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I can't tell if they're serious about that "extraterrestrials have been visiting earth" part or not

I don't think he's seriously arguing that it's possible, just saying one might count those things as "evidence of UFO's" and others might not

Meh. I see the point being made (and I definitely agree with the skepticism about blockchain fact pools and fact-checking services), but it seems a bit... lightweight?

Like, it doesn't seem to tackle evidence, or facts-as-provisional-beliefs. He also doesn't seem to distinguish between the way general members of the public use "it's a fact" and the way an expert on a topic might use it, the later of which (at least in a scientific context) I've generally found to implicitly be saying "this is the only position reasonable to hold based on our current understanding and evidence", which comes with an implicit invitation to rebut with additional information.

Any discussion of this topic needs to be account for statements with very clear, and easily verified truth conditions. While I don't think the author is encouraging a perspective of complete truth-relativism, the framework he's constructed seems unable to escape it. Perhaps if he'd dug more into the context portion of his triangle, and interrogated how true statements interact with selective framing, he might be able to make a better distinction?

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Yeah for sure. It’s certainly not comprehensive. Definitely going to look more into Wittgenstein

But I think for such a brief read this post is pretty good value epistemologically

I thought of it like..

If the moon is shining through my window and I hold my fist up to it and compare - I can objectively say that my fist is bigger than the moon. I could probably even get a ruler and take some measurements to prove it. So I can say that it’s a Fact that my fist is larger than the moon. The context I’m omitting here, obviously, is that the moon is 200 thousand miles further away. That’s why you need the trust part. You have to trust that the curator of a fact has omitted context that frames truth in a way that is useful and enlightening instead of obfuscating

That doesn’t mean truth is relative, but observations and measurements definitely are

Yeah, I agree. "Context omission is always subjective" seems like a wrong way to put it. Let's split facts into assertions about a model/approximation of the world being accurate (usually implicit), and an assertion about what the truth is within that model (explicit). (That split isn't always a clear bright line, btw.)

The first part is implicit, and thus 1. less visible, 2. more fluid, in that in an argument, you can often pretend you had a different context in mind later, or your intelocutor can have a very incompatible one in mind. Hence the need for trust and compromise. But it's not really any more subjective than the second part - the choice of model is very much like the choice of fact/assertion/observation within the model: it strongly depends on the world, we can tell it is intersubjective, people tend to agree on it independently, we can call it "correct" or "wrong", etc. That's all closer to what we usually call objective, like "the sky is blue", unlike "I like anchovies", even though you always need context even for objective claims ("not at night, obviously").

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Wouldn't evidence fall under the observation category in the trifecta that constitutes "Facts"?

It feels like this attenuation of facts implies, because of the sheer amount of context and observations there could be, there cannot be clear and easily verified truth conditions. Trust feels like the catch-all to where observation and context fail because Part 3 ends with allowing the reader faithful beliefs to a certain extent. I believe the second part also goes into alternative facts to explain the consensus people can buy into depending on the "Facts" - perhaps to eventually lead up to the end.

Wittgenstein's revenge, I would think, puts us in a blackhole passed the event horizon. We are inescapable of the language(s) we speak and have implicitly put truth on the otherside. Eventually, truth (technically, this kind of truth can always be around us but we just don't know it) would gravitate towards us but only if we're in the right space, time, and conscious enough. We can at least begin accept it then. That's just for ourselves too. Imagine trying to share truth with someone else! Feels like a miracle if that happened especially in our day and age. Then again, I feel like truth is outside the scope of the article, so this is just my understanding.

I don't like the use of "Trust" here and would much rather have "Reliability" because it can be grounded in statistics.

I did skim over a few parts towards the end, but it was a pretty good read. Thanks for sharing.

There is one language we speak that we know for a certainty describes Truth accurately and unadulterated: that’s mathematics

Even an all-powerful God wouldn’t have the power to make math untrue

That begs the question: which mathematics are you referring to? Algebra? Calculus? Base10?

Mathematics isn't Truth at the highest levels (the fundamental levels?) but it's definitely reliable! Then again if we don't need proof for Truth then you're right, but that feels weird to say.

All of those are only ways we’ve come up with to help better describe abstract mathematical concepts.

