On Board Decorum

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I don't get angry about message boards posts; I once did.

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But I do experience something in the brain like mild stomach upset, and Zen's posts above have done it again on the chase for infallibility. Above, as he did in comments on climate, he tries to offer confusion about a tilt towards a kind of personal infallibalism requirement for others. There is not a realm of actual, useful real world knowledge that ever depends on being infallible, but the requirement is that well-formed belief of the highest value is knowledge, which is justified (to the best we can do) true belief. With knowledge, we can persuade others and improve the world.

Let's say you're in a soundproof basement with no windows and have seen no weather reports, and you say believe it's raining. A friend goes upstairs and checks. If not, your belief was unjustified and false. If it is raining it's a true belief but as a lucky guess, the belief is unjustified. If you had prayed to Jesus for rain and believed it was happening for that reason, to any test anyone can do, your belief was also true but unjustified. What we want is objective testing to work towards true beliefs that are both true and justified.

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The center there is knowledge, in the practical world we are all a part of, this is formulated as justified true belief. It's an ideal to reach for, done by combining the three realms in this Venn diagram. I and many others intuit the world is a far better place if people almost entirely have justified true beliefs, rather than beliefs from one or two realms there alone. On deeper analysis there can be specific confounds here, but for general purposes this is what you want in life.

We can apply justification from personal perception, from the use of sound logic, and if needed from expertise, including consensus of scientific expertise. Doing this is highly justified from the interconnection of science and its scientific method, which is founded on objective testing, and findings replication. If something remains too contentious in current science, then we admit there is no justified belief yet.

Speculation is not knowledge, but can be an important mode of thought, a kind of placeholder, temporary stand in for belief, and it can have or lack information to back it up. Free speculation without backup is creative, sometimes fun (there might be flying antarctic giraffes), and it can be grounded in ways that even have value (there could be needed mineral sources beneath the Moon's surface) as a pointer to taking various actions.

Both saying you believe or reject something on faith alone and saying you believe or reject something based on a requirement of infallibility are tactics to ruin the very idea of knowledge, and try to invalidate its pursuit. These are tactics, as I have said, that are often an escape route (actually a pretend escape route) when a person is losing a debate in which they nurture an unjustified belief.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
Does seem like the easiest way to go for folks that can't control themselves.
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I can control myself just fine. You're the one that can't seem to handle pushback without whining about how the old board was just so mean to people like you. I'm not ignoring anyone - I'm going to call them on their bullshit. So if you don't want to see my posts you can ignore me.
 
Enigma94 said:
I can control myself just fine. You're the one that can't seem to handle pushback without whining about how the old board was just so mean to people like you. I'm not ignoring anyone - I'm going to call them on their bullshit. So if you don't want to see my posts you can ignore me.
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I think you're missing the point. It's not about you giving pushback. Its the personal insults, the vulgarity and the childish behavior. That's not saying you fit all three criteria, but certainly the vulgarity. You could have rephrased your initial post as something like the below and been fine:

"You posted all your [same stuff] on the old board too, so [stop] with your whole woe is me schtick."
 
ZenMode said:
Out of curiosity, and because I'm looking for another good liberal podcaster (Ezra Klein doesn't podcast often), I listened to part of an interview with Jon Stewart with HCR about the Trump win. I'll listen to more of her; she seems pretty intelligent.

So, back to the question of what it means to say "we aren't free to make up our own facts".....

There are people and podcasters and news sources that I generally trust for "facts" and others that I trust for good insight and analysis. In either case, none of them, except maybe Ted Cruz, has direct, first-person knowledge of the topic or situation, right? No matter who it is, that entity is getting info from someone who might be getting info from someone who has first person knowledge, but that often isn't even true. So, what does it mean to say something is truly a "fact"?
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First, Dr. HCR is a professor of History and has taught at MIT and is currently at Boston University. Her forte is the American Civil War, Reconstruction and the American West, but has also taught other history subjects. She’s a published author of several books the most recent HOW THE SOUTH WON THE CIVIL WAR and DEMOCRACY AWAKENING.
A more erudite and learned scholar you will not find.

As far as defining a “fact” or whatever - it seems as if one is talking in circles. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? And this brings us all the way back to my first point in all of this: “Go ahead, draw your petty conclusions”.

Whatever your opinion is, or what conclusions you’ve drawn - and from which set o facts you’ve drawn your conclusions - it’s all rather petty as far as anyone else is concerned. So, ok, you’re entitled to your own set of “facts”… but you’re not entitled make those “facts” the truth.
 
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gtyellowjacket said:
I think you're missing the point. It's not about you giving pushback. Its the personal insults, the vulgarity and the childish behavior. That's not saying you fit all three criteria, but certainly the vulgarity. You could have rephrased your initial post as something like the below and been fine:

"You posted all your [same stuff] on the old board too, so [stop] with your whole woe is me schtick."
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Maybe you should take the advice you gave super and get off the board if it's so upsetting to you. And we are back to the original point of you giving anyone advice on how to interact with anyone is the biggest bunch of BS I've heard.
 
Enigma94 said:
Maybe you should take the advice you gave super and get off the board if it's so upsetting to you. And we are back to the original point of you giving anyone advice on how to interact with anyone is the biggest bunch of BS I've heard.
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That's much better. I think you still got your point across but did it in a much more civil manner.
 
Well, I think that’ll be about all for today’s group therapy session.
No more personal, vulgar attacks, and we can all proceed with drawing our own petty conclusions - based on our own “facts” - but we agree not to distort those so-called facts and trying to make others believe they’re actually true.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
No. I mean it's better without the cursing and with a reference to a beloved 90's flick, but I still think we're trying to get away from the personal insults. But hey, progress. Good job.
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Go fuck yourself. (nyc I tried but the passive aggressive posting style that GT loves to employ just makes me do it!)
 
Centerpiece said:
Well, I think that’ll be about all for today’s group therapy session.
No more personal, vulgar attacks, and we can all proceed with drawing our own petty conclusions - based on our own “facts” - but we agree not to distort those so-called facts and trying to make others believe they’re actually true.
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Ouch. Posted that nice thought 2 minutes too soon but I think most folks get it. Hopefully the others will come around in time.
 
Centerpiece said:
First, Dr. HCR is a professor of History and has taught at MIT and is currently at Boston University. Her forte is the American Civil War, Reconstruction and the American West, but has also taught other history subjects. She’s a published author of several books the most recent HOW THE SOUTH WON THE CIVIL WAR and DEMOCRACY AWAKENING.
A more erudite and learned scholar you will not find.
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At least during the early part of the interview, she seemed to have some good thoughts on the causes of Trump's win in 2024. Now that I've listened more, it's easy to tell she's very much focused on history.

In regard to making our own facts, it might be easier to give an example and address new examples when they arise.

To my knowledge, the media sources that Democrats generally trust, reported, until they couldn't any longer, that Biden was still mentally sharp. Many of those same sources downplayed the things that Republicans were pointing out as being concerning. We later found out that Biden hadn't held a cabinet meeting since October 2023 because of his cognitive decline. Obviously, it's not the fault of the media that they were lied to.... because they clearly were by their "sources", right?

My point isn't that Fox News Channel is remotely close to CNN in their intention to report accurate information. My point is that, for 99% of us, the concept of a fact simply doesn't exist because neither I or you or the talking head on CNN or the NY Times writer has first hand knowledge and are susceptible to being lied to. What it comes down to is believing something and deciding to what degree we believe it.
 
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