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When you say that "this whole article just should not exist", are you stating that predictions should never be investigated, validated, measured against the sta

When you say that "this whole article just should not exist", are you stating that predictions should never be investigated, validated, measured against the statements of experts? Or are you just quibbling that it shouldn't count as "fact checking"? The former seems silly and the latter gets a shrug from me (who cares if there's a better phrase than "fact checking").

_dain_ 5y ago
Of course the predictions should be investigated and validated, but only after the events have come to pass. If you're going to write something beforehand (e.g. contrasting the predictions of various experts), don't call it a fact-check, because it's not about facts, it's about opinions. Informed, educated opinions yes, but still fundamentally opinions.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  That's fairly absurd on its face. There are many important predictions to be made about medium term outcomes (say, in the 5-25 year range). If someone says "We will never develop grid-level energy storage because elves cannot fly, therefore renewable energy is hopeless", we don't have to wait one second to investigate and (in)validate this claim. If someone says "Sea level will drop by 3m within 15 years because today's cows are farting less", we do no thave to wait 15 years to investigate and (in)validate this. If someone says "Astronomical body N28291k will hit the earth at 13:45 on Dec 2nd 2037", we do not need to wait until 2037 to investigate and validate the claim. If someone says "The cost of coal will decrease by 20% over the next 10 years", when all known reserves of coal are more difficult to access than historical ones and when demand for coal appears to be dropping, we do not need to wait 10 years to investigate and (in)validate this.
  - _dain_ 5y ago
    the first two things you said are preposterous strawmen, the third I already mentioned, the fourth is wrong. you don't know what will happen in 10 years, maybe some new coal extraction technology will be invented, maybe new sources will be discovered, maybe it becomes possible to economically extract the CO2 from the smokestacks and coal becomes green and gets tons of subsidies. yeah it's unlikely, but it's not something you can "fact-check". it does violence to the meaning of the term. imagine telling someone ten years ago that oil prices would go negative, which they did last year. and apart from all of this, for every example you can give me of an obvious black-and-white issue where you really could fact-check it 10 years in advance, there will be 99 others where it's really not so clear-cut, but partisans want there to be fact-checker approved talking points for their side. and the market will fill this demand. for subjects outside your domain-expertise, good luck telling the difference.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
      > yeah it's unlikely, but it's not something you can "fact-check". it does violence to the meaning of the term. One of the points of fact-checking is to point out to "yeah, it's unlikely" to people who would not otherwise know. Lots of claims are made about stuff, in particular climate change and energy supplies, that completely fall into the "yeah, it's unlikely" zone, and yet most ordinary readers and viewers would not know this. It's always going to be in the interest of someone to say "this might happen by the year XXXX". There's generally no shortage of black-swan boosterism. Having someone step who actually knows the field step in and point out that yes, it might happen but it almost certainly will not is of incredible value. Your response reminds me of the situation in the current satirical movie "Don't Look Up", where because the probability of an asteroid colliding with earth is only 99.7%, not 100%, the fictional US president decides it's OK to "sit tight and assess". I mean, sure it could miss, and *"yeah, it's unlikely but...."