But if I’m picking one - well, if there’s any book that talks about truth more than my Discreet Mathematics textbook from college ..well I can’t imagine it lol, literally describing truth with spreadsheets

edit: I just noticed that truth tables were invented by Wittgenstein lol. I never even heard of him until this blog post

Interesting take, although i would say this applies more to the soft sciences than hard sciences. Hard science can use instruments that meassure generally on a materialist basis while social sciences put out logical systems of ideas based on social phenomena; meaning that innovation from a capitalist view in relation to a wellbeing and health from a socialist point of view is a matter of prioritization in the tribe u belong to - and therefor u trust a political "fact" based on the tribe (or blockchain) u belong to.

You just activated my trap card!

Then Philosophy is Truth. Not Mathematics.

I mean, Math-Realist would agree with you in a Platonists kind of way, but then we're using Philosophy to justify Mathematics and that's Truth (or at least a subset of Truth).

But now I'm being sucked into the blackhole where Philosophy and Mathematics are within language (because I'm not Math-Realist), so Language is Truth, but that doesn't feel grammatically right.

This is why I love/hate Wittgenstein. It's kinda liberating to concentrate on the language games and place conversations like these as misunderstandings, but at the same time it leaves me without something to ground myself to and I just have to go about my day.

The difference is that philosophy only exists because humans exists. Math doesn’t need us

Language is tricky, yeah. It’s how we think so how can we think about language objectively

I don’t know.

But if you need something to ground yourself, consider that the only way we’re able to have this conversation with each other right now is because mathematical truth is so rigid and unambiguous that we are able to build computers. Just by alternating high and low voltages in a circuit. 0’s and 1’s

To me, that's conceptually equivalent to the understanding that God doesn't need us (the conceptual/philosophical God. Not the religious one).

Without proof or evidence of Mathematics, can we really call it Truth? I think we can really only call it reliable then make the assertion that this reliability is evidence of Math's existence (in the Math-Realist way) but then I can't help but think this is a philosophical claim and that's Truth.

The closest I feel like we could get to Truth (without going philosophical, if that's even possible) is evidence. To me that's more true than Math as Math is used as evidence for factual claims (Like Algebra and Calculus is a subset of Math, Math is a subset of evidence) but then we run into "Facts", so it's not reliable anymore.

...stupid black hole keeps spinning me right round.

I don’t hate the idea of thinking of God as being one and the same as Math. Kind of elegant really

Math doesn’t exist in the same way as anything else exist

Here, this can probably explain what I mean way smarter than I can:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/platonism-mathematics/#ObjMatPla

If humans didn’t exist, would gravity exist? Of course. If another species came along would they conceptualise gravity how we have? Unknown. It’s the same with maths. We have our ways of looking at the world, and decide how we are going to look at numbers (like what base we use), but this sadly kinda goes back to the whole “if a tree falls” side of things.

What use does maths have if there is no-one to observe the maths, to discover it? What use does gravity have if the universe became lifeless? It would be, but it would also be meaningless.

How we perceive maths, how we perceive gravity, the effects it has on us, is useful.

The concepts of maths only exist because we exist. Would the forces of the universe react differently if we didn’t exist? Probably not (in before quantum physics I don’t understand), but there wouldn’t be any concepts. There wouldn’t be any sense of a difference between a rock, a planet, gravity, light, colour, sound.

If the universe collapsed in on itself and was reborn in a new big bang which resulted in a universe with laws of physics completely different than they are in ours.. the value of π would still be the same. Even there’s no intelligent agent that ever calculates it

There would be no one to observe pi. There would be no differentiation between any concepts at all, there wouldn’t be concepts. You need an observer for things to be observed.

I've read up a little on Platonism before so I understand where you're coming from.

To me it's more language, so you know where I'm going: black hooole...ahhh!

If you don't want to be in a black hole, avoid readings on Cantor and Gödel since you've gotten a bit into Wittgenstein already (but that probably peaked your curiosity, huh? I'm sorry).

You've been warned!! But if you do go in and come out, please let me know, and probably the world too. Humanity needs to push it's boundaries without going insane.

Edit: Schopenhauer might be the cure though, just in case.

From a pragmatic persepctive.

Our democracies hinge on the quality of the national debate/conversation. The quality is degraded to breaking point when people have alternative facts, there's no chance of resolving two arguements based on alternative facts.

Pre-'the internet' our facts were in a sense curated, because all media outlets (TV news / News papers) were responsible and liable for what they said. This meant that a fact was something that could be proven legally.

Obviously that wasn't a perfect situation, certainly not in a philosophical sense but it was a much higher bar than that set in online communities these days.

The legal and political instutions which set and applied liaible law were trusted. In Britain they've guided the national conversation for nearly 200 years in close to their current form. In which time living standards and freedoms have been protected and enhanced (compared to themselves in the 1820's).

