It varies widely depending on a combination of whether it impacts me directly, whether it contradicts or is inconsistent with information I have already accepted as fact, and the source. The source includes being reliable and if the fact could be something that serves the source's self interest as that would require corroboration.
Until recently, if NASA tells me their current data shows that black holes exist at the center of a galaxy I take their word for it. They have been consistently reliable for decades and their entire mission is about increasing knowledge and sharing it with the entire world. With recent administrative changes I am more skeptical and wouldn't trust something that contradicts prior scientific discoveries without corroboration from an external agency like the European Space Agency. I would take the ESA at their word currently.
If a for profit company says anything I want corroboration from a neutral 3rd party. They have too much incentive to lie or mislead to be trusted on their own.
Something from a stranger that fits into prior knowledge might be accepted at face value or I might double check some other source. Depends on how important it is to me and whether believing that would lead to any obvious negative outcome. I will probably also double check if it is interesting enough to want to check, and I'll use skepticism as an excuse.
That covers actual factual stuff that could possibly be corroborated by a third party. Facts like the Earth orbits the sun or Puerto Rico is a US territory type stuff.
Then there are other things that can be factual but difficult to determine and that is a combination of experience and current knowledge, plus whether believing it would be a benefit or negative. If someone tells me the ice isn't thick enough based on their judgement I will treat it as a fact and not go out on it unless I had some reason not to believe them. If they told me apples were found to be unhealthy I would check other sources.
is it a fun fact that impacts nothing? i'll accept it as fact immediately and without question
is it a fact that has some weight to it? i'll probably double check and if i find a reliable source that also claims it to be fact i'll accept it (if i'm reading about it from a reliable source i will accept it immediately)
is it a fact that contradicts my current beliefs/understanding of the world? i'll do some research on it, check if there's any recent articles like "that thing you thought was right? is not!", and depending on the nature of the fact think about why it's been debunked and how that changed my perception on the world
I have a model of everything. Everything I am, my understanding of the world, it all fits together like a web. New ideas fit by their relationship to what I already know - maybe I'm missing nodes to fit it in and I can't accept it
If it fits the model well, I'll tentatively accept it without any evidence. If it conflicts with my model, I'll need enough proof to outweigh the parts it conflicts with. It has to be enough to displace the past evidence
In practice, this usually works pretty well. I handle new concepts well. But if you feed me something that fits... Well, I'll believe it until there's a contradiction
Like my neighbors (as a teen) told me their kid had a predisposition for autism, and the load on his immune system from too many vaccines as once caused him to be nonverbal. That made sense, that's a coherent interaction of processes I knew a bit about. My parents were there and didn't challenge it at the time
Then, someone scoffing and walking away at bringing it up made me look it up. It made sense, but the evidence didn't support it at all. So my mind was changed with seconds of research, because a story is less evidence than a study (it wasn't until years later that I learned the full story behind that)
On the other hand, today someone with decades more experience on a system was adamant I was wrong about an intermittent bug. I'm still convinced I'm right, but I have no evidence... We spent an hour doing experiments, I realized the experiments couldn't prove it one way or the other, I explained that and by the end he was convinced.
It's not the amount of evidence, it's the quality of it.
I have a model of everything. Everything I am, my understanding of the world, it all fits together like a web. New ideas fit by their relationship to what I already know - maybe I'm missing nodes to fit it in and I can't accept it
Same, and I would add the clarification that I have a model for when and why people lie, tell the truth, or sincerely make false statements (mistake, having been lied to themselves, changed circumstances, etc.).
So that information comes in through a filter of both the subject matter, the speaker, and my model of the speaker's own expertise and motivations, and all of those factors mixed together.
So as an example, let's say my friend tells me that there's a new Chinese restaurant in town that's really good. I have to ask myself whether the friend's taste in Chinese restaurants is reliable (and maybe I build that model based on proxies, like friend's taste in restaurants in general, and how similar those tastes are with my own). But if it turns out that my friend is actually taking money to promote that restaurant, then the credibility of that recommendation plummets.
(it wasn’t until years later that I learned the full story behind that)
Okay, I can't be the only one that's kinda curious about your trainwreck neighbors. Obviously they fell down a conspiracy rabbit hole, but was there more?
Sorry to disappoint, I meant I learned the story behind the myth of vaccines causing autism. They seemed to be pretty good parents, before they moved away their kid was often outside on his bike.... He seemed happy and healthy to me.
We had a significant age gap so we never interacted, but he was on the sidewalk frequently and never in the street when I was driving... Take from that what you will
No? I don't care if the whole world is wrong, some evidence is strong enough to convince me forever, even if it's subjective
Quality is all that matters. One incontrovertible fact I can poke and prod myself means more than millions of subjective accounts. Or even all of science - I'll rearrange my entire model around a new fact if it's compelling enough
Sure. If it fills a gap in my model, I don't need any proof at all. Why would I? It just makes sense. Of course I'm going to tentatively fit it in
And if a study convincingly disproves it, I'll just as quickly discard the tentative idea. Why wouldn't I? It made sense, but it didn't math out.
But this is all in the context of my model. It's a big web of corroboration
You can't convince me global warming isn't happening, because I'm watching it in real time. No amount of studies are doing to do more than inform the facts of my lived experience... I'm the primary source, I was there
Oh, that would fit in my model perfectly. Because it's another world... Obviously. My model isn't disproven if I wake up in another world, my model is just physically removed from my new world. Universal things still apply until they don't, but there's no conflict
If global warming hits 2.5C then flips around to an ice age....I don't understand it, but it's happened. My old observations aren't disproven, new ones disprove the theories around them
Squaring that circle would take effort, but if it's true it's true, and truth sometimes takes time to understand
Hume had something like the wise apportion their confidence to the evidence, and Carl Sagan's extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence can apply. So if those are true the quality and type of data is going to depend on the claim of fact (friend says they bought a dog vs a dragon), and the amount of evidence depends on the claim and your general standard of evidence. If you're lowering or raising your standards for a specific claim that's usually going to mean there's a bias for or against it.
