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What I hate about this statement is that "truth" has been wrapped in political ideology. The idea that carving a section of memespace out for a worldview now me

What I hate about this statement is that "truth" has been wrapped in political ideology. The idea that carving a section of memespace out for a worldview now means that worldview owns the "truth" is batshit insane. Truth doesn't care about progressive or conservative. Truth doesn't care about left or right. Truth doesn't care. Truth just is. The problem is when people don't care to seek the truth, and instead they seeking an in-crowd. Then you simply have uncaring mobs.

strogonoff 2y ago
Truth is less straightforward than might appear. More often than not, if you try to establish truth on some divisive question from first principles—honestly, without any hidden agenda of your own—you arrive at the unknown (no consensus in the field) and/or philosophical matter (out of scope of natural science) before you can blink. (Of course, that’s in addition to the fact that all science is inherently flawed and biased, because we are.) In case of politically divisive questions, as an example, these two sentences can contradict each other and be true at the same time: 1) “abortion is killing a living being”, and 2) “abortion is a free person exercising control over her own body”. The host of questions you’d need to explore in order to make a point of truth is vast and includes the definition of life, whether there is free will, whether consequentialism is better than deontology, etc.; and if you claim that this does not matter then congratulations—you have already adopted a position on some politically divisive question. In philosophical terms, truth in absolute sense would require having some hypothetical access to underlying reality; since we can never have that (as all of our access to reality is mediated by our mind), we only have access to lossy models or maps; and because there is always more than one model or map that can be useful depending on the purpose, there is always a subset of claims where one has the opposite truth value (or no truth value) in one of the maps. In short, not only no one “owns” the truth, but anyone who claims to actually “know” it is being delusional or misleading; the solution to alienating political divisiveness is not obtaining unobtainable objective truth but finding common ground.
- _carbyau_ 2y ago
  > In short, not only no one “owns” the truth, but anyone who claims to actually “know” it is being delusional or misleading; To quote a favourite song, Tim Minchin's Storm: "So I resist the urge to ask Storm whether knowledge is so loose-weave of a morning when deciding whether to leave her apartment by the front door Or the window on her second floor" To put it another way, some truths are easier to realise than others. But most quarrels are not about truth, more about what solution we want to use for an issue. > the solution to alienating political divisiveness is not obtaining unobtainable objective truth but finding common ground. My concern with this is that all parties need to be finding, rather than barracking for their side. Wilful ignorance deserves no mercy in my book.

strogonoff 2y ago

Truth is less straightforward than might appear. More often than not, if you try to establish truth on some divisive question from first principles—honestly, without any hidden agenda of your own—you arrive at the unknown (no consensus in the field) and/or philosophical matter (out of scope of natural science) before you can blink. (Of course, that’s in addition to the fact that all science is inherently flawed and biased, because we are.) In case of politically divisive questions, as an example, these two sentences can contradict each other and be true at the same time: 1) “abortion is killing a living being”, and 2) “abortion is a free person exercising control over her own body”. The host of questions you’d need to explore in order to make a point of truth is vast and includes the definition of life, whether there is free will, whether consequentialism is better than deontology, etc.; and if you claim that this does not matter then congratulations—you have already adopted a position on some politically divisive question. In philosophical terms, truth in absolute sense would require having some hypothetical access to underlying reality; since we can never have that (as all of our access to reality is mediated by our mind), we only have access to lossy models or maps; and because there is always more than one model or map that can be useful depending on the purpose, there is always a subset of claims where one has the opposite truth value (or no truth value) in one of the maps. In short, not only no one “owns” the truth, but anyone who claims to actually “know” it is being delusional or misleading; the solution to alienating political divisiveness is not obtaining unobtainable objective truth but finding common ground.

_carbyau_ 2y ago
> In short, not only no one “owns” the truth, but anyone who claims to actually “know” it is being delusional or misleading; To quote a favourite song, Tim Minchin's Storm: "So I resist the urge to ask Storm whether knowledge is so loose-weave of a morning when deciding whether to leave her apartment by the front door Or the window on her second floor" To put it another way, some truths are easier to realise than others. But most quarrels are not about truth, more about what solution we want to use for an issue. > the solution to alienating political divisiveness is not obtaining unobtainable objective truth but finding common ground. My concern with this is that all parties need to be finding, rather than barracking for their side. Wilful ignorance deserves no mercy in my book.