Post-factualism: Goodbye Enlightenment--Hello Idiocracy?

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Papers of Indenture
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Re: Post-factualism: Goodbye Enlightenment--Hello Idiocracy?

Post by Papers of Indenture »

Good post Brute. It's pretty damning that I saw what you describe play out time and time again in rationalist communities like Less Wrong. Almost enough to drive one to nihilisim ;)

Spartan_Warrior
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Re: Post-factualism: Goodbye Enlightenment--Hello Idiocracy?

Post by Spartan_Warrior »

If there has been a sociological shift in perspective on the actual value of truth, I wonder if it's due in any way to epistemological movements that emphasize our separation from objective reality by our senses and thoughts, and therefore our inability to really "know" reality. (Think Descartes' "mind in a vat" problem). Perhaps such concerns are serving as premises to derive incorrect conclusions that "since the truth is impossible to know for sure, why bother trying", in much the same way IMO that acknowledgement of physical determinism can be "misused" to reach fatalistic conclusions that "nothing I do can change anything". Maybe philosophers should just keep this stuff to ourselves.

Chad
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Re: Post-factualism: Goodbye Enlightenment--Hello Idiocracy?

Post by Chad »

jennypenny wrote:Being 'right' isn't always what makes us happy.
Speak for yourself! :lol:

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Re: Post-factualism: Goodbye Enlightenment--Hello Idiocracy?

Post by jennypenny »

Ha! I should have said 'being correct isn't always what makes us happy' which is different from 'right' in the righteous sense. That makes us feel, well ... righteous. :D

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Re: Post-factualism: Goodbye Enlightenment--Hello Idiocracy?

Post by jacob »

I think it boils down to an epistemological difference. How do we know that a statement is true.

If you go to the links in the OP, you will see that
The researchers at Stanford's Graduate School of Education have spent more than a year evaluating how well students across the country can evaluate online sources of information.

...

The students displayed a "stunning and dismaying consistency" in their responses, the researchers wrote, getting duped again and again. They weren't looking for high-level analysis of data but just a "reasonable bar" of, for instance, telling fake accounts from real ones, activist groups from neutral sources and ads from articles.
Bingo!

And before we get too excited about thruthiness-based methods, let's remind ourselves that this idiotic approach failed in 80% of the cases! :(

What's lacking here for many of these students is a contextual framework for evaluating input. These students have insufficient data/understanding about the world and are therefore unable to tell whether what they're reading has been made up by Macedonian teenagers or whether it's been vetted and confirmed from multiple sources and is consistent with other data. Their decision making process therefore default to something like "Is the website logo well-designed and official looking?" or "Is the article internally consistent?"

Whereas someone who is more informed about politics and the world situation would be able to look at an article and detect that "something is off/weird" here so I better go dig a bit more. Such a decision making process may be anything from say 10 points deep for the interested layman to more than 1000 points for political experts.

Or take brute's example with jacob/ERE.

What brute listed were a bunch of positive-looking facts and a bunch of negative-looking facts.

An noncontextual/uninformed/noob reader would make their decision based on which of those jacob-facts they liked. How do they relate those facts to their own situation? To which degree are those facts in accordance with their personal feelings, etc. Equally important, does the ERE blog have a good logo? Does the website have a good design? Lets look at jacob's "voice" ... does he sound like he has his shit together (almost all INTJs agree) or does he sound like a condescending jerk (everybody else thinks so).

However, an contextual/expert would dig deeper and compare ERE to the framework they already know. Does it fit with an operating understanding of financial planning? For example, if they input the numbers into savings rate calculations (like ERE book chap 7), they would see that the numbers check out. I know two CFPs whose mind were blown (I paraphrase their enthusiastic sentiments) when they did that. Both told me that they couldn't believe that it had never occurred to them to input savings rates higher than 20% in their all-familiar equations. In other words, do these jacob-facts fit into an existing contextual framework and do they make sense in that framework. This goes ways beyond the gut-feeling approach of the uninformed person.

