This could be a science question or politics or general. Anyway. I have had two facebook discussions this week. One with a libertarian, who I eventually blocked. The other with a guy who ran an environmental education org all his life. One was about truth in general, then slid into global warming, the other about aspartame causing dementia, then slid into GMOs. Both of these people, polar opposites in intelligence and politics, claimed I didn’t know what science was. Both accused me of cherry picking data. I never even presented data, they just assumed that because I disagreed with them, I must be selecting my sources based on my own bias.
Anyone else get this?
Is there any hope for a world that doesn’t trust it’s smartest people? (Not me, the scientists)
I think the best policy is not to engage in serious discussion on social media.
Someone else said that, but I said this is not new. Not trusting science began in the 70’s. It’s just easier to track now. Demon Haunted World was full of stuff like this.
‘Science’ is a bit of an overall concept. It can mean anything from ‘established science’ to ‘everything a scientist says’. ‘Science’ can also mean anything ‘science’ has ever thought. And as you gave this thread the title ‘Truth’: grosso modo, one can say that established science presents truths. But everything a scientist says certainly doesn’t. And under pressure of the need of publishing, boost scientist’s egos, and a not quite justified belief that technology progressing will make everything better, science itself contributes to getting a bad name. It is also not easy for everyone to find meaning in life, where science demolishes all beliefs in a general, given meaning of life. This is more than many people can cope with, and they might prefer to believe things that cannot be scientifically proven, or even contradict science.
The problem as I see it is that established science gets snowed under for the public. Many see science as just another belief, promoted by certain interests (and partially they are right!), and then deny everything science has to say. So people can believe in homeopathy (“Science only sees what it can measure”), in the young earth, or that global warming is not happening: all examples of contradicting established science.
People who do not see the difference between established science, ongoing research, scientific speculations, and unjustified beliefs can always say that you are cherry picking data.
Yes, I am very worried too. A society that does not know the difference between facts, probabilities, beliefs and lies, cannot cope for its real problems.
Wow, I wanted to correct a typo in my previous post, but the software considers my posting suddenly as spam, I cannot edit it anymore at all. It hasn’t even a link in it! It’s getting worse and worse…
Wow, I wanted to correct a typo in my previous post, but the software considers my posting suddenly as spam, I cannot edit it anymore at all. It hasn't even a link in it! It's getting worse and worse...I've found I can do that sometimes, but not always. Not sure if it's a timing thing.
Good point on the “many see science as just another belief". Once you toss evidence, collected in a meticulous way, using cross checks, double blinds, repeated, statistical analysis to eliminate variables, etc. into the same bucket as “my mother said", it’s hard to get it back out. Arguments about some science that was wrong 200 years ago become relevant.
If that was it, I wouldn’t be so worried. Someone who completely misunderstands what science is can be educated. The ones that worry me are the ones who recognize the use and power of science in one field, usually the one they like, like clean air or global warming, but can’t see they aren’t applying the same standards to something they don’t like, like chemicals in food or pesticides. John Loftus coined the term “Outsiders Test for Faith", and I think there is a general name for it, other than its application to religion.
I've found I can do that sometimes, but not always. Not sure if it's a timing thing.Yeah, right. From home I could edit it now...
Someone who completely misunderstands what science is can be educated.The problem is most people don't want to be educated. They want to stick to their belief.
Someone who completely misunderstands what science is can be educated.The problem is most people don't want to be educated. They want to stick to their belief. That's a big problem, but I can identify it and deal with it.
Someone who completely misunderstands what science is can be educated.The problem is most people don't want to be educated. They want to stick to their belief. That's a big problem, but I can identify it and deal with it.A bit of a tangent, but I think some of that is by design. Certain groups thrive from chaos and uncertainty. The more they can create, the more they know most people will just give up and turn on the TV. I have to admit too that I'm starting to get in that group as I get older.
I’m new here and I felt that this is as good a place to start as any. After all, one would expect that inquiry should be more about ascertaining the truth than anything else. Not surprisingly however it seems to me that people often don’t have a solid understanding of the fundamentals about truth as a concept. So for the record, the context of truth I most often defer to is a philosophical version known as Correspondence ( The Correspondence Theory of Truth ).
Not going to disagree with you there Phenom (hope you don’t mind I shorten people’s usernames).
I had to develop my own sense of truth after experimenting with various non-workable systems earlier in life. It took a while to sort out the basic vocabulary, “fact”, “reality”, “probability”, and perhaps the biggest concept is the one in the title of your link, “theory”. I offhandedly said something about free will the other day and this guy went off on me about how he could disprove my theory. I shut him up by saying, “oh, sorry, I assumed that everyone here knew that we don’t know what consciousness is and that we were free to speculate and share our thoughts.” So, sometimes it’s a matter of agreeing we have limits to knowledge and establishing some background agreement on our degree of certainty. On the other hand, I frequently start “winning” a discussion, and suddenly the other person starts breaking down reality and claiming we don’t anything and can’t prove anything and can’t be sure we even exist. This is not a personal problem, Gary Johnson used this tactic in an interview and still received 3.3% of the vote.
Thanks for the reply, and it’s fine if you abbreviate my username. You make some good points. The thing that ties them together is that claims and theories tend to require a particular context in order to be properly conveyed and received as intended, and there are certainly different contexts to the concept of truth, just as there are with the question of what consciousness is, and what is meant by free will. No meaningful discussion or debate can happen unless participants are formulating the problem based on the same set of premises. It would therefore be very premature to claim one could disprove your theory unless one first understood how you look at it.
