Well, yea. It would be.

It's pretty interesting, then, that Twitter hasn't done anything to add that functionality onto the site. I mean, they added the ability to have a 280 character limit before allowing people to change the contents that character limit holds. Why haven't they added it yet?

Dunno, too lazy to Google it (DuckDuckGo it, rather). And also that's not the point of this post. Not entirely, at least. 

Twitter's site design is rather interesting if you think about it. Twitter operates as something like a hybrid of a forum and a chatroom. The branching nature of people's posts can be likened to a forum layout, but the immediacy of people's replies and, maybe in some universe, the character limit, reflect the fast-paced nature of being in a live chatroom. Granted, that's not an excuse, is it? Discord is a chatroom, and you can edit your messages there too. You can even argue that with the ability to make channels, and thereby categorize and organize topics, it's even more forum-like than even Twitter. But there's an aspect of this hybridization that people often don't consider until it's important: archival. It's not easy archiving things on Discord: you can delete the message, the channel, the server, or more relevantly, edit your message. On Twitter, you can delete your message, but people's replies are still available, allowing a curious party get a gist of what was said, or the reaction to it. But now we have to ask the question that's on everyone's mind:

What is truth?

You probably think that the heading is kinda silly. You know what truth is. You can search for the definition and get one pretty easily. But the more you think about aspects of truth, you find yourself deeper into the pit of philosophy that make up the foundational abyss of thought, perception, and reality. The abyss has taunted the best thinkers of all time, throughout history, so you can only imagine the kind of havoc it'd wreck on idiots like myself, but let me take you through the thought process. I'll start by asking two questions:

1. If everyone agrees on something, does that make it true?

2. If no one agrees on a truth-state, can truth exist?

I'm not going to try and big-brain a guess to how you answered, but I'm going to start with the first question. The answer should probably be: it depends. Let's take two examples. 1+1=2, right? This is true, especially if the person presented with this statement has what we consider to be an accurate understanding of math. A child with an incomplete understanding of math might disagree because they don't know better, but under our condition of knowledge, we would find that 99% to 100% of people on Earth agree that 1+1=2. Ok. 

Does the sun revolve around Earth? Well, this question is a bit more contentious, but you could apply similar logic to this one. If the person we present this question to has what we would consider an accurate understanding of science and astronomy, the answer would very likely be "no". There are in fact a large number of people who subscribe to an ideology that suggests that the sun does indeed revolve around Earth, among other things. Criticism aside, we now have to ask another interesting question: what exactly does it mean to have an "accurate" understanding of anything? Because while nowadays, our definition of "accurate" understanding suggests that the sun doesn't revolve around us, previous notions of the "accurate" understanding of the celestial figures would suggest that the correct conclusion was either that sun revolved around Earth, or it was contested, at the very least. What exactly, though, do we predicate accuracy on? A safe answer would be "conclusions derived from evident reality". In order for a conclusion to be accurate, it has to be in accordance with reality. 

But this definition is what unlocks the true impracticality of truth: the question of what exactly is reality?

If you Google the definitions of "reality", "accurate" and "truth", you'll very quickly come across definitions that invoke circular reasoning: truth is something that is accurate to reality, accuracy relies on the truthfulness of reality, and reality is the state of being true or actual (which in itself relies the object of "actuality" being true or accurate). 

So, how can we qualify reality in a way that doesn't succumb to circular reasoning? You may have your own answer, but a practical definition of reality would be "things that can be perceived and observed". For most, that's perfectly fine. If you see a red ball, you're perceiving the ball to be there, therefore it exists in reality. If you can touch it, even better; more sensory data to prove that the red ball exists. 

(On a side note, what is "seeing" anyhow? Does the red ball you see in your mind make it real? Food for brain-eyes.)

