rioreiser t1_jb21byp wrote on March 5, 2023 at 8:55 PM

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

"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.

ElliElephant OP t1_jb23w1s wrote on March 5, 2023 at 9:13 PM

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

rioreiser t1_jb2aa67 wrote on March 5, 2023 at 9:57 PM

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.

ElliElephant OP t1_jb2biq2 wrote on March 5, 2023 at 10:06 PM

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.