a cacophony of competing voices? Two clarifications may offer a way forward.
First, “truth” is not the same as “fact.” Certainly there is a dimension of “factual truth” – those things we can verify through repeated observation – that we depend upon for a myriad of activities from turning on the lights to starting our cars. But when speaking of truth, we often intend to gesture beyond mere scientific data to the realm of meaning and significance. We may agree, for instance, on the historical factors contributing to the Civil War, the key battles, the number of dead, the political and economic toll. But what did the War mean? Facts alone don’t answer that question. But even naming it “the Civil War” – as opposed to “The War of States’ Rights,” let alone “the War of Northern Aggression” – betrays our conviction about the deeper truth of the matter.
Second, abandoning the claim to a single, ultimate truth doesn’t mean abandoning making truth claims altogether.
The opening phrase of the signature sentence in the Declaration of Independence is helpful: “We hold these truths to be self-evident….” “Self-evident” means “obvious, apparent to all, and therefore needing no proof.” Which was both a wise and convenient turn of phrase for Thomas Jefferson to employ. Given that there was a whole nation that disagreed with Jefferson, proof remained elusive. But that didn’t stop him from asserting this truth or the colonists from risking their lives and fortunes defending it. Notice the verb Jefferson employs: “We hold….” Might we also “hold” our truths, asserting and defending them in the public square and inviting a vigorous response rather than positing a “universal truth” that immediately silences contrary voices?
Such a move is both bold and humble, strong and vulnerable. Bold in being willing to state and stand behind what you believe to be true, yet humble in neither assuming nor coercing universal acceptance. Strong in the commitment to share unabashedly your deepest convictions, yet vulnerable in not presuming you have prefect knowledge and are therefore open to reconsider, or even change, what you had once imagined to be true.
If we can hold our truths rather than insist others accept them, we might discover several things.
First, we may discover that our truth is persuasive, that as we share what we believe and why it matters to us, others come to believe our truth as well. That can be affirming. Second, in conversation with others we might discover that truth is more dynamic than static as our sense of truth changes and grows. While that can initially be disconcerting, we might end up reassured that the truth arising from honest conversation, even if different than our earlier belief, may be more trustworthy. Third, we may grow in the confidence that one doesn’t have to prove something once and for all to believe it, defend it, and sacrifice for it. In turn, that growth in confidence might invite a deeper compassion for those who believe differently. We might even admire their ability to “hold truth,” knowing firsthand that living according to our convictions is both challenging and vital.
I am a Lutheran pastor and so regularly climb into a pulpit to share what I firmly believe to be true. As I do so, I try to remember that claiming truth is more an act of faith than a matter of proof and, therefore, requires equal measures of courage and compassion. Which may, ultimately, be just the kind of truth that sets us free.
~~~
Pavirthra Manu Krishnan
Troy, MI
Silver Medal Winner
There is one truth.
Truth, in its absolute form, has been the subject of philosophical inquiry for centuries. Is there a single truth, constant and independent of human perception, or is truth itself a construction, an illusion bounded by the limits of our knowledge? While relativists assert that truth is multifaceted, relative to perspective, culture, and experience, such a stance collapses under closer scrutiny. There can only be one truth—absolute and objective. To make such an assertion, however, requires a more unsettling question: does truth even exist?
A single absolute truth suggests that reality is structured in such a way as to be coherent and independent of human observation. Math, for example, operates on principles that remain the same irrespective of interpretation. The equation 2 + 2 = 4 is not subject to cultural interpretation or individual perception. Even in more complex systems, such as physics, the laws of the universe remain the same whether humans comprehend them or not. If truth were a mere human construct, these laws would be subject to change with belief, yet the universe behaves independently of our understanding.
Yet for all this seemingly solid foundation, the character of truth itself is elusive. Philosophers like Friedrich Nietzsche and Jacques Derrida have questioned whether truth is an illusion—a manufactured myth to bring meaning to chaos. Nietzsche infamously claimed that “there are no facts, only interpretations,” implying that truth is not an objective fact but a projection of the human intellect. If truth is a construction in every possible way, then it is not an objective thing anymore but a simple reflection of power, perception, and language.
This kind of skepticism forces us to confront the uneasy possibility that the truth is unknowable, if it even exists. Human perception is faulty, filtered through biases, cognitive limitations, and subjective experience. That which we claim to be true must go through the limitations of our senses and the structures of our language. The color red, for instance, is something different to other species and even to other individuals. If truth is something that stands beyond perception, then the question has to be: how can we ever get to it?