Let me throw a wrench into this idea: suppose we're in a car and we're at a light. You're confused as to why I'm not going- because the light's green. I hit back with a different idea- the light's red, you idiot! Of course I'm stopped! What's going on here? A smartass might say one of us is colorblind (and it sure ain't me), but what I'm trying to get at is schizophrenia. Now I'm not gonna claim I know everything there is to know about schizophrenia, but some of the hallmark symptoms of it are delusions and hallucinations. Here's a harrowing question though: what if the schizophrenic's version of events are the "right" ones. Conventional logic would argue that since the majority of non-schizophrenics don't interpret their surrounds the same way, and that their interpretations are more consistent among themselves, that this can't be the case. But if we can't agree on a truth-state, what becomes of reality then? You don't even need to be schizophrenic for this to have relevance: just think about the next time you and someone else disagree on what you heard, smelled, tasted, felt, saw, etc., and you'll see how fiddly human perception can be when trying to determine something resembling an objective reality. Remember, perception led to the geocentric theory. It also led to the heliocentric theory.

Have you heard of this saying? "Speak Your Truth". The idea behind it is that you have your side of the story to tell, and you should feel free to express it. Your feelings, thoughts, and ideas are true, and you shouldn't feel the need to reserve them. However, given what we've talked about so far, the phrasing is kinda odd, yea? "Your" truth. But truth is supposed to be objective, right? If something is "true" then all relevant assertions surrounding that proposition have to be "false". 1+1=2, this is true. 2+2=4 is also true, but it's not competing with the previous truth. 1+1=3, now that's not true; it's competing with a previous truth, and it's not equivalent to said truth, therefore, it's false. But life is vastly more complicated than simple math.

Let's take a touchy example: two internet celebrities in a controversy of a sexual nature. Celeb A claims they're the victim of Celeb B. Celeb A lays out an assortment of evidences that point toward their position being the correct one. Celeb B also lays out an assortment of evidences of their innocence, along with some rebuttals to some of A's evidences. A replies to B with more rebuttals, and this cycle repeats for some time. After both parties have laid their complete hands on the table for the internet to see, the court of public opinion has to make its call: is A lying about B for some reason, or is B truly an awful person who committed an awful crime? You might want some more concrete information before forming an answer (something with more context, or a real life example, for instance), but there is an answer, even with this scenario. The answer, is yes. 

Two completely different people will view this situation. They'll have access to all the same information, but the way they think about it is completely different- because they're different people, of course. They'll come to completely different answers- Viewer X agrees with A, but Y agrees with B. What's the truth? Yes. It's often the case in everyday life that truth doesn't lie somewhere in the middle, but it's whatever we're content with accepting. Truth, broadly speaking, isn't an objective state, but a subjective one; tailor made for each and every one of us. 

Granted, this whole line of thinking completely dies when we add the possibility of an objective-perceiving entity, like God or some-such, but shut up, I'm gonna get to the relevant bit in a second.

Invoking God again, the closest thing a human can do to imitate the omnipotence of such a being is to create. The second-closest thing humans can do, is to change the form of something else, as this oftentimes leads to creation. For the past few hours, I've been editing a blank text field by populating it with various characters, which, when built atop one another, creates a completely new blog post. This creates a very obvious situation with Twitter: they don't want you to play God.

That's obviously not the answer though.

Truth be told, I don't know why Twitter doesn't add an edit button, but I find it very interesting. Twitter, in a way, is the epitome of the internet's slogan: "anything you put online can never really be deleted". Not adding an edit button helps cement that, likely as an unintended consequence. 

The power to edit truly is a scary one. Sure, a lot of people wanna use it to fix their phone autocorrecting some quickly or sloppily inputted text, but you can get pretty crafty with an edit button. Sure, you might not be able to delete anything from the internet, but can you escape the consequences of your actions if you simply change the inciting incident? People can back up your original message, but controversy dies down eventually, and once the fire of indignation burns down everything, your message will still be there, in all its false or true glory. People who see your message after everything's died down might be confused about the previous anger. Maybe they'll see your original post, but assume that's Photoshopped or something. Maybe that's what you'll tell them. 

Maybe truth isn't subjective to your perception, but to your power and persuasiveness.