Another way of seeing the difference in the decision process is form (the former) vs function (the latter).

When I'm talking post-factualism, I really mean that "form" (does it look true based on initial and final impressions?) is gaining in importance over "function" (is it consistent with a validated framework?). Since the average person increasingly lack such a framework, they're increasingly unable to tell the difference between a sciency-looking graph on a blog and an actual scientific argument in Nature.

I think school teachers and students everywhere know the familiar "show your work" exhortation. "Showing your work" demonstrates that your statement is based on a contextual framework and not just made up bullshit. In the classroom or at an examination table, it's easy to catch a bullshit artist, because they can't worm themselves out of it when the spotlight is on and they can't leave until the exam is over. However, on the internet, they can just ignore the request to explain themselves and pop out of the discussion for a day and then reenter a day or a year later repeating the bs again hoping that nobody will catch onto their scam.

As has been noted elsewhere (FBeyer?), if 90% of people were able to detect BS, then BS wouldn't be a problem. Anyone making up graphs or news etc would just be laughed out of the room for acting like a noob. Unfortunately, painstakingly refuting BS takes much more time than making shit up on the fly.

PT Barnum observed that you can fool all of the people some of the time and all of the people some of the time.

I think specialization in expertise can add some nuance to that. For example, you can probably convince a few random people that kinking an electric wire will stop electricity from flowing, but if you try that argument in a room full of electricians, they'd all think you're an idiot. The silly old fallback that "Electric wiring is too complex to understand, so nobody really knows" is not going to fly with them either.

But anything slightly more complex will work with the average person these days. And so here we are ...

What I find funny ... and what's really happening all over ... is that experts in a given field will readily acknowledge this effect in their own specialist field. For example, network security specialists will lament how Trump or boomers don't understand computers and how it's good that at least some experts are in charge ... but then they will flip around and do the "This subject is too complex so nobody really knows" for any other field than their own.

IOW, while specialists can easily see the large range in terms of knowledge when it comes to their own expertise, most seem unable to acknowledge the same dynamics in fields when they aren't experts themselves and seem surprised by how much experts in other fields know after all if they take the time to look into it. Of course few people bother...

It's also getting clear ... see agnotology ... how this comes about. Do a sustained campaign spreading uncertainty about "function" (as per above). For example, this was successfully done with tobacco and climate science and the effort has been well documented. Spread some doubt that experts and hint they not much smarter than you ... maybe use a good logo or some random graphs to increase the noise/signal ratio. Once that's done, it increases the virality of BS. Spreading the idea that the media is biased (it's really not anyone biased than congress, IOW the media falls within the viewpoints presented by congress, not outside it) and it opens the door for Macedonian teenagers to make a quick buck or politicians to lie at will.

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Re: Post-factualism: Goodbye Enlightenment--Hello Idiocracy?

Post by Spartan_Warrior »

jacob wrote: Spreading the idea that the media is biased (it's really not anyone biased than congress, IOW the media falls within the viewpoints presented by congress, not outside it) and it opens the door for Macedonian teenagers to make a quick buck or politicians to lie at will.
Naturally, this is where you lose me. Actually, I might concur that the "media is not (anymore) biased than congress, IOW the media falls within the viewpoints presented by congress, not outside it". But I would say that in and of itself is evidence of bias, not evidence against it. An investigative, impartial journalist observes and relays facts preferably from observation. When you do nothing but wait for the prescribed opinion to be handed down in a PR statement from Washington--or worse, transmitted in a secret email--you cease to be a journalist and become a propagandist.

I kinda suspected this lament was premised on the idea that mainstream media is a trustworthy arbiter of objective fact, and at another level poking at those who distrust it as being "post-factual", which makes it difficult for me to get on board. If you don't think the mainstream media has promulgated "fake news" for reasons of political bias, I invite you to show me proof that violence took place and/or chairs were thrown by Sanders supporters at the Nevada Democratic Caucus. And that's just the first example to mind. Failing to acknowledge bias in the media is fairly post-factual in and of itself.