It honestly depends more on the source to me. I'd like to claim to rely on data but life is short and there is no way I can verify even a fraction of all the truths I have come to accept.
It takes a lot for me to accept something as fact, but I'm okay with living my life on a combination of likelihoods, reasonable plausibilities, and vibes
Yeh it is.
Proving that a scientific theory is wrong means we don't understand enough about the thing. And we know we need to look at other theories about the thing.
Proving things wrong as well as failed hypothesis is as important (even if it is disappointing) as proving things correct and successful hypothesis. It rules the theory out, and guides further scientific study.
With published papers, other scientists can hopefully see what the publishing scientists missed.
Scientists can also repeat experiments of successful papers to confirm the papers conclusion, and perhaps even make further observations that can support further studies.
ill tell you this, the amount of data would require for anyone accept a statement or idea as fact is related to their emotional assessment of the idea. See it all the time with trump supporters that think that trump is actually fighting to cut tax on overtime pay simple because he said it on the trail and there no evidence (and they have no evidence) that is happening, on the other hand it would take an infinite amount of evidence that trump took bribes even as he openly appointed Elon after spending millions of dollars.
so its weird that you have to propagandize the facts just to get people anywhere near a reasonable level of skeptism.
but for me I just say anything is valid unless I know how its wrong, which is limbo of acceptance then afterwards it can become a scoreboard where for and against. maybe a source doesn't 100% line up with a statement, hell even video/audio evidence can be incongruent with a statement (as in its similar to what's said but doesn't back up a statement). I think the claim that Floyd overdosed but the video doesn't show a overdose from opioids, so you'd have to rule out overdose simple because video doesn't match the description of an overdose.
it wouldn't take much, generally new information has to be consistent with what I know. the hard part is understanding the new information. no one is randomly disprove gravity or that things have mass, but someone can prove to me how a myth is meant to be interpreted for the intended audience
There are very few pieces of knowledge that I'd consider a fact. Rather, I tend to see those as the best current knowledge that might turn out to be false in the future. The fact of consciousness is among the only things in the entire universe that I see as absolutely being true. Pretty much anything else can just be an illusion.
Because consciousness is where illusions appear. The unconscious mind can’t experience illusions.
I’m using Thomas Nagel’s definition of consciousness: the fact of experience - that it feels like something to be from a subjective point of view.
Even if we’re living in a simulation and literally everything is fake, what remains undeniable is that it feels like something to be simulated. I’d argue that this is the only thing in the entire universe that cannot be an illusion.
“Unconsciousness” as a clinical term is different from the absence of consciousness in the philosophical or phenomenological sense.
A sleeping person may appear unconscious to an outside observer, but from the subjective point of view, they’re not - because dreaming feels like something. A better example of what I mean by unconsciousness is general anesthesia. That doesn’t feel like anything. One moment you’re lying in the operating room counting backwards, and the next you’re in the recovery room. There’s no sense of time passing, no dreams, nothing in between - it’s just a gap.
Thomas Nagel explains this idea in What Is It Like to Be a Bat? by saying that if bats are conscious, then trading places with one wouldn’t be like the lights going out - it would feel like something to be a bat. But if you switched places with a rock, it likely wouldn’t feel like anything at all. It would be indistinguishable from dying - because there’s no subjectivity, no point of view, no experience happening.
A better example of what I mean by unconsciousness is general anesthesia. That doesn’t feel like anything. One moment you’re lying in the operating room counting backwards, and the next you’re in the recovery room. There’s no sense of time passing, no dreams, nothing in between - it’s just a gap.
I am not disagreeing. I am providing you something that demonstrates the premise you built your idea on is false.
I have absolutely no idea why you are being so weird about this since obviously if the spring does not exist then it cannot be drunk from. However, what you are working bizarrely hard to go out of your way to miss is that, regardless of whether the spring itself exists in objective reality, the experience of seeing it has objective existence.
Phrased in a different way: if you see something that looks like a spring in the desert, then that might not mean that you will be able to drink from it, but you can be certain that, in that moment, you are seeing something that looks like a spring in the desert.
Things that are considered facts in today's world can be disproven by new experiments and observations (recreated through experimentation and after adequate peer review).
So for me, it depends on what is being evaluated. 2+2 is a fact. Exact age of the moon might be up for more debate.
Only if you completely redefine some aspect of the equation. You'd have to define "5" to actually mean "4" or change the meaning of "+" or "=" in some way that changes the operation. 2+2=4 isn't just an abstract statement, it's based on the way the physical world works. If you have 2 apples, and then I give you 2 more, you don't suddenly have 5 apples because we all decided 2+2=5.
Orwell's meaning in 1984 wasn't about belief changing the world, it was about the power of brainwashing and how fascism demands obedience.
You have 2 apples. I give you 2 more. How many apples do you have? Unless you redefine what the numbers or the operators mean, then you now have 4 apples. That's a truth that is evident in the world and can be verified. That's what a fact is.
He didn't suggest we could never determine the age of the moon. He said that science refines it's methods and gathers new information, and so we may change our estimate of its age based on new evidence.
If it's a really reliable source and sounds plausible, very little. Iran hit a hospital in Israel recently.
If it's some random person and sounds plausible, probably many repetitions from unrelated people in unrelated contexts, with some time as "word is" after a couple or few mentions. Airport security is theater and misses actual weapons all the time. I guess I should add the caveat that if it's something easily refuted like "TSA hires out of malls" it gets promoted to fact faster, because of Cunningham's law.
If it sounds implausible, a lot. Like, it might be a thing I painstakingly confirm or deny over the course of years. Thermodynamics is always explained in a way that has massive gaping logical holes. It obviously empirically works, but a rigorous derivation without any sneaky tricks would probably imply a proof of P!=NP - and it took me years to work my way through enough papers and literature to confirm that.
If it's a source or type of source with a history of making up the sort of thing they're saying, infinite - it will be all noise regardless of how much data there is.
