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Reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from the afterword of Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States: >But there is no such thing as a pure fact
by kej 3y ago
Reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from the afterword of Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States:
>But there is no such thing as a pure fact, innocent of interpretation. Behind every fact presented to the world—by a teacher, a writer, anyone—is a judgment. The judgment that has been made is that this fact is important, and that other facts, omitted, are not important.
- lovecg 3y agoThat quote tells more about Zinn’s views than anything true about the world. Explains a lot about that propaganda piece of a book that has little to do with actual history.
- sctb 3y agoThis is also a feature (the defining feature, IMO) of causal narratives.
- tptacek 3y agoRight. It's a thing to be aware of, not a disqualifier; if you simply filter out any content delivered with an agenda, you can't learn anything.
- sctb 3y agoI'm going to agree harder: it's a thing to be aware of as a fundamental mechanism which may or may not be related to agenda or judgement in any given instance.
- hackeraccount 3y agoTrue enough but the poison is in the dose. Too much and you're left with Nihilism. The trouble revolves around how much judgement is required on any given subject. On the right subject people can come perilously close to laying out facts devoid of interpretation; on the wrong subject either no one can or no one believes anyone can - which is pretty much the same thing.
- injeolmi_love 3y agoAnd what exactly is wrong with a nihilism? If we don’t really know what’s going on, maybe we should accept that truth and move on with living better lives less swayed by political propaganda. Given how many relationships have been ruined because both sides were certain of their political facts, a nihilism seems simply better.
- akprasad 3y agoBroadly, nihilism rejects purpose and meaning. I don't see how one can justify we "move on with living better lives" within such a worldview (i.e. why act that way when nothing matters?).
- tptacek 3y agoWhat the last two comments are really saying is that "nihilism" isn't the right word for the state you enter when you give up on developing an accurate picture of the world from luridly presented tragedies in news stories.
- injeolmi_love 3y agoThere’s many forms of nihilism, and purpose nihilism wasn’t the subject of my comment. A Nihilist is more stable than you think. A tree doesn’t need purpose to grow, and neither does a human. Instead they follow a process that’s expressed by the body in response to the environment. For humans we not only have physical sensation but also memories, ideas, and thoughts. Without a worldview these all still happen, and your body will still react to your thoughts and sensations without a purpose. A healthy Nihilist would not feel sad about having no meaning, since they never had one anyway; on reflection, they might feel happy that there’s no obligation to respond other than how their situation moves them to. A Nihilist can do what is morally right without the restrictions of a purpose that proscribes them to do otherwise.
- dingnuts 3y agoCan a fact not simply exist without presentation? pi does not need an agent to exist; it simply is. Circles and the relationship between their circumference and diameter existed before minds existed to comprehend them. Behind every human presentation there is a judgment, sure, but many facts simply exist in nature, ready to be observed and judged without a preexisting agenda. I'm naturally suspicious of people who put "People's" in front of words where the word should be implied. It's like a People's Republic, you know? What's Zinn's agenda? Perhaps he is telling on himself, in this quote.
- tptacek 3y agoYes. Perhaps Howard Zinn has an agenda.
- adolph 3y agoIf you don't like Zinn, how about Popper by way of Deutsch in The Beginning of Everything: We never know any data before interpreting it through theories. All observations are, as Popper put it, theory-laden, and hence fallible, as all our theories are. . . . The growth of knowledge consists of correcting misconceptions in our theiories. Pi is a great example. Did circles exist before minds existed? Or are circles approximations of the observed world?
- smrq 3y agoI was thinking about this in the shower the other day. Circles don't "exist" because they are a pure abstraction; as an element of mathematics they are simply a bag of conclusions that are inevitable if you are willing to accept other axioms. The language with which we talk about these axioms and conclusions might be fallible, and certainly the conclusions themselves may be fallible (though not likely so for elemental enough mathematics), but the kernel of truth in logic at the middle is, I think, unassailable.
- adolph 3y agoPerhaps so. I trimmed down the parts where I referenced Euclid in a similar vein to “conclusions … inevitable if you … accept other axioms.” I was thinking though of this Veritasium video outlining the development of non-Euclidean geometries: https://youtu.be/lFlu60qs7_4?si=vd1s7vPmV-drPSfP https://youtu.be/lFlu60qs7_4?si=vd1s7vPmV-drPSfP
- paulddraper 3y agoThat is brilliant. Also why "unbiased" reporting can never truly exist (however wonderful that would be). The choice to report something is itself a judgment of the topic.
