3 ms·

In the realm of media, there's a lot of equivocation with the word "fact". I believe in the existence of objective facts in the general sense. But when we're us

by jerf 7y ago

In the realm of media, there's a lot of equivocation with the word "fact". I believe in the existence of objective facts in the general sense. But when we're using the term in the context of our current media environment, a lot of "facts" are actually conclusions that contain heaping helpings of opinion, if you really dig into them. There's a lot of telling you what to think and not a lot of bare facts, because who wants to read boring bare facts? Assuming the bare facts are even reported accurately between the place where they were collected and the final reporting (see almost all popular science articles, where even when "facts" are being reported they still get screwed up). Here's a common set of "subjective facts": "Policy X will help group Y in manner Z." along with "Politician A voted against X and therefore hates Y." As I've commented before, even the apparent objective fact that "Politician A voted against X" isn't necessarily as factual as it may seem since it's a common tactic to have X bundled in with a whole bunch of other things, and you don't know whether A voted against X, or voted against boondoggle B buried in the bill, or if X was in fact the only thing the politician agreed with in the entire bill and was forced to vote against it because everything else was worse, or if they agreed with X and voted against it as part of some other political deal, or what. Even the "bare fact" "Politician A voted against X" can be treated in a way that turns it into an effective lie, even if it is nominally 100% true. That is the sort of "fact" we deal with in the media environment all the time, and it isn't as objective as we'd like it to be.

mtberatwork 7y ago
> Here's a common set of "subjective facts": "Policy X will help group Y in manner Z." along with "Politician A voted against X and therefore hates Y." That's just a logical fallacy. By definition a fact can only be objective, otherwise it's simply an opinion.
- mistermann 7y ago
  > That's just a logical fallacy. Which is presented as a fact by the media.....which is consumed by readers and mentally filed under "fact", and subsequently used by subconscious heuristics in future evaluations of reality, producing more "facts" which are transmitted throughout their network of acquaintances, infecting more subconscious heuristics, and round and round we go. It's interesting that many here at HN expect the general public to up their epistemological game, when all of us here have the same infected heuristics as them (if to a lesser degree), and routinely behave in similar ways. The question on my mind lately is: how might this situation be improved, first here at HN, and then maybe later throughout the rest of society? We've got a bunch of bright minds here, it might be interesting if we acknowledged this problem and set our collective minds to finding a solution.
  - mtberatwork 7y ago
    > Which is presented as a fact by the media..... > The question on my mind lately is: how might this situation be improved, first here at HN I would first suggest not applying such a broad brush stroke to all players in "the media". It's a false-equivalence to say the least.
    - mistermann 7y ago
      A fair angle of criticism, but while I'm no expert, I feel fairly confident asserting (with no proof of course) that "the media", with few exceptions, routinely reports on complex matters in a way that is extremely misleading. Granted, this is not entirely their fault, not by a long shot. They are tasked with conveying extremely complex information to the masses, at a level that is understandable to some sort of lowest common denominator, using human created languages that optimize for pragmatism (and are therefore flawed in various ways: nuance, accuracy, bandwidth, etc), across various mediums that each have their own limitations, all in a limited time frame that must also make room for other pressing topics. It shouldn't be too surprising that the end result is less than perfect.
IIAOPSW 7y ago
>"Policy X will help group Y in manner Z." While true that conditional statements about the future ("X will help") is not falsifiable, it is still a well formed if-then statement. The statement must be either true or false even though we can't derive a proof one way or the other. I disagree that we have to just throw our hands up and accept belief in unfalsifiable "subjective facts". I can easily fix your statement. Watch me: "Relevant organization W projects that policy X will help group Y in manner Z." Now your belief in "X helps Y in manner Z" is no longer blind but derived from trust in organization W. If you don't want to trust W you can dig deeper into their methods and data. There is no link in the chain that can only be filled in subjectively. >"Politician A voted against X" isn't necessarily as factual as it may seem since it's a common tactic to have X bundled in with a whole bunch of other things, and you don't know whether A voted against X, or voted against boondoggle B buried in the bill, or if X was in fact the only thing the politician agreed with in the entire bill and was forced to vote against it because everything ..." If you looked closely you would see "therefore politician A hates Y" is a false conclusion from a true premise. Not to victim blame here, but if true facts are leading someone to false conclusions then that's on them for being bad at critical reasoning. The facts aren't subjective. The flaw is in the wetware. Human brains have exploitable bugs. We call them "fallacies". The hotfix was released in the education system. It hasn't reached everyone yet. If the public can't be trusted to evaluate facts presented to them then the very premise of democracy is flawed anyway.
- jerf 7y ago
  "I can easily fix your statement. Watch me:" But that's missing the point. My point is entirely about what the media calls "facts" and what gets called "facts" in these sorts of discussions and by "fact checkers", not whether or not in some hypothetical universe the media could indeed deal in objective facts alone. The fact that it could be done correctly does not mean it is done correctly; or to go with a traditional philosophical formulation, ought does not lead to is. Correcting me doesn't help anything, you need to convince the media. And you will not do that, because dealing in psuedo-facts suits them fine.

