I’ve read dozens of articles like this and my complaint is always the same: “Just because we can’t know everything, doesn’t mean we can’t know anything.”
Yes, maybe a buffalo stepped on the thermometer. But the temperature was SOMETHING and just because you don’t trust your thermometer doesn’t mean the temperature is unknowable.
And I found the glorification of free speech at the end troubling. Is free speech good? Yes. Is it the greatest good? Not at all. To say we shouldn’t strive to know anything concretely because we might suppress free speech seems like sheer folly.
> Objects traveling 5,000 miles per hour and making 90-degree turns without slowing down have been recorded by radar that can only detect physical objects.
Really? Got links to more info? It amuses me that the blogger voices concerns over pop scientists omitting context from their claims, and then fails to include context for his own.
I was a bit confused by that tangent. By the title of the article I was hoping for a bit of psychological insight on how people react to facts in certain conversations and then suddenly I’m asking “is the author trying to convince me aliens are flying space craft now?”
The rest was a bit of a ramble as well. The main tenets of the fact trust, context, and the third one seemed interesting though.
Yeah the philosophy is a bit cray. Trust and curation are the key words. Those were smart to point out. Curation is great. Folks only let those they respect most do curation for them. It's about the most esteemed role there is. It makes collective information processing scalable. Omitting details when filtering information through layers of humans is the point. Transparency enables good curators to address any concerns relating to that. For example, programming and mathematics have pretty much already invented the blockchain of facts the author is describing, with things like GNU Make or Zermelo–Fraenkel axioms. The latter is a great way to have more depth if you think normal arithmetic alone isn't factual enough. Some people even use math for theology with theorem provers like coq, but the conclusions they come to only really apply afaik if you believe in certain assumptions like the ability to divide good from non-good.
I think this author is in fact correct that science isn’t typically concerned with absolute, eternal truths but rather circumstantial truths or whatever hypothesis best maps onto available evidence.
One of the hallmarks of critical thinking is being able to move past black-and-white reasoning. Critical thinking entails comprehension of the ambiguity and gray area present within most debates. Any individual who feels as though there exist ideas which are irrefutable even in the face of many other similarly viable explanations is clearly not thinking rationally.
I’m sure radar has indeed recorded objects in the air going very fast and turning rapidly, but as mentioned in the article, there is likely additional context which has been omitted. Thus, I don’t feel any need to fact check this individual, as there is no need to verify such a vague claim which lacks almost any context whatsoever. Hopefully both author and reader understand that claims made without context or citations are not meant to be interpreted as authoritative, definitive examples.
I LOLed at the attempt to prove that facts do not persuade by linking to a bunch of psychology studies. And not one reference to Aristotle? However, the author's general thrust is correct, as anybody could tell you.
There's centuries of deliberation about what knowledge is, how we can obtain such knowledge and what its value is. Of course, the author ignores all of that and tries to "reinvent the wheel", badly.
Apart from the (true, but not very original) observations that a) you can easily mislead with decontextualised facts, b) trust is necessary in a world where you can't verify everything yourself and c) people are not necessarily persuaded by facts, the article doesn't seem to have much content. He also completely lost me when it seems he's trying to make a case for the existence of UFOs. In an article that describes the importance of trust, I find it a bit ironic that he's basically coming off as a crank.
But more importantly, this article has a decidedly anti-science vibe. And while it is important to be careful with science and understand its flaws and limitations, historically it has again and again shown to be the best tool for advancing our understanding of the world.
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[ 1.9 ms ] story [ 25.5 ms ] threadYes, maybe a buffalo stepped on the thermometer. But the temperature was SOMETHING and just because you don’t trust your thermometer doesn’t mean the temperature is unknowable.
And I found the glorification of free speech at the end troubling. Is free speech good? Yes. Is it the greatest good? Not at all. To say we shouldn’t strive to know anything concretely because we might suppress free speech seems like sheer folly.
Really? Got links to more info? It amuses me that the blogger voices concerns over pop scientists omitting context from their claims, and then fails to include context for his own.
The rest was a bit of a ramble as well. The main tenets of the fact trust, context, and the third one seemed interesting though.
One of the hallmarks of critical thinking is being able to move past black-and-white reasoning. Critical thinking entails comprehension of the ambiguity and gray area present within most debates. Any individual who feels as though there exist ideas which are irrefutable even in the face of many other similarly viable explanations is clearly not thinking rationally.
I’m sure radar has indeed recorded objects in the air going very fast and turning rapidly, but as mentioned in the article, there is likely additional context which has been omitted. Thus, I don’t feel any need to fact check this individual, as there is no need to verify such a vague claim which lacks almost any context whatsoever. Hopefully both author and reader understand that claims made without context or citations are not meant to be interpreted as authoritative, definitive examples.
There's centuries of deliberation about what knowledge is, how we can obtain such knowledge and what its value is. Of course, the author ignores all of that and tries to "reinvent the wheel", badly.
Apart from the (true, but not very original) observations that a) you can easily mislead with decontextualised facts, b) trust is necessary in a world where you can't verify everything yourself and c) people are not necessarily persuaded by facts, the article doesn't seem to have much content. He also completely lost me when it seems he's trying to make a case for the existence of UFOs. In an article that describes the importance of trust, I find it a bit ironic that he's basically coming off as a crank.
But more importantly, this article has a decidedly anti-science vibe. And while it is important to be careful with science and understand its flaws and limitations, historically it has again and again shown to be the best tool for advancing our understanding of the world.