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Thought-provoking article. I often battle friends on Facebook over issues of politics, economics, and stuff, and I definitely notice that people are generally m
by acjohnson55 13y ago
Thought-provoking article. I often battle friends on Facebook over issues of politics, economics, and stuff, and I definitely notice that people are generally more interested in winning than learning. In fact, that's the model cable news shows and presidential debates teach us. It's all about introducing some obscure fact or anecdote that your opponent can't possibly know off-hand to force them to have to research enough to rebut, acquiesce to your position, duck and counter with their own obscure fact, throw an exasperated ad hominem, or quietly slink away. But none of those tactics involve actually trying to learn some better picture of the truth or examining your own belief schema.
I think we've kind of moved to a post-fact society in this sense. Every position has it's own set of miscellaneous facts that seem to support it, and those facts are typically unverifiable, or at least certainly unverified. Factual debate seems to quickly descend into partisanship. I've come to believe that it's far more interesting and useful to debate principles instead.
- frandroid 13y agoI don't think it's that we're post-fact in the sense that data in unverifiable; most data is verifiable. But there are enough websites and online communities out there to support any point of view, so that people find a peer group that supports their theory, especially one's fears on this complex world. Anti-vaxxers are a huge example of this. Try to find information about specific vaccines and you'll be deluged in anti-vax pages that sound rather scientific. The information is out there, but so is the disinformation.
- drjesusphd 13y ago> I often battle friends on Facebook over issues of politics, economics, and stuff, and I definitely notice that people are generally more interested in winning than learning. Of course. If you want to learn something, talk one-on-one or seek out authoritative sources. If you're engaging in a dispute in a public forum in front of millions of spectators, like it or not, the debate exists to convince others, not each other. And there's nothing wrong with that.