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On math, I would argue those are all equivalent and equally right. On politics different positions are rarely equivalent, but you're right that there's almost
by eloff 6y ago
On math, I would argue those are all equivalent and equally right.
On politics different positions are rarely equivalent, but you're right that there's almost always truth on both sides and it's really expressing differing views of priorities and values. However, if you rank them by "which is best for human well-being" there is a best answer even if we can't know it. So one can't use this as a easy out "all opinions are equally valuable" kind of thing, which is just nonsense. Though one could argue that prioritizing "human well-being" is a value judgment, which it is.
I also agree with your last point, it's usually me who's misunderstanding something in that case upon digging deeper.
However, there are also classes of things that are objectively true like whether climate change is happening as a result of human activity. Or whether a politician said X or not when there's a video of them saying X. It's never 100% certainty in life, but some things are known sufficiently well that there's almost no chance of them being wrong.
- darkerside 6y ago> However, if you rank them by "which is best for human well-being" there is a best answer even if we can't know it. Years of philosophical thinking begs to differ. https://owlcation.com/humanities/Different-Types-of-Modern-Utilitarianism https://owlcation.com/humanities/Different-Types-of-Modern-U... On those latter points, I'd go back to much of the disagreement being how much it matters. On balance, I agree with taking preventative actions because of the risk of global catastrophe. But I recognize that I don't know the future. There's a nonzero chance that global warming is less catastrophic than people expect, perhaps because we invent technological mitigations or because the Earth offsets the warming for cyclical reasons or in some kind of natural reaction to rising temperatures. On balance, I believe we should work to reduce emissions and mitigate greenhouse gases, but I realize that it is just that, a belief, and I may be wrong.
- eloff 6y agoI think long term there's a chance global warming is just what the Earth needs. We have a pattern of ice ages, and if you think global warming is bad imagine an ice age. We grow most of our food at latitudes in the northern hemisphere that would no longer have a long enough growing season. We might one day find ourselves in a position of having to burn coal or release methane on purpose to ward off an ice age. However, there's no question it's going to be horrific to adapt to meanwhile. There's also a question of how much warming do we need to prevent an ice age, because ideally we'd want to stop there. Nobody asks these questions seriously though, and it could likely end ones career as a scientist to talk about it.
- dragonwriter 6y ago> However, if you rank them by "which is best for human well-being" there is a best answer even if we can't know it. This assumes that “human well-being” has a single, objectively correct, ordinal measure, though maybe we don't know what that measure is. That seems non-obvious, at best.