Laying it out like this, I clearly put a lot of emphasis on the motivation and past track record of sources. There's so many things to see and measure, far too many, and there's also lies and mistakes, so I guess one has to. That's probably been true since the stone age, and probably drove some human evolution, although it's intensified quite a lot in recent history.
Note that even facts are still subject to skepticism, discussion and revision. Absolute certainty it it's own beast, and it's not a universally agreed-on fact that it even exists.
I remember there was one fact I was really beating my head on; A dishwasher should always have some food or other gunk on the dishes before starting the machine, otherwise the detergent will attack the coloring on the dishes instead.
How has no company solved this problem? It makes no sense. Many people do wash their kitchenware so it doesn't stink up the entire dishwasher if it has been sitting for a while... idk.
I would be happy to hear if anyone can help confirm or dismiss this.
Phosphates were banned in dishwasher detergents in 2011, so most of the name brand companies switched to enzyme-based cleaners that use amylase and protease, which dissolve starches and proteins, respectively. And then some traditional detergent, which allows oil and water to mix, washes it all away.
The nature of the enzymes are that as soon as they've broken up the starch or protein, they survive the reaction and can happily move onto the next starch or protein molecule. So if they're overactive, without enough targets, then any portion of the dishes that are sensitive to that particular cleaner is going to get a higher "dose" of that cleaner working specifically at it.
How would the dish soap not "attack" the pigments on the crockery not covered by gunk, do you need to make sure that the plate is covered in an even spread? It's a desurficant, iirc, with hydrophobic molecules to get into molecular scale sized spaces. Maybe unvarnished crockery could lose the colour... But eating off that and washing it wouldn't be the best choice either.
Also, most dishwashers instruct you to rinse the worst off in the sink before loading. And we've followed that and most of our china still has good colours, the one that doesn't I know was left in direct sunlight for over a summer.
I have heard this before and as far as I was ever able to find it is a bunch of bunk that seemed to originate from damage done by a recalled detergent.
If I can find three reputable sources that say the same thing, I feel pretty confident in accepting it as fact. The real trick is finding reputable sources. Media Bias Fact Check is really helpful for this.
Have you ever tried the 1 Left, 1 center, 1 right source when looking into something? I try to do this myself when I have the time and can find the articles.
How do you define the centre? Do you account for existing wide-spread social biases? E.g. systemic racism, or the neoliberal belief that we can have infinite growth on a finite planet?
They're referring to the shifting variance between political sides and the range expressed between them. The Overton Window usually.
The Overton window is the range of subjects and arguments politically acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time. It is also known as the window of discourse. The key to the concept is that the window changes over time; it can shift, or shrink or expand. It exemplifies "the slow evolution of societal values and norms".
Outside of this window you still have Left and Right, but they're the more extreme beliefs that the general populace doesn't currently accept. The window shifting over time means something that would have been considered absolutely insane 20 years ago, could be entirely mainstream now.
A current example would be federal deployment of the military to handle local protests when there is no declared State of Emergency and local government doesn't need or want assistance.
But left and right aren't absolute positions, they change in time. E.g. democrats now hold a lot of similar positions to what the republicans held in the 1980s (and also a lot of different ones).
Left and right are also a unidimensional approximation of a multidimensional value space.. E.g. most people on the left disagree with nearly everything Marjorie Taylor Greene says, but they agree with her that the US should not be supporting Israel's war on Iran.
There are also people on the left AND the right that oppose global economic liberalisation, but what is often called the "centre" supports it - clearly not a "middle" stance.
So how can you meaningfully define what is led and what is right, for the purpose of your reading?
That it also changes in time and is not absolute. And also, in many ways, that it does it does not exist (in the sense that the "centre" in one dimension might be correlated with extremes in another)
They're incredibly pro-Israel and anti-anything else in the middle east. Reputable information gets a lower reliability rating from them "just because".
Their problem is that any news agency in the middle east is automatically "untrustworthy" with quotes like "they haven't been found to report false stories, but we still give them an untrustworthy rating".
I already gave you the examples, I said that they unfairly represent middle eastern news as untrustworthy. Or are you here to nitpick and "um ackthcshually"?
It is itself extremely biased, you believed an authority that isn’t neutral.
Their problem is that any news agency in the middle east is automatically “untrustworthy” with quotes like “they haven’t been found to report false stories, but we still give them an untrustworthy rating”.
I already gave you the examples, I said that they unfairly represent middle eastern news as untrustworthy. Or are you here to nitpick and “um ackthcshually”?
You have provided 0 examples of a middle eastern news source that is unfairly ranked.
Are you going to keep being combative and waste both of our time refusing to answer a simple good faith question?
Al Jazeera has been a valuable voice for the Palestinians as most Western media favors Israel. While most of its reporting has been factual in covering the conflict they have demonstrated one-sided reporting that tends to denigrate Israel.
Mixed for factual reporting. They cite 2 articles that they have found to be false since forever. They complain about "loaded language". Yet they say "straight news has minimal bias". Then they give Times of Israel "high credibility" and speak how unbiased their language is, giving the same examples as they gave in the Al Jazeera one for "biased language".
High credibility is 2 "levels" higher than the middle of the field "mixed".
None. I believe everything. Especially the contradictory parts. It's one of the powers granted to me by my true nature, revealed through the one true Slackmaster, J.R. "Bob" Dobbs.
Like, i found this youtube channel from the video "mom founf the yaoi". And now its latest video is about the rapture? Its just morse code, this description, and 2 links in the comments.
As soon as i get home, im yt-dlp this channel to preserve this.
The bit where she's distracted by her skinny arm right after saying she can't distract herself makes me pretty sure it's parody. It's very well done, though.
Depends how interesting or important or complex the thing is. If you tell me that your foot is 25cm long, I'll believe you without question. If you tell me it's 52cm, then you're going to have a hard time convincing me (unless you've already convinced me that you're a talking kangaroo).
This is why it's much more important to be skeptical of people's views on political issues too, because the situations are always complex, and important to different people in different ways.