ETA: Oh, and bonus points if you can find a single one of the media outlets or specific reporters who reported on violence at the Nevada convention later publish a formal retraction or in any way admit they were wrong or that what they spread was propagandistic "fake news".

But let's play along. Supposing the mainstream media is an unbiased source of objective truth, and that allowing voices to question the media's authority or provide alternative narratives opens the door for Macedonian hackers to undermine our (otherwise sterling) democracy, what should be done about it? Would an appropriate response be censorship of all alternative news and a centralized media broadcasting only state-approved "facts"? Because that seems to be where the "fake news" frenzy is trying to herd us. (Speaking of "firehoses of falsehood", reread the document and see how many of those tactics are being used to convince us that Russians using fake news swung the election for Trump.)

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Re: Post-factualism: Goodbye Enlightenment--Hello Idiocracy?

Post by jacob »

@SW - Nah, you're too deeply focused on nuance/your concerns are very wonkish/parochial-lost in the big pic ... focusing on the bark of a single tree instead of the forest. Not appreciating that the average person doesn't even know what the forest is.

The average/random person wouldn't even have heard of the details you're talking about. What's a caucus? Nevada what? Who is this Sanders person? I remind you than 40% of the public can't even name the friggin' VP ... Who is Sanders again? Where is Nevada on a map? Where is North on a map? There's a 2% chance that any random person knows who the chief justice is! Reconcile this with how many thought that this election was about the composition of the supreme court. I'm talking about people who still think Trump vote the popular vote or who think Obama personally adjusted their social security pay-outs and denied their COLA. That's not just a few outliers. It's a lot of people!

The average (median! really) person currently think themselves well-informed because they click on every news article in their facebook feed. The average person thinks they've done their research because they spent a few minutes googling and clicking on a few links on the page one [of google].

That's where the political bar is.

So if you make any political statement, etc. the average person thinks they know about as much as you do because they spent 5 mins on google.You're some 10-100x better informed ... but the average person can't tell the difference between you and their crazy Uncle and doesn't appreciate it either!

In terms of science, as far as I can tell (see above to confirm), the general belief is apparently that most scientists have never measured anything on their own (wrong) and just rely on hear-say data from others (wrong) and that scientific theory is too complex for anyone to understand (wrong). So about at the same level where the political bar is.

Same difference.

What to do about it? I spent a modicum of effort during this election cycle refuting/fact-checking stupid shit from friends and family. Eventually most of them actually listened. Kinda how I spent a modicum of effort refuting bullshit on (your) original CC thread a few years ago with similar results. It's standard starfish-story. It doesn't matter to most but it matters to the few.

Ultimately, I think it's unpossible to change course and it's part of the natural cycle of civilization. The better things get, the less the average person appreciates the work/knowledge it took to get there.

I mean people could go and read a few books, but I have a hard time imagining most people would be willing to go that far.

steveo73
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Re: Post-factualism: Goodbye Enlightenment--Hello Idiocracy?

Post by steveo73 »

