4 ms·

Could you expand a little on the notion of “correct values”?

by h4b4n3r0 8y ago

__jahh 8y ago
reciprocity is a favorite
ashleyn 8y ago
Pretty obvious stuff we can agree on, like "hate is wrong" and "facts are indisputable."
- reaperducer 8y ago
  Pretty obvious stuff we can agree on, like "hate is wrong" I hate mayonnaise. I guess that makes me “wrong.” and "facts are indisputable." 1942: “The Germans are our enemies.” That was a fact. 1992: “The Germans are our friends.” That was a fact. Facts change. Nothing in the universe is indisputable.
  - johnchristopher 8y ago
    I am working in a toxic environment these days and for months now I have been throwing this maxim at everyone's face every occasion I get: "Facts don't matter, only opinion on those facts do."
  - tzs 8y ago
    > 1942: “The Germans are our enemies.” That was a fact. It still is a fact. The statement is implicitly about the relationship with Germany at the time of the statement. It is not a claim that the relationship will stay the same for all time forward.
    - Fnoord 8y ago
      Context matters, indeed.
  - noanabeshima 8y ago
    Not being able to know things with certainty is one thing, but I don't think your latter argument about truth being literally different in different times is what the parent is getting at. We can get really, really certain about some things. If a superforecaster (or anyone for that matter) gives 95% certainty on an event occuring and he or she has frequently made similar predictions with 95% accuracy, the event is likely to occur. It's still uncertain, but not by very much. "Donald Trump is president". It's uncertain, certainly, but I still feel comfortable calling it a fact. Are you talking about misuse of 'facts are unquestionable' to apply to statements that aren't as clear?
  - hfdgiutdryg 8y ago
    "In 1942, the Germans were our enemy." "In 1992, the Germans were our friends." Facts don't change. Poorly-worded, imprecise, incomplete statements can be misunderstood, though.
  - wool_gather 8y ago
    This is a linguistic ploy, not an argument. > 1942: “The Germans are our enemies.” That was a fact. And it will not cease being a fact that, in 1942, Germany and whoever were enemies. Nor that they became friends later. It's possible that they will be enemies again in the future. That wouldn't render the statement about 1992 non-factual. I'm not even going to bother with the mayonnaise, since that's just founded on a willful misinterpretation of the original comment.
- h4b4n3r0 8y ago
  That’s an incredibly naive and narrow view. In most of life’s circumstances “facts” can’t even fully be established, and are better referred to as “strong beliefs”. And the definition of “hate” depends on perspective as well as varies over time. Moreover, there are circumstances where hate is definitely not “wrong”.
  - sidstling 8y ago
    I disagree with this. I think you can find facts in most parts of life. What has changed is how we use those facts to try and build a narrative, by chosing the facts that support the story we want to tell and ignore the facts that don’t. Anti-vaxers are a good example of this. They’ve read that vaccines are dangerous, which is actually a fact, so they chose to not vaccinate their children. But they are ignoring another vaccination fact in the process. The fact that not-vaccinating children is more dangerous than vaccinating them. As a result we now live in a world where westerners are once again dying from the measles even though they really shouldn’t be. Politicians are especially great at misusing facts to build their agendas. Possibly because they’d be too agreeing if they weren’t and they simply don’t know how to work together across party lines. I once saw a climate change meme, asking if you’d cross a bridge which 99.9% of the worlds leading engineers said was unsafe. Every day we see more and more people cross that damn bridge. :p I also agree with you though. Because things are this way, it would often be more reasonable to talk about “strong beliefs” rather than “facts”, exactly because people are chosing to ignore the facts.
    - h4b4n3r0 8y ago
      It was also a "fact", in the times of Galileo, that Earth is in the center of the universe and the Sun rotates around it. But that might be too ancient, so how about another: before the 80's there was "scientific consensus" that ulcers are caused by all sorts of things other than bacteria. Dude who discovered they were, in fact, caused by bacteria, was nearly kicked out of his field. History is rife with "facts" that weren't actually, you know, real facts at the time, even though there was "scientific consensus". Note that I'm not an anti-vaxxer, and I'm not a climate change denier. I also don't imbue "scientific consensus" with magical properties, seeing how often it was dead wrong.
- AmericanChopper 8y ago
  There’s nothing obvious about this. Hate is entirely in the eye of the beholder, and is no different from the idea of “offensive”. People are free to, and routinely do, read hate into all sorts of things where it’s not at all obvious whether it was intended. You also won’t be able to prove that hate it always wrong. Is it OK to hate Nazis? Is it OK to hate people that have harmed you? Is it OK to hate people that want to harm you? Is it OK to hate people that hate you? There is no obvious place at all to draw the line on that. Finally, all facts are disputable. There are entire disciplines devoted to disputing facts. Science, philosophy and logic all revolve are hypothesising, disputing and falsifying facts. In the centuries that humans have been pondering logic, the combined efforts of everybody who has ever lived have yet to produce a single objective truth. Asserting that people should hold the ‘correct values’ before being entitled to express themselves is simply asserting that your own orthodoxy should be universally enforced. This idea comes directly from Orwell in the form of ‘wrongthink’.
- passwordreset 8y ago
  A fact, iirc, is a statement made which is purported to be about the real world. Given this, both of the statements "the moon is made out of green cheese" and "the moon is made out of things other than green cheese" are both statements of fact, and that they are factual statements is indeed indisputable. That they are true or false is entirely disputable, as veracity exists on a different spectrum than facts. It's important to be clear about this, because some people seem to think that "it's a fact, therefore it's true". Facts aren't indisputably true, they are indisputably facts. True and false is a different scale.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > A fact, iirc, is a statement made which is purported to be about the real world. No, you recall incorrectly; that's a rough definition of a fact claim. A fact is a true fact claim.