Science, which seeks objective truth through empirical evidence, is also updated. What was once held to be true, for instance, the geocentric universe, was later disproved. This will make us think that truth is mutable, but that is an error. The objective reality of the universe did not change; our understanding did. Truth is unchanging, but our knowledge is incomplete. This is a crucial difference: human knowledge is fallible, but the existence of one objective truth is not negated by our inability to completely grasp it.
If truth exists independently of perception, then why do so many subscribe to the idea of multiple truths? The appeal of relativism lies in its flexibility; it makes room for various perspectives and accounts for the messiness of human experience.
However, multiplicity of perspectives does not necessarily mean multiplicity of truths. If one person says the world is round and another person says it is flat, one of them is wrong, regardless of how strongly they may believe it. The existence of illusion does not negate the existence of reality.
But even if we assume that truth is one, there is an epistemological issue: can we ever know it? The limits of human knowledge guarantee that we can at best know fragments of the absolute. If truth is a mountain, we may climb it, but the summit is forever shrouded in mist. We may find fragments of it, but the entirety is always elusive. That doesn’t mean the mountain is not there—only that our knowledge of it is incomplete.
So we arrive at a paradox.
There is only one truth, absolute and independent of belief, but our capacity to attain it is doubtful. To question truth is both to affirm its existence and to acknowledge our limitations. The quest for truth, then, is not creating it, but finding it—slowly, laboriously, through reason, doubt, and questioning.
Ultimately, the question is not whether there are many truths, but whether we can find the one. Perhaps we are condemned to wander in the darkness of half-truths, always reaching for an absolute we may never quite reach. But even in our skepticism, something is always the same: the truth is out there, even if it’s beyond our reach.
~~~
David Eckel
Clayton, NC
Bronze Medal Winner
There is one truth.
The Nature of Truth
Outside my back door lies a forest. Though small as forests go – just several hundred acres – it is nonetheless intricate and complex beyond human comprehension. We might count and catalog each of Forest’s million trees, but what of other plant life: from ferns, moss and lichen to shrubs, grasses and mushrooms? One could discover every deer, but what of squirrels and raccoons, owls and warblers, snakes and salamanders, beetles and butterflies, fish and frogs? Let us not overlook mineral features, from great boulders to sand, from stream-fed ponds to outcrops and ravines that wrinkle Forest’s well-worn face.
However lengthy, any description of Forest would be but a step on a path stretching to the horizon. No matter: a census or parts list does not a forest make. Its being is an emergent property, as different from its components as are the living from the dead. Endowed with such magic, might Forest help us better consider the nature of truth?
Last year perhaps 50,000 people could truthfully say they visited Forest. But while their reports would likely bear some resemblance to mine, each visitor was gifted an experience and a memory as unique as a fingerprint, as one-of-a-kind as a snowflake is said to be. Does that suggest there is one forest, or many? Some might contend our forest “is what one thinks it is”, and thus would truly exist in 50,000 different forms, one per mind of each visitor. I find it more reasonable that a single, same forest is perceived in 50,000 different ways, all of them approximations and *none* of them true despite all effort.
No two forest visitors see, hear, taste, smell or feel an identical set of “foresty” things. Those they do sense are but a tiny slice of all that’s there to experience. It’s easy to miss the hawk overhead when one is looking down, preoccupied by a circus of turtles in the pond. Some things lurk outside the range of our senses and understanding; we might not know precisely what, but we can infer “something” is there. Visiting dogs may exhibit great interest in certain tree trunks or stop and test the air for reasons they know, though our noses do not. Dragonflies apparently see color in dimensions to which we humans cannot relate. Birds chirp in patterns, but the information and possibly ideas they may convey to one another are largely mysterious to us. Finally, we interpret what we sense through the prism of prior experience; the same stimulus can evoke a drastically different response from even the closest friends. One might be fascinated by a spider, the other terrified.
Why then, if the forest is such a uniquely personal experience for each visitor, does it matter that there is one forest instead of many? It matters when we compare notes: when we tell others about our experiences, and they share theirs with us.
The amount of knowledge we gather through direct experience is dwarfed by the amount of indirect knowledge we gain from others through spoken language, books, and the internet to name a few sources. Civilization has been built on indirect knowledge. Imagine if each of us had to discover fire and invent the wheel on our own.
But the value of indirect knowledge critically depends on its close relationship to a common reality, upon there being just one truth. People with even the best intent can be mistaken in their observations and beliefs, so discrepancies between direct and indirect experience are bound to arise. How could they be resolved, one proven correct or at least more likely than the other, if multiple truths were in play? If a forest visitor claimed to have seen turtles wearing clown noses, merrily beeping horns as they rode unicycles across the surface of the pond, you might smile at the circus image evoked but would not give credence to the story as fact. But if there were many truths, might this be one of them?
