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I'm in the same boat. But my naivete was in thinking it would be easier to dispel lies when facts where easily linked to. The propagandists' workaround was to

by badsock 10y ago

I'm in the same boat. But my naivete was in thinking it would be easier to dispel lies when facts where easily linked to. The propagandists' workaround was to just attack facts.

bbctol 10y ago
The thing is, "facts" aren't just mined out of the ground, and people underestimated how much our concept of what a "fact" is was affected by our information infrastructure. There is very little true foundation of facts to build on; scientific inquiry and reason are structures just like anything else, and can be disrupted by new media.
creaghpatr 10y ago
"fact" is just a rhetorical label that relies on continuous social consensus, as tempting as it is to believe otherwise. The "facts" change or evolve all the time. That's the whole point of the scientific method.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- badsock 10y ago
  You're not wrong, but I also think that culturally we've made a big mistake by not acknowledging that there's a gradient here. There /is/ an objective reality, and we can measure it to varying degrees of accuracy. The air temperature at a given place and a given time, for instance. Of course there's always the possibility of it being wrong (e.g. a passing hot air current, a faulty thermometer, etc.), but to live as though you can't record the temperature is absurd. It paralyses action based on evidence, rather than ideology, if everything is considered equally suspect. Yes, we're going to get it wrong sometimes, and that has a cost. But there's also a cost to thinking that you can't ever get it right, and that is letting people the who routinely dismiss inconvenient evidence have their way all the time. I think we've swung too far towards the latter.
  - BuuQu9hu 10y ago
    You only think that there is an objective reality, and others may think differently. Thus, even if there is an objective reality, facts are nonetheless subjective because the actual basis for believing in facts is subjective. If you like maths, Tarski's undefinability theorem suggests that anything which is a fact about our objective reality cannot be shown to be a fact from within reality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarski's_undefinability_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarski's_undefinability_theore...
    - MaxfordAndSons 10y ago
      You're espousing what some have termed the "Kantian correlationist" perspective. A very reductive summary is: "...correlationism is a form of scepticism for it asserts that whether or not things-in-themselves are this way is something we can never know because we can only ever know things as they appear to us, not as they are in themselves."[1] It's worth noting that some philosophers, particularly Alain Badiou and Quentin Meillassoux (whose work the above quote is given in the context of), have argued strongly against correlationism. Though they don't claim we might ever have a completely unfiltered view of what objectively is, they argue that the absolute limitations on knowledge of reality imposed by correlationist thinkers are mistaken, and that we can make progress by degrees towards an ever fuller perspective on reality. So, even though you assert >Thus, even if there is an objective reality, facts are nonetheless subjective because the actual basis for believing in facts is subjective. as a factual (somewhat ironically), it should be noted that this too is disputable. Also I would argue that Tarski (or any formal mathematical result) does not necessarily have implications about "our objective reality." As Alain Badiou would say, mathematics is ontology - i.e. the language with which we might speak most precisely about "what is" - but this does not entail that mathematical concepts are real in the Platonic sense. I agree strongly with gp that we shouldn't err on the side of formally foreclosing on the possibility of finding truths about the world. It literally legitimizes ignorance to espouse the correlationist worldview. [1]https://euppublishingblog.com/2014/12/12/correlationism-an-extract-from-the-meillassoux-dictionary/ https://euppublishingblog.com/2014/12/12/correlationism-an-e...
    - badsock 10y ago
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

by badsock 10y ago

I'm in the same boat. But my naivete was in thinking it would be easier to dispel lies when facts where easily linked to. The propagandists' workaround was to just attack facts.

bbctol 10y ago

The thing is, "facts" aren't just mined out of the ground, and people underestimated how much our concept of what a "fact" is was affected by our information infrastructure. There is very little true foundation of facts to build on; scientific inquiry and reason are structures just like anything else, and can be disrupted by new media.

creaghpatr 10y ago

"fact" is just a rhetorical label that relies on continuous social consensus, as tempting as it is to believe otherwise. The "facts" change or evolve all the time. That's the whole point of the scientific method.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
badsock 10y ago
You're not wrong, but I also think that culturally we've made a big mistake by not acknowledging that there's a gradient here. There /is/ an objective reality, and we can measure it to varying degrees of accuracy. The air temperature at a given place and a given time, for instance. Of course there's always the possibility of it being wrong (e.g. a passing hot air current, a faulty thermometer, etc.), but to live as though you can't record the temperature is absurd. It paralyses action based on evidence, rather than ideology, if everything is considered equally suspect. Yes, we're going to get it wrong sometimes, and that has a cost. But there's also a cost to thinking that you can't ever get it right, and that is letting people the who routinely dismiss inconvenient evidence have their way all the time. I think we've swung too far towards the latter.
- BuuQu9hu 10y ago
  You only think that there is an objective reality, and others may think differently. Thus, even if there is an objective reality, facts are nonetheless subjective because the actual basis for believing in facts is subjective. If you like maths, Tarski's undefinability theorem suggests that anything which is a fact about our objective reality cannot be shown to be a fact from within reality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarski's_undefinability_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarski's_undefinability_theore...
  - MaxfordAndSons 10y ago
    You're espousing what some have termed the "Kantian correlationist" perspective. A very reductive summary is: "...correlationism is a form of scepticism for it asserts that whether or not things-in-themselves are this way is something we can never know because we can only ever know things as they appear to us, not as they are in themselves."[1] It's worth noting that some philosophers, particularly Alain Badiou and Quentin Meillassoux (whose work the above quote is given in the context of), have argued strongly against correlationism. Though they don't claim we might ever have a completely unfiltered view of what objectively is, they argue that the absolute limitations on knowledge of reality imposed by correlationist thinkers are mistaken, and that we can make progress by degrees towards an ever fuller perspective on reality. So, even though you assert >Thus, even if there is an objective reality, facts are nonetheless subjective because the actual basis for believing in facts is subjective. as a factual (somewhat ironically), it should be noted that this too is disputable. Also I would argue that Tarski (or any formal mathematical result) does not necessarily have implications about "our objective reality." As Alain Badiou would say, mathematics is ontology - i.e. the language with which we might speak most precisely about "what is" - but this does not entail that mathematical concepts are real in the Platonic sense. I agree strongly with gp that we shouldn't err on the side of formally foreclosing on the possibility of finding truths about the world. It literally legitimizes ignorance to espouse the correlationist worldview. [1]https://euppublishingblog.com/2014/12/12/correlationism-an-extract-from-the-meillassoux-dictionary/ https://euppublishingblog.com/2014/12/12/correlationism-an-e...
  - badsock 10y ago
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]