I'll colloquially use the word "fact" for extremely well supported claims, but in my head the only actual "facts" are mathematical derivations. Evidence supports the veracity of a claim, and a claim with a lot of evidence gets a tentative place in my world model, but any of those claims can be refuted by sufficient counter-evidence
Depends on the source and the weight of the claim. My fattest friend tells me the new Italian place slaps? Fact. The smartest person I know tells me there's a newly discovered planet? Worth looking into if it comes from them, but I'm skeptical.
I would say, a good starting point would be a few examples of those so-called facts and their corresponding data.
Half-jokingly, I have little doubt I could find a lot of data demonstrating the earth is flat on flat-earth.org or whatever flat-earthers main website is called. But no matter the amount of data I would find there that still would not cut it as far as I'm concerned to accept their certainty as a fact—Incidentally, I also just answered your first question: it's not just the quantity of data, it's also its trustworthiness that should matter ;)
I keep hearing "it isn't the quantity..." and I do not understand why it isn't seen as just as important as trustworthiness of source because even the best source needs a high amount of data to back up a claim.
On the topic of flat earthers, did you ever see the video of the guy who tried to demonstrate the earth was flat and proved it was round? The look on his face was priceless. haha
I keep hearing “it isn’t the quantity…” and I do not understand why it isn’t seen as just as important as trustworthiness of source because even the best source needs a high amount of data to back up a claim.
consider my flat-earthers example: the trustworthiness of the source(s) is at least as important. If I told you my pseudo is 'Libb' you can bet that it is indeed so, even if that just me saying it. And that would remain true if, out of nowhere, 100s of people started telling you my pseudo was in reality 'Mickey' or 'Gertrude'. I would still be Libb. Conclusion? All by myself, against that hypotheticla large crowd, I'm still a more reliable source of info concerning my identity.
On the topic of flat earthers, did you ever see the video of the guy who tried to demonstrate the earth was flat and proved it was round? The look on his face was priceless. haha
No, and I'm almost wishing to see it. Almost.
I must admit the rise of flat earth theory came as a shock to me. I always have had a sweet spot for absurd theories but I could not imagine people taking those seriously. But maybe that's just me being manipulated/lobotomized by the government? As a matter of fact, I'm also a pro-vax and that may explain a lot :p
consider my flat-earthers example: the trustworthiness of the source(s) is at least as important. If I told you my pseudo is ‘Libb’ you can bet that it is indeed so, even if that just me saying it. And that would remain true if, out of nowhere, 100s of people started telling you my pseudo was in reality ‘Mickey’ or ‘Gertrude’. I would still be Libb. Conclusion? All by myself, against that hypotheticla large crowd, I’m still a more reliable source of info concerning my identity.
The trustworthiness is absolutely important, and just as important to me, as quantity. The point I was making is it seems that a lot of people in the thread have been underrating the importance of quantity and over rating the importance of source quality. Even the most reputable sources can be wrong, especially in frontier sciences, which leads to a lot of retractions and rewrites.
Using your example, you could be lying.
No, and I’m almost wishing to see it. Almost.
It isn't worth hunting down, but worth a watch if you stumble across it. haha
I must admit the rise of flat earth theory came as a shock to me. I always have had a sweet spot for absurd theories but I could not imagine people taking those seriously. But maybe that’s just me being manipulated/lobotomized by the government? As a matter of fact, I’m also a pro-vax and that may explain a lot :p
It came as a shock to me as well. I enjoy reading about the absurd ideas people have in their heads, and I get why people believe in them. It makes sense to them, and they rely on nothing but personal observation and limited knowledge to form beliefs. They were failed as children in my opinion.
I too got my microchips and am possibly being manipulated by the government. Which one? Who knows. Monies on the US. lol
True that. It's even more interesting considering 'Libb' is not my real name, just the one I fancy using online. But I would say that it's beside the point of your question (which was not about the possibility one would be intentionally telling lies, just how much data makes a 'fact' reliable), still, it's obviously related.
But then... considering that for some undisclosed reason you could not get access to more (source of) info, how would you decide if I say the truth about my name or not, when at the same time next to me some people (more than one) are claiming I'm a liar and that my name is Gertrude? Maybe that can't be decided? Or that should not be? Or mayb the dude claiming his name should be given some extra credit? Or maybe not (I may say I'm but I doubt Elon Musk will admit I'm his natural son and that I should therefore be entitled to a part of his huge piles of money, plus change for the trauma I endured ;)
It varies widely depending on a combination of whether it impacts me directly, whether it contradicts or is inconsistent with information I have already accepted as fact, and the source. The source includes being reliable and if the fact could be something that serves the source's self interest as that would require corroboration.
Until recently, if NASA tells me their current data shows that black holes exist at the center of a galaxy I take their word for it. They have been consistently reliable for decades and their entire mission is about increasing knowledge and sharing it with the entire world. With recent administrative changes I am more skeptical and wouldn't trust something that contradicts prior scientific discoveries without corroboration from an external agency like the European Space Agency. I would take the ESA at their word currently.
If a for profit company says anything I want corroboration from a neutral 3rd party. They have too much incentive to lie or mislead to be trusted on their own.
Something from a stranger that fits into prior knowledge might be accepted at face value or I might double check some other source. Depends on how important it is to me and whether believing that would lead to any obvious negative outcome. I will probably also double check if it is interesting enough to want to check, and I'll use skepticism as an excuse.
That covers actual factual stuff that could possibly be corroborated by a third party. Facts like the Earth orbits the sun or Puerto Rico is a US territory type stuff.
Then there are other things that can be factual but difficult to determine and that is a combination of experience and current knowledge, plus whether believing it would be a benefit or negative. If someone tells me the ice isn't thick enough based on their judgement I will treat it as a fact and not go out on it unless I had some reason not to believe them. If they told me apples were found to be unhealthy I would check other sources.
Thank you for such a detailed answer.
Reading it once on social media
Hearing it in a YouTube short linked by a one day old account
I think this applies to vastly more of us than are comfortable admitting
Yes, but only if it matches my current beliefs.