Campitor wrote:Facts matter but in context, i.e., if both of us are not experts about climate science, how would we know we have all the facts and/or if those facts are being presented logically and correctly? And would we have the maturity to look at the facts-in-opposition objectively to correct our beliefs?
I disagree with this. It's like putting your hands on your head and stating unless I'm an expert I can't offer an opinion. I think lots of so called experts have biases and utilise facts not to get to the truth but for some other objective. You mention climate science and that is a classic example. There are alarmists and skeptics that are experts. Facts have been distorted and even made up.
Campitor wrote:You may know how to use a TV but your lack knowledge about how it works will leave you ignorant in topics such as "what electronics can interfere with my tv signal?" or "how do I fix my tv?", etc. This lack of knowledge will make you susceptible to charlatans who will happily charge you for fixes that don't work or make your TV susceptible to further damage.
Yes but there is a tolerance level. That tolerance level is partly in my opinion based on clear logical thinking.
Campitor wrote:I think facts probably matter to Brute too. But how can either of you be sure you are arguing for the correct solution unless you know you have ALL the facts or if the facts are being presented and interpreted correctly? I think what Brute is stating regarding facts being a "social phenomenon", is that most problems are so complex with so many active inputs, it is extremely difficult for a layperson to be sure he is arguing for the correct solution or interpreting the data correctly.
Again I disagree with this premise.
Campitor wrote:And how would anyone, not being an expert on a complex topic, know which facts to clarify? How do you know there isn't any missing data that could greatly influence the conclusions?
This comes down to clear logical thinking. It means being open-minded but not too open minded.
Campitor wrote:And how would a non-expert know what a poor quality fact looks like if they aren't experts on the complex item being discussed?
Same point.
Campitor wrote:I will agree with Brute but with a slight change to his conclusion: facts are often very useless to solve questions or problems about complex models when people fall into logical fallacies such as confirmation bias, etc.
I actually agree with this but that is because the facts aren't good quality facts. So I view what you are talking about as still about getting the facts clear and then coming to a conclusion.

If you have a complex model with good data and the data matches the complex model with in and out of sample data (and enough data) then you probably can state that you believe that model is correct. If the data doesn't match the model then you should reassess the model.

To me it's still about being clear about the facts and then coming to a conclusion. I think the issue that we have now is twofold:-

1. People aren't truthful about the facts. So they pervert the facts of make up facts to suit them. Using climate change as an example we have the fraudulent 97% of scientists confirmation and for instance the fact that extreme weather events are caused by global warming.
2. People don't care about the facts. I think that this is partly a reaction to point 1. So your belief becomes more important than the facts.

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Re: Post-factualism: Goodbye Enlightenment--Hello Idiocracy?

Post by steveo73 »

jennypenny wrote:IMO a big part of the problem right now isn't ignorance but a sense of mistrust towards government and by extension, others who resemble that kind of authority. Some of that comes from the government and certain authorities being too slow to admit when they've been wrong about facts in the past. You only have to look at the FDA and the influence lobbyists have had on the food pyramid to see how misinformation has been systematically doled out to the public, but there are lots of other examples.
To me this is problem 1. The facts are often not clear cut because of biases.
jennypenny wrote:The other problem is what was stated up-thread -- that setting up the argument as belief v. fact is never going to resolve the issue because it implies that belief is 'incorrect' and one must give up their beliefs in order to agree with the facts.
This is what I disagree with. If you have the facts to prove my belief wrong I want to see it. That allows me to change my belief to be more aligned to reality. I think though lots of people fail to do this including possibly myself.

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Re: Post-factualism: Goodbye Enlightenment--Hello Idiocracy?

Post by Spartan_Warrior »

@Jacob: My focus may be narrow, but I think the legacy media's coverage of this election is relevant to support my earlier positions. I think it goes without saying that the median person (not a scientist) does not have the educational background or perhaps even access to the data and resources to investigate and reach accurate conclusions about things like climate change or Russian hacking or election fairness. I don't think that's changed. What seems to be a more recent (last two decades with rapid acceleration) change is how much credibility the mainstream/legacy media and political establishment have lost. Examples like the Nevada caucus reporting go to show why that credibility has been lost... and perhaps offer a commentary as to whether that loss of credibility might be justified.*

*I would also question the idea that the level of detail in that example is below the attention of the average person. Sure, the average person may not know the exact process behind the Nevada caucus and such. They probably aren't interested** in such details, either. Instead what they see, over and over again in every single media outlet is headlines all sharing two key words: "Sanders" and "violence". The median person with his rudimentary level of knowledge and interest concludes that Sanders is a poor leader with out of control violent supporters (a meme that was already furiously promoted by the legacy media--see "Bernie Bros", etc). Hell, whoever this Sanders guy is, he sounds no different from Trump! ...And that's how it's done. (Again, I apologize if my focus seems narrow, it's simply that these are the recent examples that I've studied most closely, and I think they remain relevant.)