      - pdonis 5y ago
        > One of the points of fact-checking is to point out to "yeah, it's unlikely" to people who would not otherwise know. Saying some prediction about the future is unlikely to be correct is not fact-checking. That's the whole point. Predictions aren't facts. Unlikely predictions aren't false facts. They're unlikely predictions. > because the probability of an asteroid colliding with earth is only 99.7%, not 100%, the fictional US president decides it's OK to "sit tight and assess". Saying that it is a good idea to act on predictions that are overwhelmingly likely is not the same as saying that those predictions are facts. If you want to improve other people's critical thinking skills, you need to make sure yours are good. Calling predictions facts and acting as if they're the same thing is not good critical thinking.
        PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
        > Saying some prediction about the future is unlikely to be correct is not fact-checking. That's the whole point. Predictions aren't facts. Unlikely predictions aren't false facts. They're unlikely predictions. Our culture has become filled with a certain kind of noise in which people who frequently don't know what they are talking about make predictions about the future. I don't really care what you want to call a counter-balancing trend to that - I would agree that "fact-checking" for things that are clearly predictions is likely not the best term, but it's not the worst either, since frequently the process of pointing out just how ridiculous the predictions are will involve using actual facts. So in that context, "fact checking" does not mean "check that the facts claimed are correct", it means "check the facts underlying the prediction". But call it what it should be called or not, it's still a valuable act.
  - zenron 5y ago
    Hey, you know you are right. Every time a prediction is made in connection to a fact-check, the prediction should be falsified 100% immediately. You are right, we don't have to wait.
- scotty79 5y ago
  They should have called it bullshit check and all claims about the future not backed by data and scientific modelling should be automatically marked as BS.
ErikVandeWater 5y ago
Calling it a fact check (even implicitly) causes people with poor critical reading skills - to wit, almost everyone - to interpret the expert opinion as being undoubtedly true. This is a big part of the widening divide between right and left, which is a major issue.
- markdown 5y ago
  > Calling it a fact check (even implicitly) causes people with poor critical reading skills - to wit, almost everyone - to interpret the expert opinion as being undoubtedly true. In my experience, people with poor critical reading skills don't read. Instead they just regurgitate what they heard on FOX, which is that fact check websites are a liberal scam.
  - timr 5y ago
    > In my experience, people with poor critical reading skills don't read. Instead they just regurgitate what they heard on FOX The same thing happens on the left with the New York Times. Laziness is a trait orthogonal to political party.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - jquery 5y ago
      False equivalence. Fox went to court to call themselves entertainment because of all the verifiable lies they were pushing. In court, Tucker Carlson said “no reasonable person” would believe him. New York Times standards are much higher than Fox. Are they perfect? No. But generally they are far less likely to lie to you.
      - jessaustin 5y ago
        You're trolling us, right? Maddow won a nearly identical court case using a nearly identical defense. https://greenwald.substack.com/p/a-court-ruled-rachel-maddows-viewers https://greenwald.substack.com/p/a-court-ruled-rachel-maddow...