Broad, implicit agreement that there is only one truth may seem theoretical and academic, but our world would crumble without it. That none of us is in possession of that truth doesn’t argue against its being, only that we ought to be humbler and more cooperative in our mutual search for a greater grasp of it.
The forest isn’t likely to give up all its secrets. If it ever does, there’s all that lies beyond it to explore, and one truth beyond it all.
~~~
Jay Sieling
Miltona, MN
Bronze Medal Winner
There are many truths.
I am writing this on the eve of my sixty-first birthday. My joints ache. I move slower than I used to. I’m bald and my beard is white. I think I at least have the appearance of wisdom, or at least Socrates – who was wise because he admitted he knew nothing.
There is a saying attributed to Socrates – “The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms.”
I asked my grandson about truth a couple of weeks ago. “Finn, what does it mean when we say something is true?” (A gentler way of asking the question posed by Socrates: what is truth?)
“It means it’s real” he replied. I continued “So what does it mean if something is false, not true?”
“That would be not real”. He is going to be six this summer.
Watching my own kids grow and now observing the development of dear grandkids, I know there are many truths.
40 years ago I wrote a final paper for an intro to philosophy course that argued in favor of one objective truth. In that paper I used the story of the blind men and the elephant. A poem by John Godfrey Saxe. Each man touches the elephant and describes what it is like. Six different answers come from the blind men as they touch different parts. Touching the leg – it’s like a tree. Touch the trunk it’s like a snake. Touch the ear it’s like a fan. Touch the side – it’s like a wall. Each person’s account is true – based on their experience and senses. But each is wrong or at least not complete. There is, objectively, an elephant – but they cannot know it. The blind men would need to share their experience and create a composite of what they know an elephant to be. And even then, it would be six different ideas or truths of what an elephant is. Even an outside observer could use descriptions to try to guide them – and they would still have varying images in mind.
When I asked Finn how we know something is true, or real he said “Well, you see it”. Even at this age he has begun to realize that truth – things that are real- are known from experience, from our senses.
“What if you couldn’t see something. Or if someone was blind? How could they know what is true?” “Someone could tell them!”
Even in the John Saxe poem, there is a narrator who tells us there is an elephant.
We create truth, what is real, through communication with each other. Rhetoric is epistemic. We construct shared narratives – stories that are true – to us. Shared narratives are powerful – and need not be true to be powerful.
When I was my grandson’s age, my younger brother and I would bug each other. Pester and tease. According to a shared narrative in our family, I was pestering my brother and he was chasing me around the yard and eventually around the neighbors house. I would go half way around and then double back as he would try to go the opposite way. He spotted the garden hose on the ground and stood behind the corner of the house. Ready to spray me when I came around the corner. Footsteps approached. He jumped out and pulled the spray trigger. Water gushed forth and soaked our elderly neighbor lady from head to toe!
A few years ago my brother asked me “do you remember that?” “Honestly- no not really” I replied. “Me neither” he said. Did it really happen? Was it true?
A shared narrative doesn’t have to be true to be powerful. Even if we lose memory of such an event – it can remain true.
That also means things that are not true can be told and sold as true. The earth is flat. The emperor has fine clothes. The election was stolen.
There are as many truths as there are stories. Stories matter.
Jimmy Buffet notes this in his song “semi true story”
“It’s a semi-true story, believe it or not
I made up a few things and there’s some I forgot
But the life and the telling are both real to me
And they all run together and turn out to be
A semi-true story”
“But the life and the telling are both real to me” – as my grandson said “true is real” so they are both true to me. There are many lives – many people – many tellings.
There are many truths.
~~~
Did you miss the 2025 debate? Click below to see it on YouTube!
2025 Great American Think-Off Debate>
The Think-Off Committee also awarded Honorable Mention recognitions to the following essayists:
ONE TRUTH HONORABLE MENTIONS:
- Ron Stewart – Coon Rapids, Minnesota
- Laurie Fitz – Independence, Minnesota
- Katherine Tencza – Edison, New Jersey
- Angela Loupe – Murfreesboro, Tennessee
MANY TRUTHS HONORABLE MENTIONS:
- Miriam Santos – Windhoek, Khomas, Namibia
- Sherry Vavra – Mountain Home, Arkansas
- Blaine Rada – Darien, Illinois
- Marcia Witt – Ijamsville, Maryland
The Honorable Mention essays will be published soon; STAY TUNED!
Questions or want more information? Give us a call at 218-385-3339.