It depends. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
is it a fun fact that impacts nothing? i'll accept it as fact immediately and without question
is it a fact that has some weight to it? i'll probably double check and if i find a reliable source that also claims it to be fact i'll accept it (if i'm reading about it from a reliable source i will accept it immediately)
is it a fact that contradicts my current beliefs/understanding of the world? i'll do some research on it, check if there's any recent articles like "that thing you thought was right? is not!", and depending on the nature of the fact think about why it's been debunked and how that changed my perception on the world
I have a model of everything. Everything I am, my understanding of the world, it all fits together like a web. New ideas fit by their relationship to what I already know - maybe I'm missing nodes to fit it in and I can't accept it
If it fits the model well, I'll tentatively accept it without any evidence. If it conflicts with my model, I'll need enough proof to outweigh the parts it conflicts with. It has to be enough to displace the past evidence
In practice, this usually works pretty well. I handle new concepts well. But if you feed me something that fits... Well, I'll believe it until there's a contradiction
Like my neighbors (as a teen) told me their kid had a predisposition for autism, and the load on his immune system from too many vaccines as once caused him to be nonverbal. That made sense, that's a coherent interaction of processes I knew a bit about. My parents were there and didn't challenge it at the time
Then, someone scoffing and walking away at bringing it up made me look it up. It made sense, but the evidence didn't support it at all. So my mind was changed with seconds of research, because a story is less evidence than a study (it wasn't until years later that I learned the full story behind that)
On the other hand, today someone with decades more experience on a system was adamant I was wrong about an intermittent bug. I'm still convinced I'm right, but I have no evidence... We spent an hour doing experiments, I realized the experiments couldn't prove it one way or the other, I explained that and by the end he was convinced.
It's not the amount of evidence, it's the quality of it.
Same, and I would add the clarification that I have a model for when and why people lie, tell the truth, or sincerely make false statements (mistake, having been lied to themselves, changed circumstances, etc.).
So that information comes in through a filter of both the subject matter, the speaker, and my model of the speaker's own expertise and motivations, and all of those factors mixed together.
So as an example, let's say my friend tells me that there's a new Chinese restaurant in town that's really good. I have to ask myself whether the friend's taste in Chinese restaurants is reliable (and maybe I build that model based on proxies, like friend's taste in restaurants in general, and how similar those tastes are with my own). But if it turns out that my friend is actually taking money to promote that restaurant, then the credibility of that recommendation plummets.
Okay, I can't be the only one that's kinda curious about your trainwreck neighbors. Obviously they fell down a conspiracy rabbit hole, but was there more?
Sorry to disappoint, I meant I learned the story behind the myth of vaccines causing autism. They seemed to be pretty good parents, before they moved away their kid was often outside on his bike.... He seemed happy and healthy to me.
We had a significant age gap so we never interacted, but he was on the sidewalk frequently and never in the street when I was driving... Take from that what you will
Quality evidence has an inherent quantity wouldn't you say?
No? I don't care if the whole world is wrong, some evidence is strong enough to convince me forever, even if it's subjective
Quality is all that matters. One incontrovertible fact I can poke and prod myself means more than millions of subjective accounts. Or even all of science - I'll rearrange my entire model around a new fact if it's compelling enough
One quality study is enough to convince you of something, even if it has never been reproduced or reviewed?
Sure. If it fills a gap in my model, I don't need any proof at all. Why would I? It just makes sense. Of course I'm going to tentatively fit it in
And if a study convincingly disproves it, I'll just as quickly discard the tentative idea. Why wouldn't I? It made sense, but it didn't math out.
But this is all in the context of my model. It's a big web of corroboration
You can't convince me global warming isn't happening, because I'm watching it in real time. No amount of studies are doing to do more than inform the facts of my lived experience... I'm the primary source, I was there
What if you wake up from the Matrix and it turns out the world actually descended into an ice age?
I mean, it's a silly, kinda extreme scenario, but we're talking about big picture stuff and you can't ever convince me would cover it as well.
Oh, that would fit in my model perfectly. Because it's another world... Obviously. My model isn't disproven if I wake up in another world, my model is just physically removed from my new world. Universal things still apply until they don't, but there's no conflict
If global warming hits 2.5C then flips around to an ice age....I don't understand it, but it's happened. My old observations aren't disproven, new ones disprove the theories around them
Squaring that circle would take effort, but if it's true it's true, and truth sometimes takes time to understand
Hume had something like the wise apportion their confidence to the evidence, and Carl Sagan's extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence can apply. So if those are true the quality and type of data is going to depend on the claim of fact (friend says they bought a dog vs a dragon), and the amount of evidence depends on the claim and your general standard of evidence. If you're lowering or raising your standards for a specific claim that's usually going to mean there's a bias for or against it.
tl;dr 42 pieces of data
It honestly depends more on the source to me. I'd like to claim to rely on data but life is short and there is no way I can verify even a fraction of all the truths I have come to accept.
A couple kilobites, minimum.
It takes a lot for me to accept something as fact, but I'm okay with living my life on a combination of likelihoods, reasonable plausibilities, and vibes
Facts are overrated
Facts are hard to confirm, bullshit tends to reveal itself.
So I have try not to cling to tightly to any given "fact", in case new evidence arrives.
That said, is can be surprisingly easy to navigate many parts of life simply by avoiding confirmed bullshit.
It isn't quantity. It is the quality and logical reasoning.
I would argue that quantity is just as important as quality and logical reasoning. The Triforce of Science, if you will.
really depends on the source and if it makes sense in the first place.
A sufficient amount
It's not so much the amount as the quality.
when science backs it up.
What happens when "science" backs up two opposing ideas with sufficient evidence and logic to make either seem plausible?
Have you got an example?
Off the top of my head string theory is a good example of numerous competing hypothesis that seem plausible given the data.
Then the science isn't done evaluating the opposing ideas. That's the beauty of science, it can be proven wrong and still work.
How can Science be proven wrong and still work? That is not at all how Science works.
Yeh it is.