Could you expand a little on the notion of “correct values”?

__jahh 8y ago

reciprocity is a favorite

ashleyn 8y ago

Pretty obvious stuff we can agree on, like "hate is wrong" and "facts are indisputable."

reaperducer 8y ago
Pretty obvious stuff we can agree on, like "hate is wrong" I hate mayonnaise. I guess that makes me “wrong.” and "facts are indisputable." 1942: “The Germans are our enemies.” That was a fact. 1992: “The Germans are our friends.” That was a fact. Facts change. Nothing in the universe is indisputable.
- johnchristopher 8y ago
  I am working in a toxic environment these days and for months now I have been throwing this maxim at everyone's face every occasion I get: "Facts don't matter, only opinion on those facts do."
- tzs 8y ago
  > 1942: “The Germans are our enemies.” That was a fact. It still is a fact. The statement is implicitly about the relationship with Germany at the time of the statement. It is not a claim that the relationship will stay the same for all time forward.
  - Fnoord 8y ago
    Context matters, indeed.
- noanabeshima 8y ago
  Not being able to know things with certainty is one thing, but I don't think your latter argument about truth being literally different in different times is what the parent is getting at. We can get really, really certain about some things. If a superforecaster (or anyone for that matter) gives 95% certainty on an event occuring and he or she has frequently made similar predictions with 95% accuracy, the event is likely to occur. It's still uncertain, but not by very much. "Donald Trump is president". It's uncertain, certainly, but I still feel comfortable calling it a fact. Are you talking about misuse of 'facts are unquestionable' to apply to statements that aren't as clear?
- hfdgiutdryg 8y ago
  "In 1942, the Germans were our enemy." "In 1992, the Germans were our friends." Facts don't change. Poorly-worded, imprecise, incomplete statements can be misunderstood, though.
- wool_gather 8y ago
  This is a linguistic ploy, not an argument. > 1942: “The Germans are our enemies.” That was a fact. And it will not cease being a fact that, in 1942, Germany and whoever were enemies. Nor that they became friends later. It's possible that they will be enemies again in the future. That wouldn't render the statement about 1992 non-factual. I'm not even going to bother with the mayonnaise, since that's just founded on a willful misinterpretation of the original comment.
h4b4n3r0 8y ago
That’s an incredibly naive and narrow view. In most of life’s circumstances “facts” can’t even fully be established, and are better referred to as “strong beliefs”. And the definition of “hate” depends on perspective as well as varies over time. Moreover, there are circumstances where hate is definitely not “wrong”.
- sidstling 8y ago
  I disagree with this. I think you can find facts in most parts of life. What has changed is how we use those facts to try and build a narrative, by chosing the facts that support the story we want to tell and ignore the facts that don’t. Anti-vaxers are a good example of this. They’ve read that vaccines are dangerous, which is actually a fact, so they chose to not vaccinate their children. But they are ignoring another vaccination fact in the process. The fact that not-vaccinating children is more dangerous than vaccinating them. As a result we now live in a world where westerners are once again dying from the measles even though they really shouldn’t be. Politicians are especially great at misusing facts to build their agendas. Possibly because they’d be too agreeing if they weren’t and they simply don’t know how to work together across party lines. I once saw a climate change meme, asking if you’d cross a bridge which 99.9% of the worlds leading engineers said was unsafe. Every day we see more and more people cross that damn bridge. :p I also agree with you though. Because things are this way, it would often be more reasonable to talk about “strong beliefs” rather than “facts”, exactly because people are chosing to ignore the facts.
  - h4b4n3r0 8y ago
    It was also a "fact", in the times of Galileo, that Earth is in the center of the universe and the Sun rotates around it. But that might be too ancient, so how about another: before the 80's there was "scientific consensus" that ulcers are caused by all sorts of things other than bacteria. Dude who discovered they were, in fact, caused by bacteria, was nearly kicked out of his field. History is rife with "facts" that weren't actually, you know, real facts at the time, even though there was "scientific consensus". Note that I'm not an anti-vaxxer, and I'm not a climate change denier. I also don't imbue "scientific consensus" with magical properties, seeing how often it was dead wrong.
AmericanChopper 8y ago
There’s nothing obvious about this. Hate is entirely in the eye of the beholder, and is no different from the idea of “offensive”. People are free to, and routinely do, read hate into all sorts of things where it’s not at all obvious whether it was intended. You also won’t be able to prove that hate it always wrong. Is it OK to hate Nazis? Is it OK to hate people that have harmed you? Is it OK to hate people that want to harm you? Is it OK to hate people that hate you? There is no obvious place at all to draw the line on that. Finally, all facts are disputable. There are entire disciplines devoted to disputing facts. Science, philosophy and logic all revolve are hypothesising, disputing and falsifying facts. In the centuries that humans have been pondering logic, the combined efforts of everybody who has ever lived have yet to produce a single objective truth. Asserting that people should hold the ‘correct values’ before being entitled to express themselves is simply asserting that your own orthodoxy should be universally enforced. This idea comes directly from Orwell in the form of ‘wrongthink’.
passwordreset 8y ago
A fact, iirc, is a statement made which is purported to be about the real world. Given this, both of the statements "the moon is made out of green cheese" and "the moon is made out of things other than green cheese" are both statements of fact, and that they are factual statements is indeed indisputable. That they are true or false is entirely disputable, as veracity exists on a different spectrum than facts. It's important to be clear about this, because some people seem to think that "it's a fact, therefore it's true". Facts aren't indisputably true, they are indisputably facts. True and false is a different scale.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > A fact, iirc, is a statement made which is purported to be about the real world. No, you recall incorrectly; that's a rough definition of a fact claim. A fact is a true fact claim.