40 ms·

She seems to dream of this "one absolute source of truth". There is no universal truth. The best way to know something is to know as many perspectives on it as

by lwouis 5y ago

She seems to dream of this "one absolute source of truth". There is no universal truth. The best way to know something is to know as many perspectives on it as possible. In her example of "massacre" changing to "incident", both are descriptions that groups of people find appropriate. You open a left-wing journal and read about what people in that bubble think of the world. You open a right-wing journal and read a different perspective. Plurality of information and perspective gives you the richest knowledge. Not some Orwellian universal truth that some committee/government approved.

selfhoster11 5y ago
There is universal truth (though there may be many perspectives - some biased purposefully, some merely imperfect), and that truth is rooted in the fact that the real world is an objective thing that exists. Claiming that "there is no universal truth" just feeds the recent concept of "alternative facts" and lends validity to absurd worldviews that don't take the objectivity of the physical world as foundational feature. I agree that it's good to try to see things from various angles, but "there is no such thing as universal truth" seems like a very damaging idea.
- alisonkisk 5y ago
  Do you claim to know the solution to the age-old problem of epistemology? A Nobel Prize awaits you.
  - lwouis 5y ago
    The GP is mentioning "recent" things. None of this is recent. I studied the idea of truth in high school. We studied it through the historical lens of Greek philosophy and how it influenced and evolved through following European philosophers up to modern times. I'm often seeing people react to "fake news" and other trends like this is the first time humanity is dealing with such things. Historical revisionism, propaganda, all of these are as old as the first human settlements
- HKH2 5y ago
  While I do think there is one reality, our ability to get to what is true is always limited by time, information overload etc. I think what people react against is the hubris of claiming an intimate knowledge of reality and acting as if it can be successfully contained in abstractions of language.
- lwouis 5y ago
  Yes there is one physical truth about where atoms are at a given point. However the type of statement discussed in this thread, and by most humans most of the time, are not about "how many of this, and at what velocity". They are statements of judgement, value-systems, morality, etc. This is most of the discussion we produce as a species, on the topics we care the most about. People like to talk about whether things are moral or righteous. These discussions are by nature not about truths but perspectives and preferences. Someone is going to call trump "unpatriotic" and trump is going to reply "fake news". At no point here was the physical world/truth involved. What I'm defending is that encyclopedias shouldn't pick a side on these events but reflect the controversies and let each reader make their own mind, from their own preferences/biases. Very little of human discourse is about physical facts
philwelch 5y ago
But at the foundation, there is a universal truth. Whether you describe something as a "massacre" or an "incident" is a moral judgment, but whether the event happened in the first place is a fact that continues to be true regardless of the strength of anyone's delusion to the contrary. Plurality of information and perspective gives you the richest knowledge because (a) the knowledge of which judgments different people apply to the same facts is a fact in itself and (b) all sides lie and omit information to further their own agenda, so you have to try your best to interpolate the universal truth from what everyone else is saying.
- alisonkisk 5y ago
  The universal truth leptons and bosons and photons, too much for any human to comprehend. Summarization is subjective choices. > whether the event happened in the first place is a fact Facts are easy. I'm 6'3" tall How do you know which facts are true? How do I know?
- secondaryacct 5y ago
  But usually the fact the event happened is never in debate: its impact on victims and culprit, and the need for readers to cool down or be offended, is often guiding editorial decision. For example, Im French and live in China. I read of Nankin in French very neutrally with a small pro chinese bias: it happened "far away" from my original culture, I know it s used a lot in China to remind people of Japan's dark side, Im usually interested in the number of death, disciplinary problems in the japanese army, weakness of the chinese defense system, I feel dejected by the girl hunting and expect Japan to face it upfront. But I m sure a Japanese has a very different perspective: why did they go to war in the first place, how did it serve as an escape mechanism from the blocus, how today's communist propaganda needs to increase the horror factor, how the former soldiers never speak of it. A Chinese wouldnt even comprehend the existence of such aspects unless very tuned to the Japanese perspective (like how french education now tries to give a german perspective to wwii) There is a single reality, but truth is the conversion of reality into speech. It s always going to be tainted unless you spend weeks explaining all variations in all parties. Just choosing adjectives in a limited article is going to not represent reality perfectly.