** "When people are less interested in a topic, they are more likely to accept familiarity brought about by repetition as an indicator that the information [repeated to the point of familiarity] is correct." - Firehose of Falsehood, p. 4

Suffice it to say, IMO, people are very right to question everything, including anything the media says. They're probably right to investigate to the extent of their investigative abilities (e.g. Google search) and form their own opinions to the extent of their reasoning abilities (e.g. confirmation bias). Maybe where it goes wrong is where everyone believes they've got it objectively right as a result of this process. But perhaps this is the human condition at play? I have to constantly remind myself how little I actually know about anything. Or perhaps I'm only giving into post-factualist reasoning myself.

I don't know what to do about it beyond the personal level, though. On the one hand, skepticism is a natural and proper reaction to misinformation, but it can also entrench false beliefs. E.g., my telling people to question the mainstream media likely wouldn't help convince a climate change denier.

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Re: Post-factualism: Goodbye Enlightenment--Hello Idiocracy?

Post by Ego »

jacob wrote: It's also getting clear ... see agnotology ... how this comes about. Do a sustained campaign spreading uncertainty about "function" (as per above). For example, this was successfully done with tobacco and climate science and the effort has been well documented. Spread some doubt that experts and hint they not much smarter than you ... maybe use a good logo or some random graphs to increase the noise/signal ratio. Once that's done, it increases the virality of BS. Spreading the idea that the media is biased (it's really not anyone biased than congress, IOW the media falls within the viewpoints presented by congress, not outside it) and it opens the door for Macedonian teenagers to make a quick buck or politicians to lie at will.
Practice makes perfect. Do anything over and over and you are bound to get good at it.
viewtopic.php?t=4654&start=25#p66177


When we practice believing things that run counter to what evidence suggests, we get good at it. My hypothesis is that by practicing this in one realm we get good at applying it in other realms.

Image


Who tends to harbor these beliefs? Who spreads then?
jennypenny wrote:Balance is needed -- not necessarily 50/50 -- to protect society from ignorance while allowing some breathing room for enough 'belief' to keep people feeling happy and connected.
Why is belief necessary to keep people feeling happy and connected?

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Re: Post-factualism: Goodbye Enlightenment--Hello Idiocracy?

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Ego said: Why is belief necessary to keep people feeling happy and connected?
I somehow found myself assigned the task of reading a story about the year Santa Claus took a vacation to a group of 7 year old children ( 2/3 Muslim) today. When I finished the children clapped, and then one boy said "Santa Claus is fake, right?" and another chimed in "No, he isn't fake. He is dead." Others quickly voiced their opinion on the controversy, and it seemed that the group was fairly evenly divided between fake, dead or real, and I was called upon to settle the matter from my position of authority sitting up in the rocking chair. So, I said "Santa Claus is real if you are somebody who believes that Santa Claus is real."

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Re: Post-factualism: Goodbye Enlightenment--Hello Idiocracy?

Post by jacob »

@7wb5 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KAGwNtI26w ... This is the attitude I'm increasingly trying to adopt when it comes to what other people think about reality. It certainly works with Santa Claus. Eventually these kids will go read a book or learn in other ways. Not my problem.

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Re: Post-factualism: Goodbye Enlightenment--Hello Idiocracy?

Post by George the original one »

Ego wrote:Why is belief necessary to keep people feeling happy and connected?
If you don't believe, then you're not a member of the tribe. See above Santa Claus story.

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Re: Post-factualism: Goodbye Enlightenment--Hello Idiocracy?

Post by Ego »

George the original one wrote:
Ego wrote:Why is belief necessary to keep people feeling happy and connected?
If you don't believe, then you're not a member of the tribe. See above Santa Claus story.
Each year we attend a large Christmas party where the eighty-odd guests collectively sing Christmas carols. I have an ongoing joke with one of my more faith-filled friends. He shakes his head in bewilderment and asks how it is that I as an atheist am okay singing Oh Holy Night and O' Little Town of Bethlehem. A few years ago, rather than answering his gibe I just began singing Santa Clause is Coming to Town and everyone followed along. He is a little dense. When I pointed out that he sang about how Santa is making a list and checking it twice, he didn't quite catch my meaning.