- kazinator 3y agoYou can exercise judgment in choosing a topic: fair enough. Within that topic, you can present all the facts that you know, or just the ones that support a certain narrative.
- tptacek 3y agoThe facts you know are also selected subjectively, both by yourself and by the people who make you available to those facts.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- TeMPOraL 3y agoYes, and then bias is also a statistical phenomenon too, yadda yadda. But we all understand we're talking about the subset of bias that any specific actor can introduce due to ignorance or ulterior motives, and could in principle choose otherwise. Objectively unbiased reporting may be impossible, but intellectual honesty is possible, and should be required of people more.
- zogrodea 3y agoAgreed. Even if one cannot achieve an ideal, there is no reason why one should not try their hardest to live up to it, instead of abandoning it as "all or nothing".
- paulddraper 3y ago> Within that topic, you can present all the facts that you know, or just the ones that support a certain narrative. Let's say you are reporting on the elevated rate of gun violence in Chicago compared to other US cities. Which of the following facts do you include in your story? (For sake of argument, assume these are factually accurate statements.) 1. Chicago votes predominately Democrat. 2. Chicago has a higher poverty rate than other cities. 3. Chicago has a large black and Hispanic population. 4. Chicago has more gangs than other cities.
- crabmusket 3y agoKarl Popper: “Twenty-five years ago I tried to bring home the same point to a group of physics students in Vienna by beginning a lecture with the following instructions: 'Take pencil and paper; carefully observe, and write down what you have observed!' They asked, of course, what I wanted them to observe. Clearly the instruction, 'Observe!' is absurd. (It is not even idiomatic, unless the object of the transitive verb can be taken as understood.) Observation is always selective. It needs a chosen object, a definite task, an interest, a point of view, a problem. And its description presupposes a descriptive language, with property words; it presupposes similarity and classification, which in their turn presuppose interests, points of view, and problems.”
- raincom 3y agoIn philosophy of sciences, it is known that every fact is a fact of some or another theory. That's what "theory-laden" facts are. When some or another claim is not under dispute, such a theoretical claim is accepted as a fact. We accept many theories, whose theoretical claims have attained the status of facts. Same thing happens when it comes to newspapers, journalists: whatever they present as facts are facts of a certain of way of describing an event/process/slice of the world. As long as such descriptions are accepted, facts of those descriptions(theories) reach the status of facts: when someone disputes these descriptions, he is branded as extremist/conspiracy theorist/right wing/labels that many find abhorrent.
- globalnode 3y agoagree, and then we get into the world of combative self interest, its hard to move forward to a solution when so much energy is spent trying to undermine one's opponent -- I did like your description of theory-laden facts though, so thats what they were trying to teach me in science 101 :)
- raincom 3y agoYou may find these interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory-ladenness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory-ladenness https://plato.stanford.edu/search/searcher.py?query=%22theory-laden%22 https://plato.stanford.edu/search/searcher.py?query=%22theor...
- adamredwoods 3y ago>> when someone disputes these descriptions, he is branded as extremist/conspiracy theorist/right wing/labels that many find abhorrent Not always true. The goal of facts is to create trust and order. So when disputing "facts", it will initially cause chaos and disorder. Additionally, challenging a "fact" should come with reasoning (usually through the scientific method), and not an unresearched response. For example, flat-earthers deny a fact, yet offer no research. In such a case, a derogatory label is provided. https://physicsworld.com/a/fighting-flat-earth-theory/ https://physicsworld.com/a/fighting-flat-earth-theory/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method
- xdennis 3y ago> But there is no such thing as a pure fact Yes there is. People who say otherwise just want to push their partizan viewpoint. You can present non-biased facts, it's just that it's hard and not financially rewarding because when you're non-biased you loose the polarized audience. Sticking to a single world view gives you a loyal audience.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- akoboldfrying 3y agoSummarising things is lossy, and every piece of information we don't say might have consequences for the audience. But we need to do it so that we can stop talking.