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I'm trying to be straight with you and ignoring the condescension in your comments. (Anyone can do that). This appears to have been far too charitable given you

I'm trying to be straight with you and ignoring the condescension in your comments. (Anyone can do that). This appears to have been far too charitable given your last sentence. Anyway, I'll continue to treat you as an equal and tell you straight that I think you are being dishonest throughout this exchange. Most people when asked the question about driving in the wrong lane would give me the benefit of the doubt and assume that it wasn't the highly unusual situation you describe. I think your know full well what I meant but you chose to come at it like a lawyer (which is what I mean by dishonest). In order to prevent that I'll try to lock it down: Would you agree that if you routinely drive down the wrong side of the highway when it is fully open to the public and there are cars driving against you in the lane that you are in that in that case you are likely to suffer as a result of your failure to adapt your model to that of the rest of the society around you?

kortilla 6y ago
Your scenario has changed significantly now to someone willingly driving at oncoming traffic in the same lane. I think you’ve inadvertently proven your adversary’s point. Knee jerk black and white statements are very rarely correct.
themodelplumber 6y ago
> come at it like a lawyer (which is what I mean by dishonest) This seems to get more and more emotional, but even if not so, I would suggest that people who feel it's an absolute truth that every lawyer is dishonest are really doing the legal world a disservice by not at least offering training via ethics courses. I also admit to being frustrated at the unfairness of the argument, in which I've communicated several times a point that gets at the crux of the issue: Real context and details. Both are needed. So what happened was: I encouraged you to think about real context, and instead you added more details to the fake example, turning it into a corner case and making it an exceptional situation as opposed to a workable general example justifying absolute truth. In effect you've further marginalized the reality and utility of the absolute truth idea. Your sense of the existence of absolute truth is apparently held hostage by unrealistic conceptual examples, turning it into a straw man, which I hope you can understand I'm not interested in debating...
- discreteevent 6y ago
  There's an article linked from hn that I just read where the author says: "There are, after all, no post-fact conversations when we talk about how to build a bridge, for example." I don't know if I would be able to function in a world where this kind of statement had to be qualified every time. The editor of Die Zeit appears to think similarly. So it looks like there's at least three of us who think like this. But you're not alone either. Each to their own.
  - kortilla 6y ago
    Alas, “post-fact” itself is a bit of a straw man. “Many truths” is not the same thing as “no truths”.

kortilla 6y ago

Your scenario has changed significantly now to someone willingly driving at oncoming traffic in the same lane. I think you’ve inadvertently proven your adversary’s point. Knee jerk black and white statements are very rarely correct.

themodelplumber 6y ago

> come at it like a lawyer (which is what I mean by dishonest) This seems to get more and more emotional, but even if not so, I would suggest that people who feel it's an absolute truth that every lawyer is dishonest are really doing the legal world a disservice by not at least offering training via ethics courses. I also admit to being frustrated at the unfairness of the argument, in which I've communicated several times a point that gets at the crux of the issue: Real context and details. Both are needed. So what happened was: I encouraged you to think about real context, and instead you added more details to the fake example, turning it into a corner case and making it an exceptional situation as opposed to a workable general example justifying absolute truth. In effect you've further marginalized the reality and utility of the absolute truth idea. Your sense of the existence of absolute truth is apparently held hostage by unrealistic conceptual examples, turning it into a straw man, which I hope you can understand I'm not interested in debating...

discreteevent 6y ago
There's an article linked from hn that I just read where the author says: "There are, after all, no post-fact conversations when we talk about how to build a bridge, for example." I don't know if I would be able to function in a world where this kind of statement had to be qualified every time. The editor of Die Zeit appears to think similarly. So it looks like there's at least three of us who think like this. But you're not alone either. Each to their own.
- kortilla 6y ago
  Alas, “post-fact” itself is a bit of a straw man. “Many truths” is not the same thing as “no truths”.