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ElliElephant OP t1_jb1q57v wrote

Reply to comment by rioreiser in Wittgenstein’s Revenge (this genuinely changed the way I look at the world) by ElliElephant

I’m really struggling to see anything here that you could object to. Do you remember the public discourse around Trump’s tweets being civil and open-minded?

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rioreiser t1_jb1t008 wrote

lets take this trump tweet as an example: "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive."

a civil and open-minded discourse concerning such a laughable tweet is simply impossible. it is also not clear to me what the author means when he attests a "universal agreement on the facts". clearly the discourse is not about the "exact words he said" (they are evident, right there in the tweet), but about whether or not these ramblings contain any truth. obviously they do not, which might be hard to understand for someone who believes in the absurd concept of "alternative facts".

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ElliElephant OP t1_jb1v76s wrote

Yeah, everyone can see the tweet but the reactions to and interpretations of it can be wildly different and any discussion around it quickly devolves into tribalism. That’s all he’s saying

This isn’t a political post so I’ll keep political debate out of it, but minimum there’s surely truth in saying that American manufacturing can’t compete with Chinese manufacturing

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rioreiser t1_jb1wl0k wrote

so what you and the blog entry are saying is that this tweet represents an ""alternative fact,” in a completely genuine and non-insulting sense of the term", based on "honest disagreement about omitted context". because that seems to me the point of that blog entry. he is not just saying that some people believe in facts and others believe in "alternative facts" but he is saying that those two views are both equally valid. which is mental, both in the case of UFOs and trump tweets.

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ElliElephant OP t1_jb1xuko wrote

Not at all.. of course bullshit is still bullshit

But, yes, alternative facts are a thing that genuinely exist

Fact: it’s daytime and winter

Alternative Fact: it’s dark out and summer

These are both equally true to different subgroups of people

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rioreiser t1_jb21byp wrote

"alternative facts" are a thing to the same extend that alternative medicine is a thing. if it was reasonable to call them true / if it worked, it would simply be called a fact / medicine.

your time of day and season example really isn't at all what the blog entry is talking about when it discusses facts and "alternative facts". of course your examples are simply overgeneralizations.

in another comment you said that the blog was "just saying one might count those things as "evidence of UFO's" and others might not". it is very obvious that some people DO count those as evidence of UFOs, but that is not all the author is saying. he is asserting that Neil DeGrasse Tyson is "omitting context" when he says that there is "no evidence for the existence of UFOs". obviously nobody is unaware or deviously omitting that people claim to have been anal probed by aliens. NDTs the point is that there is no credible evidence. the author on the other hand is saying that these "alternative facts" are "completely genuine" and "honest disagreement about omitted context". this is nuts.

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ElliElephant OP t1_jb23w1s wrote

NDT is saying there’s no direct evidence of UFOs.

But it’s interesting you say credible, which describes a subjective evaluation if trustworthiness

This context about different types and strengths of evidence is the omitted context

To some people those bits of circumstancial evidence may be significant enough to say that there is some evidence that supports UFOs. That determination is subjective and it can still be true even if UFOs don’t exist

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rioreiser t1_jb2aa67 wrote

not sure why you put emphasis on "direct evidence". obviously nobody is denying that some people claim to have direct evidence of UFOs. or more precisely, direct evidence of UFOs not only existing (nobody denies that unidentified flying objects exist), but they themselves being evidence of extraterrestrials visiting earth.

i feel like you are significantly misrepresenting the argument made in the blog post and as a result are misinterpreting my critique. again, nobody is denying that some evidence that supports UFOs exists (in the sense of them being aliens). nobody is saying that subjectivity plays no role whatsoever when determining something as fact or not.

the blog concludes with "Seeking truth is great — but mingling truth-seeking with ambitions about consensus is one twitch away from the belief that “forcing my truth upon others is a good thing”". lets look at the context (which the author seems to value so much) in which this statement is uttered: fact checking trump tweets (which the author seems to deem highly problematic) and extraterrestrial aliens visiting earth (which the author seems to say is as reasonable to belief as the opposite). if you do not see the issue here, i don't know what to say.

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ElliElephant OP t1_jb2biq2 wrote

I could definitely have misinterpreted the author’s intent, but don’t think so. I think all three of us mostly agree, we’re just calling it different things,

“There is [no/some] [omitted context: direct/circumstantial] evidence of UFO’s”

That’s my best understanding of how he argues that fact is constructed

We both agree that some evidence exists, but no direct evidence. Yet we still have been debating it because using the fact metaphor, as he calls it, has lead us astray. Actively looking for differences instead of common ground.

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millchopcuss t1_jb3yety wrote

There aren't any facts in it to engage with, though. It was all vapid assertions. A claim was asserted about why the Chinese invented global warming (a framing trick, meant to pass off an unsupported assumption as true a priori), but no evidence is given to support the conclusion about American manufacturing. That is also a framing trick, because there are a lot other plausible explanations for our industrial decline.

I don't need a new concept for "fact" to notice these things.

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ElliElephant OP t1_jb41fr7 wrote

Um okay? But do you have anything to say about the topic at hand

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