I fear for next 200 years if the current alternative fact blizzard of whitlessness is allowed to continue unabated

Just an observation.

I’m curious, yes… though a black hole that becomes more irresistible the deeper I go, until there’s no going back, sounds like something inconvenient to my life atm haha

Well quantum physics would suggest that absent an observer, there is no reality at all

Wouldn’t that be more aligned to my argument than your own?

Possibly, yeah. When going thaaaat deep I can only guess blindly at answers

Surely it could only improve the quality of public discourse to collectively admit that having a debate doesn’t mean one side is right and the other wrong

I did say originally “in before quantum physics I can’t understand” :p

Thats not an admition i'd be happy making across the board. Certainly not in the context of a public debate.

Some courses of action will result in a society that is more consistent with our values (what ever they may be), and some will result in a society that is less consistent with out values.

The values are not matters of fact but can be agreed. The effect of various policies can be matters of fact in the context of your society and assuming trustworthy institutions can curate the 'facts'.

Obviously none of this holds up to philosphical rigour but in pragmatic terms we need to defend the concept of a fact as an atom of truth to enable democratic debate.

I don’t think anyone can. It seems like even to the physicists it is extremely awkward that our best, most tested scientific theory of understanding of the universe… somehow implies physical reality is directly effected by a conscious mind

Suddenly George Berkeley does not seem so silly!

Woah, yeah, I looked him up and it seems like he nailed it

Ergo God exists /j

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"Science holds all knowledge as tentative and uncertain" is an untrue statement.

"Trump Tweets have shown us that access to, obviousness of, and even universal agreement on the facts often achieves nothing for public discourse. Everyone agrees on the exact words he said, but their interpretation remains individual and tribal." imagine a blog post containing these words getting 41 upvotes on a philosophy subreddit. absolutely laughable.

Facts are the dimensions (in the sense of things along which information is conserved) which constitute the map, which, remember– is NOT the territory.

Language cannot be used to get around that.

I think this interpretation of what "observation" means in quantum physics is generally rejected in the scientific community.

It seems consciousness is not a requirement for observation to occur in this context.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_(quantum_physics)

Debated for sure. Scientists never imagined they’d ever need the philosophers’ help to do science, but they do

What does it truly mean to observe? And does it require consciousness?

How so? That’s kind of one of the core tenents of science, is it not

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?

I think the author is unfamiliar with the concept of "shared pool of meaning". Part of interacting is comparing our individual pool of meaning with another to see where we match or don't and going from there to refine our shared pool of meaning in order to coordinate.

Context, nuance, and circumstances always matter.

If I ask someone to "describe water". It might seem like an "easy" task. But the complexity become apparent when we think more broadly. You might describe it by it's chemical formula H2O. You might describe how it behaves under various circumstances (boils at 100°C and freezes at 0°C - under "normal" atmospheric pressure, at sea level, on Earth - those temps are different at elevation or on another planet with different atmospheric conditions) and if someone isn't familiar with the Celsius scale, those number wouldn't "mean" anything to them. There is prerequisite knowledge that builds off other prerequisite knowledge, which is why advanced classes often have prerequisites to make sure the learner has a foundational understanding of the underlying concepts before building upon that foundation.

This is why science gets documentation. It allows us to expand our collective shared pool of meaning beyond our lifetimes and update our understanding as we build upon those foundational tenets.

100°C is equivalent to 212°F, which is 373K.

^(I'm a bot that converts temperature between two units humans can understand, then convert it to Kelvin for bots and physicists to understand)

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".

Totally misses the point the older Wittgenstein made against the younger Wittgenstein, i.e. meaning holism destroys the possibility of atomic facts.

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

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.

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

"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.

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

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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Some truth conditions are extremely straightforward to verify, like "the sky is blue" or "holy shit come outside the sky is fucking purple wtf". The choice to share certain information might be loaded with implicit context and ulterior motives.

And after all, when two people talk, there's normally some context that both people are operating in, some common set of topics that are being discussed, and both sides would notionally agree about what would support of refute a claim.

It just seems that the article was written with an eye towards beliefs and facts asserted within large sprawling worldviews, and didn't stop to consider the opposite extreme of everyday, extremely mundane and tangible statements.

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.

I agree with you with about 90% of intent here.