Proving that a scientific theory is wrong means we don't understand enough about the thing. And we know we need to look at other theories about the thing.
Proving things wrong as well as failed hypothesis is as important (even if it is disappointing) as proving things correct and successful hypothesis. It rules the theory out, and guides further scientific study.
With published papers, other scientists can hopefully see what the publishing scientists missed.
Scientists can also repeat experiments of successful papers to confirm the papers conclusion, and perhaps even make further observations that can support further studies.
You may want to read what I said and try again.
Science rules!
I'm not sure how I would even quantify this.
But I could qualify this: having a consensus across multiple trusted sources.
ill tell you this, the amount of data would require for anyone accept a statement or idea as fact is related to their emotional assessment of the idea. See it all the time with trump supporters that think that trump is actually fighting to cut tax on overtime pay simple because he said it on the trail and there no evidence (and they have no evidence) that is happening, on the other hand it would take an infinite amount of evidence that trump took bribes even as he openly appointed Elon after spending millions of dollars.
so its weird that you have to propagandize the facts just to get people anywhere near a reasonable level of skeptism.
but for me I just say anything is valid unless I know how its wrong, which is limbo of acceptance then afterwards it can become a scoreboard where for and against. maybe a source doesn't 100% line up with a statement, hell even video/audio evidence can be incongruent with a statement (as in its similar to what's said but doesn't back up a statement). I think the claim that Floyd overdosed but the video doesn't show a overdose from opioids, so you'd have to rule out overdose simple because video doesn't match the description of an overdose.
it wouldn't take much, generally new information has to be consistent with what I know. the hard part is understanding the new information. no one is randomly disprove gravity or that things have mass, but someone can prove to me how a myth is meant to be interpreted for the intended audience
There are very few pieces of knowledge that I'd consider a fact. Rather, I tend to see those as the best current knowledge that might turn out to be false in the future. The fact of consciousness is among the only things in the entire universe that I see as absolutely being true. Pretty much anything else can just be an illusion.
How do you know consciousness is "true" and not also an illusion created by the brain?
Because consciousness is where illusions appear. The unconscious mind can’t experience illusions.
I’m using Thomas Nagel’s definition of consciousness: the fact of experience - that it feels like something to be from a subjective point of view.
Even if we’re living in a simulation and literally everything is fake, what remains undeniable is that it feels like something to be simulated. I’d argue that this is the only thing in the entire universe that cannot be an illusion.
How do humans dream?
“Unconsciousness” as a clinical term is different from the absence of consciousness in the philosophical or phenomenological sense.
A sleeping person may appear unconscious to an outside observer, but from the subjective point of view, they’re not - because dreaming feels like something. A better example of what I mean by unconsciousness is general anesthesia. That doesn’t feel like anything. One moment you’re lying in the operating room counting backwards, and the next you’re in the recovery room. There’s no sense of time passing, no dreams, nothing in between - it’s just a gap.
Thomas Nagel explains this idea in What Is It Like to Be a Bat? by saying that if bats are conscious, then trading places with one wouldn’t be like the lights going out - it would feel like something to be a bat. But if you switched places with a rock, it likely wouldn’t feel like anything at all. It would be indistinguishable from dying - because there’s no subjectivity, no point of view, no experience happening.
Some studies on dreams under anesthesia.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4970206/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5668036/
What do you disagree with here exactly?
I am not disagreeing. I am providing you something that demonstrates the premise you built your idea on is false.
Even if it is an illusion created by the brain, does that make it any less existent?
If you see a mirage of a spring in the desert can you quench your thirst?
The fact that there is word for this experience demonstrates that the experience itself objectively exists, which only serves to prove my point.
Answer the question.
I have absolutely no idea why you are being so weird about this since obviously if the spring does not exist then it cannot be drunk from. However, what you are working bizarrely hard to go out of your way to miss is that, regardless of whether the spring itself exists in objective reality, the experience of seeing it has objective existence.
Phrased in a different way: if you see something that looks like a spring in the desert, then that might not mean that you will be able to drink from it, but you can be certain that, in that moment, you are seeing something that looks like a spring in the desert.
Do Unicorns exist?
Depends if I agree with it.
That's the great thing about science.
Things that are considered facts in today's world can be disproven by new experiments and observations (recreated through experimentation and after adequate peer review).
So for me, it depends on what is being evaluated. 2+2 is a fact. Exact age of the moon might be up for more debate.
In some sense, if every single human thought that 2+2 equaled 5, it would become true
(I'm not smart enough to come up with this lol, got it from Orwell's 1984)
Only if you completely redefine some aspect of the equation. You'd have to define "5" to actually mean "4" or change the meaning of "+" or "=" in some way that changes the operation. 2+2=4 isn't just an abstract statement, it's based on the way the physical world works. If you have 2 apples, and then I give you 2 more, you don't suddenly have 5 apples because we all decided 2+2=5.
Orwell's meaning in 1984 wasn't about belief changing the world, it was about the power of brainwashing and how fascism demands obedience.
No, but some types of addition follow their own rules.
Sometimes 1+1 is 2. One Apple plus one Apple is two apples.
Sometimes 1+1 is 1. Two true statements joined together in conjunction are true.
Sometimes 1+1 is 0. Two 180° rotations is the same as if you didn't rotate the thing at all.
If you don't define what kind of addition you're talking about, then it's not precise enough to talk through what is or isn't true.
It doesn't even require belief.
2+2=5 for sufficiently large values of 2.
While a facetious statement in general, it is factual if those values derive from rounding. Significant Digits must be maintained.
How is 2 + 2 a fact?
How do you know, through new experiments and observations, that we will never determine the exact age of the moon?
You have 2 apples. I give you 2 more. How many apples do you have? Unless you redefine what the numbers or the operators mean, then you now have 4 apples. That's a truth that is evident in the world and can be verified. That's what a fact is.
He didn't suggest we could never determine the age of the moon. He said that science refines it's methods and gathers new information, and so we may change our estimate of its age based on new evidence.
Maybe the person who isn't you that I asked can weight in because I didn't ask you about your comments context.