One thing I can say for sure is that I am a member of the tribe. Over years I've gotten more involved and have lately found myself in the middle of the scrum when the men vs. women Twelve Days of Christmas competition begins.

Sometimes the tribe needs gentle guiding.

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Re: Post-factualism: Goodbye Enlightenment--Hello Idiocracy?

Post by BRUTE »

wow, brute has detected large quantities of win in this thread. this is why he loves this forum!
Papers of Indenture wrote:Good post Brute. It's pretty damning that I saw what you describe play out time and time again in rationalist communities like Less Wrong. Almost enough to drive one to nihilisim ;)
almost. if Papers of Indenture likes Less Wrong, brute has a basilisk to sell him.
Spartan_Warrior wrote:Perhaps such concerns are serving as premises to derive incorrect conclusions that "since the truth is impossible to know for sure, why bother trying"
in effect, 99% of the truth is impossible to know for any particular human, just because of time and effort constraints. a human might become a specialist in climate change, but then won't know many facts about sheep herding. or whatever.

brute's rule of factlessness: number of facts learnable by a human in a lifetime / number of facts in the universe ~= 0
Spartan_Warrior wrote:What seems to be a more recent (last two decades with rapid acceleration) change is how much credibility the mainstream/legacy media and political establishment have lost.
and this might just be due to exposure. pre internet, the only exposure to anything outside of a small radius around a human would've come from TV or the radio. now there's a lot of shit on TV, but nowhere near the amount of shit that's on the internet. now this doesn't inherently mean humans are more wrong than they used to be - they're just less coordinated in their beliefs, because there are more different sources.

while brute's not going to argue that many humans now aren't dumb and uninformed, he's not sure that there's a "golden age" to be sentimental about, like jacob seems to be, where all humans were fact-based and rational. does this golden age happen to coincide with the time jacob was spending amongst physicists? brute is quite sure 98% of humans have always been misinformed.
the leader of ERE wrote:In terms of science, as far as I can tell (see above to confirm), the general belief is apparently that most scientists have never measured anything on their own (wrong) and just rely on hear-say data from others (wrong) and that scientific theory is too complex for anyone to understand (wrong).
it is not that most scientists have never measured anything. it's that no scientist has measured everything. even if each and every scientist, or even each and every human, spent their entire lives measuring facts about reality, each individual would still know roughly nothing of the universe, because the universe is (at least effectively) infinite compared to what a single human can measure in a lifetime.

this is why humans have to rely on each other for almost all facts.
steveo73 wrote:I actually agree with this but that is because the facts aren't good quality facts.
yea, none of those bullshit low-fat facts with pesticides in them. and genes. genes are disgusting.
lentil master jacob wrote:What I find funny ... and what's really happening all over ... is that experts in a given field will readily acknowledge this effect in their own specialist field.
what brute finds funny is how jacob describes the problem so perfectly, yet seems surprised by its consequences.

1)infinite number of facts about reality
2)limited human lifetime and attention span
3)humans know a little about some things or a lot about a few things, but almost nothing about almost everything
4)somehow, this is surprising

what is jacob expecting? that humans learn ALL THINGS before having an opinion?

in an infinite world, humans need to make decisions on things they don't know much about. society is a method of solving that problem. humans go along with the herd because they cannot experience all necessary facts before starving to death.

now if humans were incapable of deception or incompetence, and would therefore always only transmit objectively true facts, these facts would accumulate in and permeate society, until (conceivably) one day, all possible knowledge would be contained in this network.

but in reality, humans are often incompetent and deceptive. so they've learned to be skeptical when other humans tell them things.

now if a human isn't an expert himself, like mentioned, there's no way to identify who the real experts are. thus humans learn to identify experts by ways that are easier than becoming an expert themselves. unsurprisingly (map !== territory), these ways can fail. other humans learn to game them. endless cycle!
jennypenny wrote:The other problem is what was stated up-thread -- that setting up the argument as belief v. fact is never going to resolve the issue because it implies that belief is 'incorrect' and one must give up their beliefs in order to agree with the facts.
this so much!

having thought about this a little today, brute's new theory goes like this.

the idea posted in the OP, and which brute sees a lot in science-minded non-trumper the last 2 years, says that humans could be divided into two groups, those that believe in facts, and those that believe in beliefs or are anti-fact or post-fact. it might look something like this.

