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Facts are fickle. That Obama is christian is not a "fact" to people who believe that he's secretly a muslim. Like all other good conspiracy theories, it's base

Facts are fickle. That Obama is christian is not a "fact" to people who believe that he's secretly a muslim. Like all other good conspiracy theories, it's based on an irrefutable possible situation. You can't "fact check" that. Second example on the page, "House Speaker John Boehner claims that raising taxes on the top 2% would kill 700,000 jobs", the link lists three bullet points to refute this: one is completely unrelated to the statement made, the second assumes that Boehner misrepresents rather than misbelieves Obama's intention to only use the revenue to plug the deficit and editorializes that the job loss would happen over a long period of time has an impact on the truthfulness of the statement. The third claims that "relatively small" effects on the economy is not enough to say that proposal will "would slow our economy". That's not a fact check, that's a counter argument.

cleverjake 14y ago
>> That Obama is christian is not a "fact" to people who believe that he's secretly a muslim. fact /fakt/ Noun - A thing that is indisputably the case. Being separated from reality does not mean you get your own facts. facts are facts. While I will agree that you can't prove a negative, you can prove that he is not a muslim, which is really the crux of the statement. The second point is from factcheck.org, not from truth teller. It actually is a counter argument.
- mseebach 14y ago
  > While I will agree that you can't prove a negative, you can prove that he is not a muslim That is contradictory? How do you, in fact, prove that? It is not indisputably the case that Obama is a christian, because people are actively disputing it. > The second point is from factcheck.org, not from truth teller. It actually is a counter argument. I made a general reference to the fact-checking trend which factcheck.org is very much a part of.
dclowd9901 14y ago
You're making a point for ignorance and masquerading it as a legitimate disagreement on "fact", which has no variation. People who disagree with fact are literally mentally ill; delusional, not crazy like a fox. To your second point, it's a work in progress.
- mseebach 14y ago
  No, I'm making a point for not overloading the meaning of the word "fact" to something it can't actually support. There exists no validation or falsification of the statement, so there can be no fact - after all, it's about personal belief in a set of ideas that are themselves notoriously slippery to validate or falsify. It's a distracting point, and I shouldn't have included it - my main argument is the other part of my comment: That too often the facts of fact checks are, in fact, arguments.

cleverjake 14y ago

>> That Obama is christian is not a "fact" to people who believe that he's secretly a muslim. fact /fakt/ Noun - A thing that is indisputably the case. Being separated from reality does not mean you get your own facts. facts are facts. While I will agree that you can't prove a negative, you can prove that he is not a muslim, which is really the crux of the statement. The second point is from factcheck.org, not from truth teller. It actually is a counter argument.

mseebach 14y ago
> While I will agree that you can't prove a negative, you can prove that he is not a muslim That is contradictory? How do you, in fact, prove that? It is not indisputably the case that Obama is a christian, because people are actively disputing it. > The second point is from factcheck.org, not from truth teller. It actually is a counter argument. I made a general reference to the fact-checking trend which factcheck.org is very much a part of.

dclowd9901 14y ago

You're making a point for ignorance and masquerading it as a legitimate disagreement on "fact", which has no variation. People who disagree with fact are literally mentally ill; delusional, not crazy like a fox. To your second point, it's a work in progress.

mseebach 14y ago
No, I'm making a point for not overloading the meaning of the word "fact" to something it can't actually support. There exists no validation or falsification of the statement, so there can be no fact - after all, it's about personal belief in a set of ideas that are themselves notoriously slippery to validate or falsify. It's a distracting point, and I shouldn't have included it - my main argument is the other part of my comment: That too often the facts of fact checks are, in fact, arguments.