If it's a really reliable source and sounds plausible, very little. Iran hit a hospital in Israel recently.
If it's some random person and sounds plausible, probably many repetitions from unrelated people in unrelated contexts, with some time as "word is" after a couple or few mentions. Airport security is theater and misses actual weapons all the time. I guess I should add the caveat that if it's something easily refuted like "TSA hires out of malls" it gets promoted to fact faster, because of Cunningham's law.
If it sounds implausible, a lot. Like, it might be a thing I painstakingly confirm or deny over the course of years. Thermodynamics is always explained in a way that has massive gaping logical holes. It obviously empirically works, but a rigorous derivation without any sneaky tricks would probably imply a proof of P!=NP - and it took me years to work my way through enough papers and literature to confirm that.
If it's a source or type of source with a history of making up the sort of thing they're saying, infinite - it will be all noise regardless of how much data there is.
Laying it out like this, I clearly put a lot of emphasis on the motivation and past track record of sources. There's so many things to see and measure, far too many, and there's also lies and mistakes, so I guess one has to. That's probably been true since the stone age, and probably drove some human evolution, although it's intensified quite a lot in recent history.
Note that even facts are still subject to skepticism, discussion and revision. Absolute certainty it it's own beast, and it's not a universally agreed-on fact that it even exists.
I remember there was one fact I was really beating my head on; A dishwasher should always have some food or other gunk on the dishes before starting the machine, otherwise the detergent will attack the coloring on the dishes instead.
How has no company solved this problem? It makes no sense. Many people do wash their kitchenware so it doesn't stink up the entire dishwasher if it has been sitting for a while... idk.
I would be happy to hear if anyone can help confirm or dismiss this.
Phosphates were banned in dishwasher detergents in 2011, so most of the name brand companies switched to enzyme-based cleaners that use amylase and protease, which dissolve starches and proteins, respectively. And then some traditional detergent, which allows oil and water to mix, washes it all away.
The nature of the enzymes are that as soon as they've broken up the starch or protein, they survive the reaction and can happily move onto the next starch or protein molecule. So if they're overactive, without enough targets, then any portion of the dishes that are sensitive to that particular cleaner is going to get a higher "dose" of that cleaner working specifically at it.
I'm going out on a limb and saying untrue.
How would the dish soap not "attack" the pigments on the crockery not covered by gunk, do you need to make sure that the plate is covered in an even spread? It's a desurficant, iirc, with hydrophobic molecules to get into molecular scale sized spaces. Maybe unvarnished crockery could lose the colour... But eating off that and washing it wouldn't be the best choice either.
Also, most dishwashers instruct you to rinse the worst off in the sink before loading. And we've followed that and most of our china still has good colours, the one that doesn't I know was left in direct sunlight for over a summer.
I have heard this before and as far as I was ever able to find it is a bunch of bunk that seemed to originate from damage done by a recalled detergent.
Sounds like bullshit.
If I can find three reputable sources that say the same thing, I feel pretty confident in accepting it as fact. The real trick is finding reputable sources. Media Bias Fact Check is really helpful for this.
Doctors paid by cigarette companies said that, and they were in a tiny minority of doctors.
There are scientists now who say global warming is a hoax because they have a monetary interest.
Have you ever tried the 1 Left, 1 center, 1 right source when looking into something? I try to do this myself when I have the time and can find the articles.
How do you define the centre? Do you account for existing wide-spread social biases? E.g. systemic racism, or the neoliberal belief that we can have infinite growth on a finite planet?
The center is the middle of the right and left.
I am unsure what you are asking after that.
They're referring to the shifting variance between political sides and the range expressed between them. The Overton Window usually.
Outside of this window you still have Left and Right, but they're the more extreme beliefs that the general populace doesn't currently accept. The window shifting over time means something that would have been considered absolutely insane 20 years ago, could be entirely mainstream now.
A current example would be federal deployment of the military to handle local protests when there is no declared State of Emergency and local government doesn't need or want assistance.
Yep, that's a big part of it..
But there's other aspects too (see my other comment replying to Arkouda)
But left and right aren't absolute positions, they change in time. E.g. democrats now hold a lot of similar positions to what the republicans held in the 1980s (and also a lot of different ones).
Left and right are also a unidimensional approximation of a multidimensional value space.. E.g. most people on the left disagree with nearly everything Marjorie Taylor Greene says, but they agree with her that the US should not be supporting Israel's war on Iran.
There are also people on the left AND the right that oppose global economic liberalisation, but what is often called the "centre" supports it - clearly not a "middle" stance.
So how can you meaningfully define what is led and what is right, for the purpose of your reading?
What do you think that means for the center?
That it also changes in time and is not absolute. And also, in many ways, that it does it does not exist (in the sense that the "centre" in one dimension might be correlated with extremes in another)
If the center, right, and left change over time how do you expect me to define "center" beyond that which is situated between left and right?
It is itself extremely biased, you believed an authority that isn't neutral.
How so? Seemed reasonable enough for the few things I checked.
They're incredibly pro-Israel and anti-anything else in the middle east. Reputable information gets a lower reliability rating from them "just because".
To my knowledge they have been criticized for being biased, but from what I can find their ratings don't differ drastically from other providers.
Their problem is that any news agency in the middle east is automatically "untrustworthy" with quotes like "they haven't been found to report false stories, but we still give them an untrustworthy rating".
Do you have examples of reputable sources from the middle east that have an unfair rating?
I already gave you the examples, I said that they unfairly represent middle eastern news as untrustworthy. Or are you here to nitpick and "um ackthcshually"?
You have provided 0 examples of a middle eastern news source that is unfairly ranked.
Are you going to keep being combative and waste both of our time refusing to answer a simple good faith question?
From their own description of Al Jazeera
Mixed for factual reporting. They cite 2 articles that they have found to be false since forever. They complain about "loaded language". Yet they say "straight news has minimal bias". Then they give Times of Israel "high credibility" and speak how unbiased their language is, giving the same examples as they gave in the Al Jazeera one for "biased language".