Wee humans are fraught with issues, and we do not have direct access to the truth. Recent developments in American politics have shed a whole new light on how propaganda works. Repetition is a key part of propaganda, and mimicry is the key agent within us which they access. We have mirror neurons. When I say the word ‘apple’ an apple pops into your head. I don’t mean any harm in this; it’s just a fact of linguistic communications. The degree to which we can communicate accurately without corruption of information could even be a sore point.
I have begun looking into the climate change deniers as a means of looking into my own assumptions about the truth. I do see some significant details that get wiped out in most discussions. Primarily the fact that water vapor is the strongest greenhouse gas, and that OCO is down in the 0.04 percent range; it just doesn’t get a fair mention or analysis. The planet is greening thanks to the added OCO, which plant life is in need of. The old theory of carbon competition is ignored. These details do not put me in a binary position; we exist on a continuum.
We have to treat the truth as inaccessible even while we seek it out. Whether it is politics or science, cause for an open mind is necessary, but that openness I think has to be coupled to skepticism. The weakest part of a chain is discovered by skepticism and it is those weak links which need mending. We are engaged in a progression. Some are arguably engaged in a digression.
The ability of humans to propagate false belief systems for thousands of years is securely established e.g. the Abrahamic religions. Modern human interactions are provably low grade for instance on the uncensored USENET. We are primates struggling to figure things out. We’ve had a lot of success, but how much is totally accurate; how much lays atop a foul basis? Science is cause for great skepticism. It is an accumulation; and the pile is rather large. If at the foundations something cracks what then? We’ve been regurgitating particle/wave duality now so that it becomes a modern assumption. That is wrong. When quantum computers fail to work then what?
'Science’ can also mean anything ‘science’ has ever thought. And as you gave this thread the title ‘Truth’: grosso modo, one can say that established science presents truths. But everything a scientist says certainly doesn’t.Responding to this and generally some of the other statements. When I say "science" or "scientific method", I'm not trying to bring in some specific claim or historical definition, rather just a few principles that can help everyday conversation. We all expect some level of evidence from others. If someone says it's raining, we don't run out and fact check them, but we know we could, so we don't have to. In the same sense, someone argued the other day that my graph of GDP over the last couple decades was manipulated by mainstream media. I pointed out how easy it would be for anyone to find a graph from 10 years ago and compare the numbers, so that just didn't make sense. They challenged me to go find the old graph.
That’s an extreme example, but less extremes happen all the time. People use the term “common sense”. I usually say that “sense” is not that common. Sometimes it is, but often it is used to mean a sense that something needs to fit their preconceived and flawed worldview or it’s false/fake/a lie. As in Trump must be the victim of a deep state conspiracy because all these indictments just don’t fit with their view of him as a good and loyal man. Or, one more straw won’t hurt anything because I’ve been using straws all my life and there are still sea turtles. It’s a failure to apply the principle of allowing your assumptions to be questioned if new data is presented.
Not necessarily resurrecting this old thread, but here's a general statement on truth and how to engage others in discussions thereof. Sort of relevant to some other threads.“Neither acquiescence in skepticism nor acquiescence in dogma is what education should produce. What it should produce is a belief that knowledge is attainable in a measure, though with difficulty; that much of what passes for knowledge at any given time is likely to be more or less mistaken, but that the mistakes can be rectified by care and industry. In acting upon our beliefs, we should be very cautious where a small error would mean disaster; nevertheless it is upon our beliefs that we must act. This state of mind is rather difficult: it requires a high degree of intellectual culture without emotional atrophy. But though difficult, it is not impossible; it is in fact the scientific temper. Knowledge, like other good things, is difficult, but not impossible; the dogmatist forgets the difficulty, the skeptic denies the possibility. Both are mistaken, and their errors, when widespread, produce social disaster.” – Bertrand Russell
I love the bottom line. By denying possibility, skeptics cut off the speculative nature of someone’s point. Sometimes, you have to do that, if their point is wacko as a faked moon landing or as dangerous as white supremacy. But at some point, those ideas must be engaged, in some way, or you end up with people driving their cars into groups of people because they are mad about not being heard.
I agree. That quote would make a good t-shirt or bumper sticker if it wasn’t so long.
The tough part is knowing if the other party is dealing in good faith or is simply stringing you along with no intention of considering your points and reasoning.
I am a big time advocate of the rational and a big time denouncer of all things supernatural, when it comes to seeking truth. But I sense that I am not a typical skeptic, because I have always been excited about data that doesn’t seem to fit with established orthodoxy, and by possibly new discoveries and innovations. So I think that I am not as quick as the typical skeptic, to refute what, at first glance, seems to fly in the face of established understanding.
That being said, I hate dogma. However, improper skepticism can itself be dogmatic. But, at least, it tends to be amenable to the scientific method. So other dogma tends to be MUCH worse. So I suspect that any ensuing social disasters of mistakes in reality have to do much more with the purely dogmatic than with the purely skeptical.
Btw, I really hate false equivalencies, Bertrand. So here’s a bumper sticker:
F#CK FALSE EQUIVALENCIES
When questions about cutting-edge-science or silly “what if’s” are tossed around for fun, then you can reign in your skepticism and let your imagination take the lead. But questions on here are often asked in a serious manner, so I think we should answer in the same way.
I don’t think any of us are denying the validity of valid questions. Only when repeated asking of the same debunked question happens, do we realize the other side never intended to have open communication, so we shut the door.