by lwouis 5y ago

selfhoster11 5y ago

There is universal truth (though there may be many perspectives - some biased purposefully, some merely imperfect), and that truth is rooted in the fact that the real world is an objective thing that exists. Claiming that "there is no universal truth" just feeds the recent concept of "alternative facts" and lends validity to absurd worldviews that don't take the objectivity of the physical world as foundational feature. I agree that it's good to try to see things from various angles, but "there is no such thing as universal truth" seems like a very damaging idea.

alisonkisk 5y ago
Do you claim to know the solution to the age-old problem of epistemology? A Nobel Prize awaits you.
- lwouis 5y ago
  The GP is mentioning "recent" things. None of this is recent. I studied the idea of truth in high school. We studied it through the historical lens of Greek philosophy and how it influenced and evolved through following European philosophers up to modern times. I'm often seeing people react to "fake news" and other trends like this is the first time humanity is dealing with such things. Historical revisionism, propaganda, all of these are as old as the first human settlements
HKH2 5y ago
While I do think there is one reality, our ability to get to what is true is always limited by time, information overload etc. I think what people react against is the hubris of claiming an intimate knowledge of reality and acting as if it can be successfully contained in abstractions of language.
lwouis 5y ago
Yes there is one physical truth about where atoms are at a given point. However the type of statement discussed in this thread, and by most humans most of the time, are not about "how many of this, and at what velocity". They are statements of judgement, value-systems, morality, etc. This is most of the discussion we produce as a species, on the topics we care the most about. People like to talk about whether things are moral or righteous. These discussions are by nature not about truths but perspectives and preferences. Someone is going to call trump "unpatriotic" and trump is going to reply "fake news". At no point here was the physical world/truth involved. What I'm defending is that encyclopedias shouldn't pick a side on these events but reflect the controversies and let each reader make their own mind, from their own preferences/biases. Very little of human discourse is about physical facts

philwelch 5y ago

But at the foundation, there is a universal truth. Whether you describe something as a "massacre" or an "incident" is a moral judgment, but whether the event happened in the first place is a fact that continues to be true regardless of the strength of anyone's delusion to the contrary. Plurality of information and perspective gives you the richest knowledge because (a) the knowledge of which judgments different people apply to the same facts is a fact in itself and (b) all sides lie and omit information to further their own agenda, so you have to try your best to interpolate the universal truth from what everyone else is saying.

alisonkisk 5y ago
The universal truth leptons and bosons and photons, too much for any human to comprehend. Summarization is subjective choices. > whether the event happened in the first place is a fact Facts are easy. I'm 6'3" tall How do you know which facts are true? How do I know?
secondaryacct 5y ago
But usually the fact the event happened is never in debate: its impact on victims and culprit, and the need for readers to cool down or be offended, is often guiding editorial decision. For example, Im French and live in China. I read of Nankin in French very neutrally with a small pro chinese bias: it happened "far away" from my original culture, I know it s used a lot in China to remind people of Japan's dark side, Im usually interested in the number of death, disciplinary problems in the japanese army, weakness of the chinese defense system, I feel dejected by the girl hunting and expect Japan to face it upfront. But I m sure a Japanese has a very different perspective: why did they go to war in the first place, how did it serve as an escape mechanism from the blocus, how today's communist propaganda needs to increase the horror factor, how the former soldiers never speak of it. A Chinese wouldnt even comprehend the existence of such aspects unless very tuned to the Japanese perspective (like how french education now tries to give a german perspective to wwii) There is a single reality, but truth is the conversion of reality into speech. It s always going to be tainted unless you spend weeks explaining all variations in all parties. Just choosing adjectives in a limited article is going to not represent reality perfectly.