High credibility is 2 "levels" higher than the middle of the field "mixed".
None. I believe everything. Especially the contradictory parts. It's one of the powers granted to me by my true nature, revealed through the one true Slackmaster, J.R. "Bob" Dobbs.
One datum
Nah, 42
Basically, if it's in the Bible, it's fact. Everything else is entirely made up by the devil.
I'm like 90% sure this is sarcastic, but you never know.
It's sarcasm
Like, i found this youtube channel from the video "mom founf the yaoi". And now its latest video is about the rapture? Its just morse code, this description, and 2 links in the comments.
As soon as i get home, im yt-dlp this channel to preserve this.
I have no earthly idea what you're talking about (replied in the wrong place, maybe?), but that is some prime internet weirdness.
Not sure if people on the internet are doing a bit for the funnies, or actually serious with what the believe.
The bit where she's distracted by her skinny arm right after saying she can't distract herself makes me pretty sure it's parody. It's very well done, though.
Maybe the person in chat is a troll. May e the person is a die hard fanatic.
We will never know...
If we're talking about things that are easily quantifiable, not very much at all.
yeah that makes sense, like a math proof
What would you classify as easily quantifiable?
I don't know, like measurements of something. Quantities of something. Distance, speed, volume.
Things that don't very much over time, like your height.
I read proper peer reviewed research. I'm usually not a specialist on the subject, so I am unable to properly process any data available.
Depends how interesting or important or complex the thing is. If you tell me that your foot is 25cm long, I'll believe you without question. If you tell me it's 52cm, then you're going to have a hard time convincing me (unless you've already convinced me that you're a talking kangaroo).
This is why it's much more important to be skeptical of people's views on political issues too, because the situations are always complex, and important to different people in different ways.
When a lot of people who have nothing to do with each other say the same thing.
When people who dedicate their life to this one thing say the same.
When I can come to the same conclusion based on the reasoning behind it
When it is repeatable.
Then I going to accept it as a fact otherwise it is just something someone has said.
At least 400 kilobyte.
At least 4.
I'll colloquially use the word "fact" for extremely well supported claims, but in my head the only actual "facts" are mathematical derivations. Evidence supports the veracity of a claim, and a claim with a lot of evidence gets a tentative place in my world model, but any of those claims can be refuted by sufficient counter-evidence
Depends on the source and the weight of the claim. My fattest friend tells me the new Italian place slaps? Fact. The smartest person I know tells me there's a newly discovered planet? Worth looking into if it comes from them, but I'm skeptical.
Depending on the fact I should be able to find sources for it on .ORG and .GOV sites.
If i just find random blog posts, or facebook groups in the search results I take it with a grain of salt.
Like with questions posted in a forum: at least, having little more to read than just its title ;)
What elaboration do you require from the title to allow you to answer the question fully?
I would say, a good starting point would be a few examples of those so-called facts and their corresponding data.
Half-jokingly, I have little doubt I could find a lot of data demonstrating the earth is flat on flat-earth.org or whatever flat-earthers main website is called. But no matter the amount of data I would find there that still would not cut it as far as I'm concerned to accept their certainty as a fact—Incidentally, I also just answered your first question: it's not just the quantity of data, it's also its trustworthiness that should matter ;)
I keep hearing "it isn't the quantity..." and I do not understand why it isn't seen as just as important as trustworthiness of source because even the best source needs a high amount of data to back up a claim.
On the topic of flat earthers, did you ever see the video of the guy who tried to demonstrate the earth was flat and proved it was round? The look on his face was priceless. haha
consider my flat-earthers example: the trustworthiness of the source(s) is at least as important. If I told you my pseudo is 'Libb' you can bet that it is indeed so, even if that just me saying it. And that would remain true if, out of nowhere, 100s of people started telling you my pseudo was in reality 'Mickey' or 'Gertrude'. I would still be Libb. Conclusion? All by myself, against that hypotheticla large crowd, I'm still a more reliable source of info concerning my identity.
No, and I'm almost wishing to see it. Almost.
I must admit the rise of flat earth theory came as a shock to me. I always have had a sweet spot for absurd theories but I could not imagine people taking those seriously. But maybe that's just me being manipulated/lobotomized by the government? As a matter of fact, I'm also a pro-vax and that may explain a lot :p
The trustworthiness is absolutely important, and just as important to me, as quantity. The point I was making is it seems that a lot of people in the thread have been underrating the importance of quantity and over rating the importance of source quality. Even the most reputable sources can be wrong, especially in frontier sciences, which leads to a lot of retractions and rewrites.
Using your example, you could be lying.
It isn't worth hunting down, but worth a watch if you stumble across it. haha
It came as a shock to me as well. I enjoy reading about the absurd ideas people have in their heads, and I get why people believe in them. It makes sense to them, and they rely on nothing but personal observation and limited knowledge to form beliefs. They were failed as children in my opinion.
I too got my microchips and am possibly being manipulated by the government. Which one? Who knows. Monies on the US. lol
True that. It's even more interesting considering 'Libb' is not my real name, just the one I fancy using online. But I would say that it's beside the point of your question (which was not about the possibility one would be intentionally telling lies, just how much data makes a 'fact' reliable), still, it's obviously related.
But then... considering that for some undisclosed reason you could not get access to more (source of) info, how would you decide if I say the truth about my name or not, when at the same time next to me some people (more than one) are claiming I'm a liar and that my name is Gertrude? Maybe that can't be decided? Or that should not be? Or mayb the dude claiming his name should be given some extra credit? Or maybe not (I may say I'm but I doubt Elon Musk will admit I'm his natural son and that I should therefore be entitled to a part of his huge piles of money, plus change for the trauma I endured ;)
Logical proof, is it reasonable and do peers agree. That could be a tiny amount of data or a large amount of data. It is specific to the "something".
This is exactly how science works. It self corrects as new information becomes available.
No real answer but in a general sense I try to know that most things are a matter of perspective and truth is on a probability curve
Just Facebook! LOL