Scientific Information can never truly be proven at it is a subjective of the individual perceiving it. However after enough replications of an instance it can be generally regarded as ‘true’ or ‘proven’ which in this sense means an outcome almost always occurs when set conditions coincide.

the statement you listed is less factual (funny, given the article we’re discussing), and more a healthy mindset based in curiosity.

The definition of observation in this case is clearly defined and different from how you would use it outside the context of quantum mechanics.

This post brought all the rationalists out. If you like this, check out Weick, Cillier, and Derrida.

It isn’t though. There is no clear definition of an observation in quantum mechanics. That’s the only whole paradox of Schrödinger’s cat being both dead and alive. Is the observation when the instrument inside the box records the value, or does the observation occur when the box is opened and the value can be read? There’s no way to know

I can fully agree with all of that as long as it’s clearly noted that you’re using “proven” as a word in the context of language and not at all as a mathematical statement

Math proofs are either true or not true. There is no almost. I think that distinction is very significant

If a tree falls in the forest, the vibrations that our ears translate into sound occur regardless of an ear being present.

>As John Bell inquired, "Was the wave function waiting to jump for thousands of millions of years until a single-celled living creature appeared? Or did it have to wait a little longer for some highly qualified measurer—with a PhD?"

Well yeah...that’s the million dollar question isn’t it.

If the universe objectively cares about life - or even more so - if the universe objectively cares about life capable of being curious about the universe..

Well, I think the profundity of the implications there is self evident

I think the big bang probably happened with or without any conscious observers.

🤷🏼‍♂️ That question goes above my pay grade

>which mathematics are you referring to? Algebra? Calculus? Base10?

tell me you know nothing about mathematics without telling me you know nothing about mathematics

I'm sorry, 2 + 2 = 4 is an objective fact.

Interesting, but I'm not going along with it.

The assumption that nobody considers epistemological factors and issues of framing when weighing facts is patently absurd. The author demonstrates this by forcefully arguing for their consideration himself.

This feels like an exercise in equivocation. The worry about facts causing religious zeal is ass backwards, because anybody who thinks of facts with epistemological factors and framing considerations in mind is de facto able to consider various points of view.

I would be a lot less hostile to this sophistry if it held the promise of a better approach to rigor, but it does not. All it does is is grant license to believe whatever the hell you want.

I am sorry, but I actually do feel a moral obligation not to believe things that are untrue, to the best of my ability. This entails using all my powers of deduction, induction and abduction to plumb out trust and framing surrounding those data by which I determine what is true. I need no new word for "fact" to keep these considerations in mind.

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.

You reminded me of a shirt I saw once. It said:

"There are 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't."

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

"2 + 2 = 4" is an objective fact if we agree on the fact that "+" signifies the operation of addition and not, let's say, string concatenation, which will result in "2 + 2 = 22".

The crux of the matter is that we no longer have a basis of facts on which to rely, to provide a cohesive story for the Kantian questions: what can I know? what ought I to do? what may I hope for? what is man?. One might even argue that we never had [1].

[1] Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern

Using the book "how to lie with statistics" as an example of the importance of being skeptical is just wierd. The author will do well to remember just who Darrell Huff was, a skeptical statistician hired by the tobacco industry claiming cancer from smoking was a statistical artifact. You can't use his book as an example for why one should be skeptical. It's just plain stupid. A better alternative would be to use Cohen's paper of the significant p-value of brain activity inside a dead salmon. Please don't make facts about true or not, but add the degree of likelihood and effect size to the argument.

Many things are entirely provable.

Yes, I'm familiar with arithmetic in different bases. "Base 10" is not a branch of mathematics.

Algebra, geometry, trigonometry, calculus, differential equations, linear algebra, graph theory, combinatorics, differential geometry, algebraic geometry, model theory, functional analysis, compex analysis, Fourier analysis ... you had a lot of choices here

Does "Base 10 math" not make sense for mathematicians? Is that like saying "square circle" or something?

I thought it made sense but it very well could be one of those misunderstandings I have.

It's not something we would usually say. "Arithmetic in base 10", maybe.

My objection, expressed more rudely than it should have been, was to placing "base 10 math" as a field of mathematics alongside algebra, etc.

I'm also not sure how his arguments work with super prosaic statements like "hey the sky's blue" or "fuck me the sky's purple!" - context seems pretty irrelevant to the truth of statements like that (though of course it could change the inferences we'd make based on them), and I'm not quite sure how to avoid their overwhelming force.

No worries.

Thanks for the clarification. Meaning and intention is difficult for me to get across. Sometimes the ambiguity helps. Sometimes it hurts.