by jerf 7y ago

mtberatwork 7y ago

> Here's a common set of "subjective facts": "Policy X will help group Y in manner Z." along with "Politician A voted against X and therefore hates Y." That's just a logical fallacy. By definition a fact can only be objective, otherwise it's simply an opinion.

mistermann 7y ago
> That's just a logical fallacy. Which is presented as a fact by the media.....which is consumed by readers and mentally filed under "fact", and subsequently used by subconscious heuristics in future evaluations of reality, producing more "facts" which are transmitted throughout their network of acquaintances, infecting more subconscious heuristics, and round and round we go. It's interesting that many here at HN expect the general public to up their epistemological game, when all of us here have the same infected heuristics as them (if to a lesser degree), and routinely behave in similar ways. The question on my mind lately is: how might this situation be improved, first here at HN, and then maybe later throughout the rest of society? We've got a bunch of bright minds here, it might be interesting if we acknowledged this problem and set our collective minds to finding a solution.
- mtberatwork 7y ago
  > Which is presented as a fact by the media..... > The question on my mind lately is: how might this situation be improved, first here at HN I would first suggest not applying such a broad brush stroke to all players in "the media". It's a false-equivalence to say the least.
  - mistermann 7y ago
    A fair angle of criticism, but while I'm no expert, I feel fairly confident asserting (with no proof of course) that "the media", with few exceptions, routinely reports on complex matters in a way that is extremely misleading. Granted, this is not entirely their fault, not by a long shot. They are tasked with conveying extremely complex information to the masses, at a level that is understandable to some sort of lowest common denominator, using human created languages that optimize for pragmatism (and are therefore flawed in various ways: nuance, accuracy, bandwidth, etc), across various mediums that each have their own limitations, all in a limited time frame that must also make room for other pressing topics. It shouldn't be too surprising that the end result is less than perfect.

IIAOPSW 7y ago

>"Policy X will help group Y in manner Z." While true that conditional statements about the future ("X will help") is not falsifiable, it is still a well formed if-then statement. The statement must be either true or false even though we can't derive a proof one way or the other. I disagree that we have to just throw our hands up and accept belief in unfalsifiable "subjective facts". I can easily fix your statement. Watch me: "Relevant organization W projects that policy X will help group Y in manner Z." Now your belief in "X helps Y in manner Z" is no longer blind but derived from trust in organization W. If you don't want to trust W you can dig deeper into their methods and data. There is no link in the chain that can only be filled in subjectively. >"Politician A voted against X" isn't necessarily as factual as it may seem since it's a common tactic to have X bundled in with a whole bunch of other things, and you don't know whether A voted against X, or voted against boondoggle B buried in the bill, or if X was in fact the only thing the politician agreed with in the entire bill and was forced to vote against it because everything ..." If you looked closely you would see "therefore politician A hates Y" is a false conclusion from a true premise. Not to victim blame here, but if true facts are leading someone to false conclusions then that's on them for being bad at critical reasoning. The facts aren't subjective. The flaw is in the wetware. Human brains have exploitable bugs. We call them "fallacies". The hotfix was released in the education system. It hasn't reached everyone yet. If the public can't be trusted to evaluate facts presented to them then the very premise of democracy is flawed anyway.

jerf 7y ago
"I can easily fix your statement. Watch me:" But that's missing the point. My point is entirely about what the media calls "facts" and what gets called "facts" in these sorts of discussions and by "fact checkers", not whether or not in some hypothetical universe the media could indeed deal in objective facts alone. The fact that it could be done correctly does not mean it is done correctly; or to go with a traditional philosophical formulation, ought does not lead to is. Correcting me doesn't help anything, you need to convince the media. And you will not do that, because dealing in psuedo-facts suits them fine.