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There are better and worse ways to do fact checking. Appealing to evidence is more objective than appealing to vibes or appealing to baseless authority. Once s

by sqeaky 2y ago

There are better and worse ways to do fact checking. Appealing to evidence is more objective than appealing to vibes or appealing to baseless authority. Once solid evidence is in sight then are usually some clean objective takes to be had and some fairly obvious or likely subjective takes that a reasonable viewer might have. The real problems happen when one side objects to what counts as evidence at all or one side puts forward low quality evidence and claims it is beyond reproach.

mistermann 2y ago
> Appealing to evidence is more objective Assuming one's evidence is subjective, and one's judgment of it, and some other things. > than appealing to vibes or appealing to baseless authority. "Baseful" authorities are not necessarily objective. In fact, we have massive amounts of evidence that they are very often not.
- sqeaky 2y ago
  Of course you are correct on both points. But subjective doesn't mean "wrong" or "open to every interpretation", it just mean more than one interpretation, and often narrowing down possibilities makes the truth easy to see. Different people disagree for different reasons. But only the most deranged disagree that what they can do and effect is worse evidence than some authority. So things like "trying it for yourself" have worked consistently as evidence for most of history. Today "it" can be a bunch of different categories of experiments and experiences. Even then lots of experiments are out of reach of most people, sometimes financially, sometimes intellectually. Some people think essential oils helped their cold go away in 3~5 days when most colds go away on their own in 3~5 days and. So there needs to be some delegation of authority. This is where a lot of problems leak it. Some people grant authority to some for silly reasons (like an a priori assumption they can do no wrong) other for good reasons (like lots of experience working in a relevant field with many published papers). For many people exploring the different levels of subjective evidence can get two people to understand why the other believes something goofy. This takes time, isn't guaranteed, but it can be done at least some of the time to show where evidence and many beliefs fall on a gradient of quality. This fails when people hold some belief as firmer than reality, like what conspiracy theorists or religious zealots do.
  - mistermann 2y ago
    It's complicated no disagreement here. But I'm not sure what I should take away from this with respect to my comments...any suggestions?
    - sqeaky 2y ago
      I was trying not to cast aspersions, but I thought you might have been treating this as a binary. I was just trying to place this stuff on a gradient.

by sqeaky 2y ago

mistermann 2y ago

> Appealing to evidence is more objective Assuming one's evidence is subjective, and one's judgment of it, and some other things. > than appealing to vibes or appealing to baseless authority. "Baseful" authorities are not necessarily objective. In fact, we have massive amounts of evidence that they are very often not.

sqeaky 2y ago
Of course you are correct on both points. But subjective doesn't mean "wrong" or "open to every interpretation", it just mean more than one interpretation, and often narrowing down possibilities makes the truth easy to see. Different people disagree for different reasons. But only the most deranged disagree that what they can do and effect is worse evidence than some authority. So things like "trying it for yourself" have worked consistently as evidence for most of history. Today "it" can be a bunch of different categories of experiments and experiences. Even then lots of experiments are out of reach of most people, sometimes financially, sometimes intellectually. Some people think essential oils helped their cold go away in 3~5 days when most colds go away on their own in 3~5 days and. So there needs to be some delegation of authority. This is where a lot of problems leak it. Some people grant authority to some for silly reasons (like an a priori assumption they can do no wrong) other for good reasons (like lots of experience working in a relevant field with many published papers). For many people exploring the different levels of subjective evidence can get two people to understand why the other believes something goofy. This takes time, isn't guaranteed, but it can be done at least some of the time to show where evidence and many beliefs fall on a gradient of quality. This fails when people hold some belief as firmer than reality, like what conspiracy theorists or religious zealots do.
- mistermann 2y ago
  It's complicated no disagreement here. But I'm not sure what I should take away from this with respect to my comments...any suggestions?
  - sqeaky 2y ago
    I was trying not to cast aspersions, but I thought you might have been treating this as a binary. I was just trying to place this stuff on a gradient.