10 ms·

It's interesting to me that this delineates between facts and personal experience as if personal experience doesn't occupy the same space as facts. Perhaps a mo

It's interesting to me that this delineates between facts and personal experience as if personal experience doesn't occupy the same space as facts. Perhaps a more useful way to think about people's relation to truth is one of proximity. For a given individual, their personal experience is entirely factual, and because it is also most proximate to them, it is weighted the most highly. Intuitively, I think we understand this, so we tend to weight other people's experiences similarly, knowing that those are as proximate to them as our experiences are to us.

petilon 6y ago
> as if personal experience doesn't occupy the same space as facts There is some overlap but it is not the same space. Humans tend to extrapolate and generalize. For example based on your personal experience with one (or a few) persons of ethnicity1 you may generalize that all persons of ethnicity1 have attribute2. But this is not a fact.
MaxBarraclough 6y ago
> this delineates between facts and personal experience as if personal experience doesn't occupy the same space as facts As a matter of neuroscience, from a quick search it appears that they do not, [0] although as a philosophical point sure, personal history narratives consist (at least partly) of beliefs of facts. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2952732/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2952732/ (or if you like paywalls: https://dx.doi.org/10.1017%2FS1355617710000676 https://dx.doi.org/10.1017%2FS1355617710000676 )
danielam 6y ago
N.b. in “An Essay in aid of a Grammar of Assent”[0], John Henry Newman makes a distinction between real and notional apprehension that would, I think, be useful here. [0] http://www.newmanreader.org/works/grammar/chapter4-1.html http://www.newmanreader.org/works/grammar/chapter4-1.html
skybrian 6y ago
Many facts are universal claims that are actually pretty hard to prove. It can take many scientific studies to establish a fact. It's often not easy to figure out what to believe. It's also often the case the whoever is asserting a fact didn't figure it out themselves. They are repeating someone else's assertion. Often, they misunderstood or simplified. With personal stories, it's simpler: do you believe the person telling the story or not?
Udik 6y ago
Personal experiences are not facts- they can be cherry-picked, they can be biased, they can be exaggerated and even just made-up. When reporting a supposedly objective fact, you have at least the benefit of multiple independent points of view over it- something observable happened and multiple people reported on it. When you hear a personal experience, you're often hearing an unconfirmed and un-confirmable recount of things that are entirely outside of public verification.
- dang 6y ago
  Facts can very much be cherry-picked and usually are, so facts alone don't get you closer to the truth. On the contrary, the way people use facts is by selecting them after the fact (no pun indended) to bolster a position they've already settled on. Everyone does this, and with a little self-honesty anyone can easily observe themselves doing it.
- drdeca 6y ago
  I’m a bit unclear on what the word “fact” means. Does it mean “known true proposition”, or “independently verifiable true proposition about an event”, or what?
dang 6y ago
If I understand it correctly, the claim is not that personal experience narration is a superior form of objective information to facts, it's that sharing personal experience is more likely to create a feeling of relational connection, which in turn is more likely to lead to a shift in position. Tossing facts in an argument where people don't feel any personal connection is a bit like throwing stones at each other. Maybe the one with more and bigger stones gains a temporary advantage, but it leads to a retrenchment of positions, which doesn't help in the long run.
- mlthoughts2018 6y ago
  I think the aspect that spans between your comment and the one you replied to is this: Why should “personal experiences” be a different category than “facts?” (even taking for granted the extra step you mentioned, where it is the use of these experiences within a discussion, not the absolute existence of the experience, at play). For example, suppose I know you and you are honest and trustworthy, so if you verbally testify to an experience, I’ll believe it. Why would there be a difference in you coming to me and saying, “I attended a BLM rally and just observed such a clear and obvious peaceful sense of non-violent protesting” vs you coming to me and saying “According to research institute XYZ, statistically almost none of the BLM protests involved violence.” Both of those things are facts in 100% the same sense, in every way. But because you personally claim to experience one of them, I am likely to give it more weight. Even though there are plenty of reasonable hypotheses why humans would rely on this heuristic, it is still a big problem and a big source of manipulation, from liars, deceivers, conspiracy theories, debunked cranks, folk wisdom, etc. If our goal is to believe as accurately as possible then we should not feel accepting or accommodating of a heuristic quirk in which we regard one set of facts that have the door wide open to manipulation (anecdotes of others) as generally more compelling than facts sourced through research, compiling data, journalism and so forth. If we let up the pressure to thwart this heuristic, the most likely outcome is that people use confirmation bias and folk wisdom to construct false realities - and indeed in the US we have been seeing that play out in a huge violent saga. That didn’t happen because people don’t like being confronted with hard facts, it happened because we have allowed much too weak of a sense of social obligation to align beliefs with accurate predictions, as opposed to merely letting people feel they are entitled to believe whatever they want.
monadic3 6y ago
What the fuck is a fact
api 6y ago
It usually doesn’t. Most facts today are outside most people’s personal experiences. Many like scientific facts are outside their economic reach to experience or verify. This is one of the major roots of the “post-truth” thing. Since facts can’t be verified we rely on trust, which is collapsing.
hntrader 6y ago
In a literal sense, personal experiences (when accurately described) are a proper subset of facts.
AmericanChopper 6y ago
Every “fact” contains an element of subjective interpretation. It is literally not possible to present a fact in a way that is unbiased by subjective reasoning. Or if it is possible, we certainly have discovered a way to do it.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

petilon 6y ago

> as if personal experience doesn't occupy the same space as facts There is some overlap but it is not the same space. Humans tend to extrapolate and generalize. For example based on your personal experience with one (or a few) persons of ethnicity1 you may generalize that all persons of ethnicity1 have attribute2. But this is not a fact.