:geek: :ugeek: :geek: :ugeek: :geek: :ugeek:

vs.

:twisted: :shock: :? :( :x :roll: :evil: :twisted:

this, to brute, seems like a false dichotomy. the "post-facters" are not really post-fact, but they believe in DIFFERENT "facts" and plug them into different world views.

due to the tribal nature of facts and their distribution through society, it's absurd to claim that the majority of the upper side is actually fact-based. sure, some of the more sciency ones might have measured a few actual facts of their own. but surely not 100% of their beliefs were based on their own measurements, because that would be impossible. instead, most of what they "know" are actually "beliefs" as well, in the sense that they didn't measure them themselves.

on the other side, the humans on the bottom didn't decide to "become post-factual" and start believing random shit either. these two groups of humans merely rely on different tribes/networks to construct their belief-systems. these belief-systems might or might not be based on measured facts somewhere down below. both probably are to some degree, but not fully. if brute imagines any "beliefs" he has on a tree, descending the social graph down to the human that actually measured (or made up) this fact, there is a sort of inverse pyramid, where a few fact-measurers support a vast graph of believers. this is true for both sides.

the clash is therefore not between facter and post-facters, it's between different belief-systems, of which facts play a foundational, but not the only, part.

it looks like this:
:geek:
:geek: 8-) :ugeek:
8-) :lol: :D :P :roll:

vs.

:evil: :twisted: :o :x
:roll: :shock: :|
:ugeek:

both sides have belief-systems in part based on fact, and in part not. the majority of the members of either group did not measure most of their beliefs themselves, but got them through the social effect. thus, both sides have facts and both sides have believers.

dichotomy solved.

now it could be said that, of the foundation of those belief-systems, one is more based on facts and the other more on lies. but that's pretty much impossible to determine for a human outside of his own expert domain. if one of them is more based on facts, most of its members couldn't have known that, and only ended up in there because of tribal connections.

bonus: some things are just super hard, and what's fact is not even obvious to the experts. economics comes to mind. natural sciences were just kind of the low hanging fruit in terms of certainty.

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Re: Post-factualism: Goodbye Enlightenment--Hello Idiocracy?

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

+1 -lol

I think you explained it very well, but I would like to note that there are also frameworks of expertise and/or experience to which reality can never be firmly pinned. So, for instance, the way Jacob feels when he has to talk to a random person on a train about atmospheric physics is like unto how I feel when the person traveling next to me suggests Stephen King or Ayn Rand as candidate for "great novelist."

I spent a number of years of my life as the inventory manager of a very large bookstore located in the heart of a world-class university center and bastion of liberal politics. Therefore, I feel I am as well qualified as anybody to offer a rough estimate of the percentage of extremely well-educated people who would choose to read a book on the topic of atmospheric physics in their leisure time vs. something more akin to "Holidays on Ice" by David Sedaris. The ratio would be, at best, something like 1/50,000. However, the fraction of this customer base who would, after very quick (20 seconds?) skim of Jacob's resume, accept that he was qualified to offer informed facts and opinion on the matter would be closer to 49,964/50,000.

However, the times they are a changing, and global climate is now regarded as a much more important issue, so I would assume that the percentage of very well-educated people who are seeking to become better informed in this realm would be higher than it was 20 years ago. Unfortunately, even the minority of us who did successfully complete two years of education in university level physics in 1987, have forgotten 85% of what we previously knew, because after 3 years of reading nothing but La Leche League manuals and Penelope Leach, we were spotted asleep on a beach with a copy of "Chaos" serving only as sun shield (sigh.)

