3 ms·

If I tell you that the sky is blue, COVID kills people, and coal emits CO2, that's "impartial" in the sense of being facts.

ryandv 2y ago
As one who is steeped in the language, culture, and thought processes of science, engineering, technology, and medicine (STEM) fields you may be forgiven for believing that facts still exist. > I'm not ceding this ground. [...] The customer is not always right, and everything is not relative. The humanities have long ago dispensed with facts since the advent of postmodernism; the ground has already been ceded. Yuval Noah Harari summarizes this eloquently in his latest work Nexus: In the late twentieth century, for example, intellectuals from the radical left like Michel Foucault and Edward Said claimed that scientific institutions like clinics and universities are not pursuing timeless and objective truths but are instead using power to determine what counts as truth, in the service of capitalist and colonialist elites. These radical critiques occasionally went as far as arguing that “scientific facts” are nothing more than a capitalist or colonialist “discourse” and that people in power can never be really interested in truth and can never be trusted to recognize and correct their own mistakes.
lazide 2y ago
Not arguing with you per-se, but…. The sky is also yellow, red, and purple in the mornings and evenings. It is also gray when there are storms, and black at night. Covid kills people, but is it a lot? Or a little? Many things kill people, but I don’t get worried about lightning or sharks. Some people do. Relative to those, how dangerous is it? Coal emits co2, but why should I care?
beau_g 2y ago
What would your feelings be on a news outlet called "Public Health Watch" publishing 250 well researched, factually verified articles on dangers of wearing masks long term from 2020-2021 and zero articles on COVID mortality? How about a source called "Atmosphere Guardian" publishing hundreds of factual articles on pollution from solar panel production and li-on battery recycling while publishing zero on coal? The curation and focus of news sources can do a lot to not be impartial even when only dealing in factual information.

ryandv 2y ago

As one who is steeped in the language, culture, and thought processes of science, engineering, technology, and medicine (STEM) fields you may be forgiven for believing that facts still exist. > I'm not ceding this ground. [...] The customer is not always right, and everything is not relative. The humanities have long ago dispensed with facts since the advent of postmodernism; the ground has already been ceded. Yuval Noah Harari summarizes this eloquently in his latest work Nexus: In the late twentieth century, for example, intellectuals from the radical left like Michel Foucault and Edward Said claimed that scientific institutions like clinics and universities are not pursuing timeless and objective truths but are instead using power to determine what counts as truth, in the service of capitalist and colonialist elites. These radical critiques occasionally went as far as arguing that “scientific facts” are nothing more than a capitalist or colonialist “discourse” and that people in power can never be really interested in truth and can never be trusted to recognize and correct their own mistakes.

lazide 2y ago

Not arguing with you per-se, but…. The sky is also yellow, red, and purple in the mornings and evenings. It is also gray when there are storms, and black at night. Covid kills people, but is it a lot? Or a little? Many things kill people, but I don’t get worried about lightning or sharks. Some people do. Relative to those, how dangerous is it? Coal emits co2, but why should I care?

beau_g 2y ago

What would your feelings be on a news outlet called "Public Health Watch" publishing 250 well researched, factually verified articles on dangers of wearing masks long term from 2020-2021 and zero articles on COVID mortality? How about a source called "Atmosphere Guardian" publishing hundreds of factual articles on pollution from solar panel production and li-on battery recycling while publishing zero on coal? The curation and focus of news sources can do a lot to not be impartial even when only dealing in factual information.