Quote:After the Fact In the history of truth, a new chapter begins.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/03/21/the-internet-of-us-and-the-end-of-facts

… "Somewhere in the middle of the twentieth century, fundamentalism and postmodernism, the religious right and the academic left, met up: either the only truth is the truth of the divine or there is no truth; for both, empiricism is an error. That epistemological havoc has never ended: much of contemporary discourse and pretty much all of American politics is a dispute over evidence. An American Presidential debate has a lot more in common with trial by combat than with trial by jury, which is what people are talking about when they say these debates seem “childish”: the outcome is the evidence. The ordeal endures.
Then came the Internet. The era of the fact is coming to an end: the place once held by “facts” is being taken over by “data.” This is making for more epistemological mayhem, not least because the collection and weighing of facts require investigation, discernment, and judgment, while the collection and analysis of data are outsourced to machines. “Most knowing now is Google-knowing—knowledge acquired online,” Lynch writes in “The Internet of Us” (his title is a riff on the ballyhooed and bewildering “Internet of Things”).” …
… "People who care about civil society have two choices: find some epistemic principles other than empiricism on which everyone can agree or else find some method other than reason with which to defend empiricism. Lynch suspects that doing the first of these things is not possible, but that the second might be. He thinks the best defense of reason is a common practical and ethical commitment. I believe he means popular sovereignty. That, anyway, is what Alexander Hamilton meant in the Federalist Papers, when he explained that the United States is an act of empirical inquiry: “It seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.” The evidence is not yet in.”

(05-16-2016, 11:49 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: With the Internet come the poseurs. People with a cranky and specious set of beliefs, whether  Afrocentrism or Holocaust denial, can get their ideas disseminated as they could never be in the academic press or even mainstream media. Plug Holocaust denial at any mainstream newspaper and you will be cast out the door fast.

People have to become their own gatekeepers to guard against patent nonsense and recognize that some bits of knowledge aren't particularly useful, and at that we are ill-trained. Many of us simply do not care. If it titillates, so much the better.

I have no idea of how many people are at the level of consciousness typical of the supermarket tabloids. Of course those tabloids tell people what they want to know -- heavily about entertainment. That is a very low level. It does not fact-check.

...What is the real difference between data and fact, anyway? Data is something to draw conclusions from. For this there are statistical devices to establish the validity of potential conclusions. But such is college material easily evaded by college students not in the sciences or in activities adopting scientific tools (like economics and sociology). Facts are conclusions or observations.

A lesser item is a factoid. Thus that David Irving claims that the Holocaust did not happen is a factoid -- something that says more about David Irving than about the reality of the Holocaust. So I can say as truth that David Irving says the Holocaust never happened without stating that the Holocaust did happen. If you know nothing about David Irving then you are in no way harmed. If you accept what he says as truth -- egad!

(05-16-2016, 03:36 PM)Odin Wrote: The issue is that there are no context-free facts, all information is understood ONLY though interpreting them though cultural and ideological lenses. One of the big reasons Postmodernism took off was because of the realization by intellectuals that what is often considered "neutral" or "apolitical" is in most cases just a dominant cultural mindset or ideology being taken as "just the way the world is". Marx famously argued this in terms of political assumptions (an idea later expanded upon by Antonio Gramsci), but it took mid and late 20th century thinkers to logically extend this to other areas. I suspect that the increasing development and growing economic importance of non-Western countries has helped encourage this philosophical shift.

The Marx connection, unfortunately, has become the source of a lot of ridiculous conspiracies about "cultural Marxists" that have become seen as self-evident truth among the Alt-Right folks, who thinks any connection to "evil commies" makes an idea automatically wrong...

(05-16-2016, 04:58 PM)radind Wrote:

(05-16-2016, 03:36 PM)Odin Wrote: The issue is that there are no context-free facts, all information is understood ONLY though interpreting them though cultural and ideological lenses. One of the big reasons Postmodernism took off was because of the realization by intellectuals that what is often considered "neutral" or "apolitical" is in most cases just a dominant cultural mindset or ideology being taken as "just the way the world is". Marx famously argued this in terms of political assumptions (an idea later expanded upon by Antonio Gramsci), but it took mid and late 20th century thinkers to logically extend this to other areas. I suspect that the increasing development and growing economic importance of non-Western countries has helped encourage this philosophical shift.

The Marx connection, unfortunately, has become the source of a lot of ridiculous conspiracies about "cultural Marxists" that have become seen as self-evident truth among the Alt-Right folks, who thinks any connection to "evil commies" makes an idea automatically wrong...

 Good points. I was not familiar with Antonio Gramsci.
Thanks

(05-16-2016, 11:49 AM)pbrower2 Wrote: ...What is the real difference between data and fact, anyway?

[Mike] Fact is a component of knowledge.  Data is the raw material from which facts can be derived.

(05-16-2016, 03:36 PM)Odin Wrote: The issue is that there are no context-free facts, all information is understood ONLY though interpreting them though cultural and ideological lenses. One of the big reasons Postmodernism took off was because of the realization by intellectuals that what is often considered "neutral" or "apolitical" is in most cases just a dominant cultural mindset or ideology being taken as "just the way the world is". Marx famously argued this in terms of political assumptions (an idea later expanded upon by Antonio Gramsci), but it took mid and late 20th century thinkers to logically extend this to other areas. I suspect that the increasing development and growing economic importance of non-Western countries has helped encourage this philosophical shift.

The Marx connection, unfortunately, has become the source of a lot of ridiculous conspiracies about "cultural Marxists" that have become seen as self-evident truth among the Alt-Right folks, who thinks any connection to "evil commies" makes an idea automatically wrong...