Another factoid I might offer based on my prior realm of experience as somebody who was actually paid to wander around trying to convince people to read books, is that it is very, very difficult to convince another person to expend the time and energy necessary to read a book based on your recommendation. I am always giving people books and saying "Just take it. Don't feel compelled to read it. Just take it, and maybe give it a look, and feel free to pass it on or whatever." So, I'm not sure whether the ease of acquiring a gloss of information on the internet is really making much of a difference. OTOH, I don't understand why people prefer to watch videos or listen to podcasts rather than just reading the same material in 1/10th of the time?

I guess it is possible that due to low barrier of publication, more people these-a-days no longer grok the difference between writing vs. just shooting some shit with the aid of a keyboard.
while brute's not going to argue that many humans now aren't dumb and uninformed, he's not sure that there's a "golden age" to be sentimental about,
Nope. Never happened. People have always been the same, and the best way to learn that people have always been the same is to read more of the great novels. For instance, a dose of "Moll Flanders" followed by "Tropic of Cancer" might cause one to take pause before applying the label of "sexual deviant" to any member of this forum ;)

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Ego
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Re: Post-factualism: Goodbye Enlightenment--Hello Idiocracy?

Post by Ego »

BRUTE wrote: what is jacob expecting? that humans learn ALL THINGS before having an opinion?.
Brute, there are two possible explanations for why you are so persistent at missing the point:

1) You are actively trying to miss the point because of motivated reasoning. You want to believe things that are unsupported by evidence.
2) You actually are missing the point.

Maybe this will help:

Rule #1: I must learn how to distinguish facts from fiction.

Rule #1a: When the topic is too complex for me to understand, I must try to figure out who really does understand how to make that distinction and listen to what they have to say.

Rule #1b: Since humans are prone to error I must watch for experts making Brute error #1. Thankfully, I have plenty of people who know more than me doing the same. The scientific method at work.

BRUTE wrote:now if a human isn't an expert himself, like mentioned, there's no way to identify who the real experts are.
Wrong. Scientists take pleasure in devouring those who make a mistake. It is the essence of the scientific method. If it is not reproducible then it gets exposed as wrong rather quickly.
BRUTE wrote: but surely not 100% of their beliefs were based on their own measurements, because that would be impossible. instead, most of what they "know" are actually "beliefs" as well, in the sense that they didn't measure them themselves.
Wrong again. You are misunderstanding the scientific method.

Spartan_Warrior
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Re: Post-factualism: Goodbye Enlightenment--Hello Idiocracy?

Post by Spartan_Warrior »

Worth considering that there are different kinds of "facts". There are the bedrock, reproducible facts backed by the scientific method, and there are also historical, political, and one-time-non-witnessed-event type of facts that are verifiable only by direct observation at the time of the event. The scientific method can verify with 99.999999...% accuracy that anthropogenic climate change is real, or that gravity exists, etc. Those effects can be measured, the conditions and models reproduced by multiple scientists to confirm it. On the other hand, the scientific method doesn't seem applicable when it comes to proving whether violence took place at a caucus or whether Russia hacked the DNC. Such "facts" seem to necessarily rely only on inductive reasoning based on uncertain premises from proven unreliable sources to establish their truth value. Or am I wrong?

BRUTE
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Re: Post-factualism: Goodbye Enlightenment--Hello Idiocracy?

Post by BRUTE »

@Ego

the scientific method says nothing about the social distribution of facts through society, it merely states one should make a hypothesis and then test it empirically.
Ego wrote:Rule #1: I must learn how to distinguish facts from fiction.
brute must definitely be missing something, because he would consider this impossible - that's his whole point. unless Ego saw the Bernie Bros throwing chairs with his own eyes, what's he going to do? ask someone? oh, relying on social information. looking at video? access to that requires social information, could be doctored, or selectively cut.

assuming that humans can distinguish facts from outside of their field of expertise from fiction is unrealistic.

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