Comment by bdangubic
6 days ago
I may be wrong if I am stating an opinion and I cannot be wrong if I stating a fact. Our society, since it got consumed by “social” media, has lost ability to accept facts, everyone doing their own “research” and all that…
Every "fact" you state really includes the opinion that the "fact" is indeed a fact.
Is climate change man-made?
Are you arguing against the existence of an objective reality? Seems a little extreme. There are countless facts, indisputably so. Gravity, death, the fact you wrote me an answer, the fact I'm writing you an answer. These aren't opinions
Objective reality is complex and hard to explain or list all the facts in a single argument session. People are also good at cherry picking the facts they agree with and disregarding other related facts. As others wrote, there are also bunch of trade offs, not many subjects have clear and low amount of facts that everyone can agree upon. People tend to argue most about society rather than theoretical math or physics. Like you can argue about what is the perfect form of government but you also have to account for the people who are part of the governing and being governed, they are not ideal actors, so the practical reality isn't straightforward.
Coming back, what is objective reality, anyway? Each person perceives the reality differently. And if you go down to measure single basic part of the reality you will find out the act of measurement already changes the outcome. Or we can agree about the final, ideal state but not how to get there.
> There are countless facts, indisputably so.
True, but isn’t the problem here that even though there are many facts, no one of us knows most of those facts with absolute certainty, and we learned them from other people, therefore we primarily hold opinions about facts as opposed to know them first hand.
My experience of gravity correlates with the explanation I was given in physics class, but I haven’t myself proven anything about it, and I just trust other people’s stories when they tell me gravity affects light or time.
I think about this often when contemplating arguments; there’s almost nothing I personally know first hand. Like you I believe in facts, but I recognize that I’m not the source of most facts, and I’m relaying a story someone else told me. I’m guessing this is one of the reasons facts can be so easily argued, because there are gaps between facts being established and facts being told and shared. Like, it’s pretty common for scientific research results to be oversimplified and told & shared in a way that doesn’t capture the entire truth, right?
> Are you arguing against the existence of an objective reality? Seems a little extreme.
No, I am not arguing against the existence of an objective reality. I argue against the capability of most people to accurately assess what that objective reality is. You for example apparently cannot even assess the meaning of my clear and simple sentence, why would I trust you to be able to assess any more complex situation?
3 replies →
> Are you arguing against the existence of an objective reality?
I’d argue against absolute certainty in any knowledge. That isn’t a statement about reality, just our measure of it.
10 replies →
There people that gravity doesn’t exist and it’s some kind of buoyancy. Death as the final end of existence? There are many religions that claim that isn’t true. Nowadays it’s even harder who wrote what but next week if I don’t find that text again, can I be sure it was written or could be just in a dream?
3 replies →
[dead]
> Is climate change man-made?
When having the climate change conversation with deniers I roll it back to; is the climate warming? They almost always[0] agree it is and we agree it’s evidenced. So now we’ve agreed on a fact and have common ground to advance the conversation. Then I can make my case that if we know the climate is warming then we have a responsibility/necessity to reduce our contribution to it and should likely invest in finding ways to reverse it. Because even if we are not the cause, we have a lot at stake.
[0] in rare case they can’t agree to this, I usually ask them if they’ve encountered a source for that and then ultimately implore them to at least read something on the topic before forming their opinion about it, there’s plenty of data available I won’t push them down any path that may be seen untrustworthy or politically misaligned with their beliefs, I just leave it alone there because it’s usually quite obvious they’re parroting the talking points of some pundit without doing any research themselves. As the article mentioned, this argument would just become an ego war more than anything.
i disagree that it' warming, so where do you start with me? I'm not being coy, i 100% believe that all of the warming detected is strictly down to poor placement of sensors and incorrect assumptions thereof in the resultant data. So what we will end up arguing about, if we get past that particularity of my thoughts, is about models. And i hate arguing about models.
edit: i think probably the cities are getting "warmer" but that's not climate change that's city change. In that cities are growing, generally, with more stuff paved over. We need to plant more trees and have less concrete/asphalt in cities if we want to reverse this trend. also less people, but that's not going to happen anytime soon.
4 replies →
Yes it's a scientific fact humans have been causing the current warming by burning fossil fuels since the industrial revoluton.
You can make skeptical arguments against this is you're willing to dismiss empirical data and methodology behind scientific facts. The people who do this aren't consistent and cherry pick which empirical data, models and methodologies to dismiss. It tends to align with some belief challenged by the science. Or their financial interests.
It's much harder to be a consistent skeptic, since empirical data is verifiable, and the scientific method works for all sorts of fields and technologies. But it could all be dream of a mental patient in a simulation god programmed while making a bet with the devil.
It's too early in the morning for this much sophistry.
I made $xxx,xxx.00 last year, that is a fact, I can definitively prove it via deposits to my bank account. It is a fact.
Climate change being man-made or not definitely does not fall into “this is a fact”
So it's only a fact if you can verify it, and not if the scientific community can? And you're consistent about this via all scientific findings you haven't verified like the balance in your bank account? You reject as fact any astronomical data or microscopic results you haven't seen with your own eyes? Or any satellite data you haven't analyzed yourself?
2 replies →
Do I need to hold the opinion that water is wet for it to be factual?
To answer your question, if by climate change you refer to the dramatic post-industrialisation acceleration of warming and climate disturbances, the correct answer is "the overwhelming majority of existing evidence points to yes".
Is water wet though? It’s the substance that makes other things wet, but is it wet itself?
1 reply →
[dead]