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> that doesn't mean that the concept of "fact checking" is inherently problematic Perhaps not, but I think there are wrinkles in it that you might not be consi
by pdonis 5y ago
> that doesn't mean that the concept of "fact checking" is inherently problematic
Perhaps not, but I think there are wrinkles in it that you might not be considering.
First, if "fact checking" just means "consulting other sources of information to see if they say the same thing", then you have to deal with the question of the credibility of those other sources of information. No source of information is always right. Nor is any "fact checker" always right in judging the relative credibility of sources of information. Ultimately, unless you have your own personal knowledge of some fact, any "fact checking" is going to come down to which sources you trust and which sources you don't. Those are always judgment calls and there will always be some degree of residual skepticism, so citing "fact checks" as if they were authoritative is problematic.
Second, if you try to go beyond that and actually do things like independent experiments to check claims (for example, when scientists try to replicate experiments or studies), then you're not really checking on previous facts, you're creating new facts, which you are then going to use to judge the validity of previous claims. But those previous claims were not factual claims but theoretical ones (for example, doing study B to help in judging the claim "study A shows that treatment X is effective against illness Y"). And again, these kinds of comparisons are judgment calls (sure, sometimes you uncover strong evidence that, for example, the data in study A was fabricated, but study B alone won't tell you that).
> t could be that there is no way in our current culture of doing anything remotely like what "fact checking" probably needs to be.
The critical problem I see with the Facebook case is that their "fact checking" results in something more than just publishing whatever Facebook's ultimate judgment is on some website (as, for example, Snopes and other "fact checking" sites do). Facebook's "fact checking" has other consequences, such as blocking access to things people have posted. And since our current culture seems to be fixated on using "fact checking" in this way, not just to arrive at judgments which are then published as speech, for the reader to take or leave, but to take actions that amount to filtering, restricting, or blocking other speech, yes, I think our current culture is not really capable of doing the limited kind of things that "fact checking" properly done would consist of.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago> And again, these kinds of comparisons are judgment calls (sure, sometimes you uncover strong evidence that, for example, the data in study A was fabricated, but study B alone won't tell you that). Making statements like "these kinds of comparisons are judgement calls" is precisely what I'd consider to be a part of any good "fact checking". > Ultimately, unless you have your own personal knowledge of some fact, any "fact checking" is going to come down to which sources you trust and which sources you don't. Those are always judgment calls and there will always be some degree of residual skepticism, so citing "fact checks" as if they were authoritative is problematic. If you follow through on this as far as possible, you vanish in a cloud of solipsism. If it is not possible to establish some ground rules for epistemological truth, then really things have just completely fallen apart (which, indeed, to some extent they have).
- pdonis 5y ago> Making statements like "these kinds of comparisons are judgement calls" is precisely what I'd consider to be a part of any good "fact checking". But the very fact that judgment calls are involved means that it isn't "fact checking"; it's not just reporting facts and giving obvious "true" or "false" labels to statements. > If you follow through on this as far as possible, you vanish in a cloud of solipsism. Oh, please. Saying that other people might not be trustworthy as sources of information is not at all the same as saying that other people don't exist. > If it is not possible to establish some ground rules for epistemological truth The problem isn't "epistemological truth". The problem is that people have many reasons for not telling the truth, either because they have incentives to deliberately lie or because they have incentives to fool themselves. In theory the idea of "just tell the truth as best you know it", independently of any incentives to do otherwise, sounds good. But in practice it never works out that way. The present time is not exceptional for the low level of trustworthiness of information; it's exceptional for how widespread the consequences of that are. Our culture has a belief that if only everyone would just listen to the "right" authorities, everything would work out fine. The idea that there are no "right authorities" at all and never have been--that every adult human being needs to have their own set of critical thinking skills, and that if some piece of knowledge is important to you, you have to make the effort to verify it for yourself, and that there is no way to avoid this by any form of social organization--is not one that our culture wants to consider. With what results, we see.