MaxBarraclough 6y ago

> this delineates between facts and personal experience as if personal experience doesn't occupy the same space as facts As a matter of neuroscience, from a quick search it appears that they do not, [0] although as a philosophical point sure, personal history narratives consist (at least partly) of beliefs of facts. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2952732/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2952732/ (or if you like paywalls: https://dx.doi.org/10.1017%2FS1355617710000676 https://dx.doi.org/10.1017%2FS1355617710000676 )

danielam 6y ago

N.b. in “An Essay in aid of a Grammar of Assent”[0], John Henry Newman makes a distinction between real and notional apprehension that would, I think, be useful here. [0] http://www.newmanreader.org/works/grammar/chapter4-1.html http://www.newmanreader.org/works/grammar/chapter4-1.html

skybrian 6y ago

Many facts are universal claims that are actually pretty hard to prove. It can take many scientific studies to establish a fact. It's often not easy to figure out what to believe. It's also often the case the whoever is asserting a fact didn't figure it out themselves. They are repeating someone else's assertion. Often, they misunderstood or simplified. With personal stories, it's simpler: do you believe the person telling the story or not?

Udik 6y ago

Personal experiences are not facts- they can be cherry-picked, they can be biased, they can be exaggerated and even just made-up. When reporting a supposedly objective fact, you have at least the benefit of multiple independent points of view over it- something observable happened and multiple people reported on it. When you hear a personal experience, you're often hearing an unconfirmed and un-confirmable recount of things that are entirely outside of public verification.

dang 6y ago
Facts can very much be cherry-picked and usually are, so facts alone don't get you closer to the truth. On the contrary, the way people use facts is by selecting them after the fact (no pun indended) to bolster a position they've already settled on. Everyone does this, and with a little self-honesty anyone can easily observe themselves doing it.
drdeca 6y ago
I’m a bit unclear on what the word “fact” means. Does it mean “known true proposition”, or “independently verifiable true proposition about an event”, or what?

dang 6y ago

If I understand it correctly, the claim is not that personal experience narration is a superior form of objective information to facts, it's that sharing personal experience is more likely to create a feeling of relational connection, which in turn is more likely to lead to a shift in position. Tossing facts in an argument where people don't feel any personal connection is a bit like throwing stones at each other. Maybe the one with more and bigger stones gains a temporary advantage, but it leads to a retrenchment of positions, which doesn't help in the long run.

mlthoughts2018 6y ago
I think the aspect that spans between your comment and the one you replied to is this: Why should “personal experiences” be a different category than “facts?” (even taking for granted the extra step you mentioned, where it is the use of these experiences within a discussion, not the absolute existence of the experience, at play). For example, suppose I know you and you are honest and trustworthy, so if you verbally testify to an experience, I’ll believe it. Why would there be a difference in you coming to me and saying, “I attended a BLM rally and just observed such a clear and obvious peaceful sense of non-violent protesting” vs you coming to me and saying “According to research institute XYZ, statistically almost none of the BLM protests involved violence.” Both of those things are facts in 100% the same sense, in every way. But because you personally claim to experience one of them, I am likely to give it more weight. Even though there are plenty of reasonable hypotheses why humans would rely on this heuristic, it is still a big problem and a big source of manipulation, from liars, deceivers, conspiracy theories, debunked cranks, folk wisdom, etc. If our goal is to believe as accurately as possible then we should not feel accepting or accommodating of a heuristic quirk in which we regard one set of facts that have the door wide open to manipulation (anecdotes of others) as generally more compelling than facts sourced through research, compiling data, journalism and so forth. If we let up the pressure to thwart this heuristic, the most likely outcome is that people use confirmation bias and folk wisdom to construct false realities - and indeed in the US we have been seeing that play out in a huge violent saga. That didn’t happen because people don’t like being confronted with hard facts, it happened because we have allowed much too weak of a sense of social obligation to align beliefs with accurate predictions, as opposed to merely letting people feel they are entitled to believe whatever they want.

monadic3 6y ago

What the fuck is a fact

api 6y ago

It usually doesn’t. Most facts today are outside most people’s personal experiences. Many like scientific facts are outside their economic reach to experience or verify. This is one of the major roots of the “post-truth” thing. Since facts can’t be verified we rely on trust, which is collapsing.

hntrader 6y ago

In a literal sense, personal experiences (when accurately described) are a proper subset of facts.

AmericanChopper 6y ago

Every “fact” contains an element of subjective interpretation. It is literally not possible to present a fact in a way that is unbiased by subjective reasoning. Or if it is possible, we certainly have discovered a way to do it.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]