_dain_ 5y ago

Of course the predictions should be investigated and validated, but only after the events have come to pass. If you're going to write something beforehand (e.g. contrasting the predictions of various experts), don't call it a fact-check, because it's not about facts, it's about opinions. Informed, educated opinions yes, but still fundamentally opinions.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
That's fairly absurd on its face. There are many important predictions to be made about medium term outcomes (say, in the 5-25 year range). If someone says "We will never develop grid-level energy storage because elves cannot fly, therefore renewable energy is hopeless", we don't have to wait one second to investigate and (in)validate this claim. If someone says "Sea level will drop by 3m within 15 years because today's cows are farting less", we do no thave to wait 15 years to investigate and (in)validate this. If someone says "Astronomical body N28291k will hit the earth at 13:45 on Dec 2nd 2037", we do not need to wait until 2037 to investigate and validate the claim. If someone says "The cost of coal will decrease by 20% over the next 10 years", when all known reserves of coal are more difficult to access than historical ones and when demand for coal appears to be dropping, we do not need to wait 10 years to investigate and (in)validate this.
- _dain_ 5y ago
  the first two things you said are preposterous strawmen, the third I already mentioned, the fourth is wrong. you don't know what will happen in 10 years, maybe some new coal extraction technology will be invented, maybe new sources will be discovered, maybe it becomes possible to economically extract the CO2 from the smokestacks and coal becomes green and gets tons of subsidies. yeah it's unlikely, but it's not something you can "fact-check". it does violence to the meaning of the term. imagine telling someone ten years ago that oil prices would go negative, which they did last year. and apart from all of this, for every example you can give me of an obvious black-and-white issue where you really could fact-check it 10 years in advance, there will be 99 others where it's really not so clear-cut, but partisans want there to be fact-checker approved talking points for their side. and the market will fill this demand. for subjects outside your domain-expertise, good luck telling the difference.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    > yeah it's unlikely, but it's not something you can "fact-check". it does violence to the meaning of the term. One of the points of fact-checking is to point out to "yeah, it's unlikely" to people who would not otherwise know. Lots of claims are made about stuff, in particular climate change and energy supplies, that completely fall into the "yeah, it's unlikely" zone, and yet most ordinary readers and viewers would not know this. It's always going to be in the interest of someone to say "this might happen by the year XXXX". There's generally no shortage of black-swan boosterism. Having someone step who actually knows the field step in and point out that yes, it might happen but it almost certainly will not is of incredible value. Your response reminds me of the situation in the current satirical movie "Don't Look Up", where because the probability of an asteroid colliding with earth is only 99.7%, not 100%, the fictional US president decides it's OK to "sit tight and assess". I mean, sure it could miss, and *"yeah, it's unlikely but...."
    - pdonis 5y ago
      > One of the points of fact-checking is to point out to "yeah, it's unlikely" to people who would not otherwise know. Saying some prediction about the future is unlikely to be correct is not fact-checking. That's the whole point. Predictions aren't facts. Unlikely predictions aren't false facts. They're unlikely predictions. > because the probability of an asteroid colliding with earth is only 99.7%, not 100%, the fictional US president decides it's OK to "sit tight and assess". Saying that it is a good idea to act on predictions that are overwhelmingly likely is not the same as saying that those predictions are facts. If you want to improve other people's critical thinking skills, you need to make sure yours are good. Calling predictions facts and acting as if they're the same thing is not good critical thinking.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
        > Saying some prediction about the future is unlikely to be correct is not fact-checking. That's the whole point. Predictions aren't facts. Unlikely predictions aren't false facts. They're unlikely predictions. Our culture has become filled with a certain kind of noise in which people who frequently don't know what they are talking about make predictions about the future. I don't really care what you want to call a counter-balancing trend to that - I would agree that "fact-checking" for things that are clearly predictions is likely not the best term, but it's not the worst either, since frequently the process of pointing out just how ridiculous the predictions are will involve using actual facts. So in that context, "fact checking" does not mean "check that the facts claimed are correct", it means "check the facts underlying the prediction". But call it what it should be called or not, it's still a valuable act.
- zenron 5y ago
  Hey, you know you are right. Every time a prediction is made in connection to a fact-check, the prediction should be falsified 100% immediately. You are right, we don't have to wait.
scotty79 5y ago
They should have called it bullshit check and all claims about the future not backed by data and scientific modelling should be automatically marked as BS.

ErikVandeWater 5y ago

Calling it a fact check (even implicitly) causes people with poor critical reading skills - to wit, almost everyone - to interpret the expert opinion as being undoubtedly true. This is a big part of the widening divide between right and left, which is a major issue.

markdown 5y ago
> Calling it a fact check (even implicitly) causes people with poor critical reading skills - to wit, almost everyone - to interpret the expert opinion as being undoubtedly true. In my experience, people with poor critical reading skills don't read. Instead they just regurgitate what they heard on FOX, which is that fact check websites are a liberal scam.
- timr 5y ago
  > In my experience, people with poor critical reading skills don't read. Instead they just regurgitate what they heard on FOX The same thing happens on the left with the New York Times. Laziness is a trait orthogonal to political party.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - jquery 5y ago
    False equivalence. Fox went to court to call themselves entertainment because of all the verifiable lies they were pushing. In court, Tucker Carlson said “no reasonable person” would believe him. New York Times standards are much higher than Fox. Are they perfect? No. But generally they are far less likely to lie to you.
    - jessaustin 5y ago
      You're trolling us, right? Maddow won a nearly identical court case using a nearly identical defense. https://greenwald.substack.com/p/a-court-ruled-rachel-maddows-viewers https://greenwald.substack.com/p/a-court-ruled-rachel-maddow...