07-18-2018, 10:06 AM
(07-18-2018, 08:27 AM)theTheNomad Wrote: I am still waiting on someone to adequately respond to my adept definition of "fact" as demonstratively proven by scientific method by an expert.
Maybe I lost some people.
The experts don't agree. Marxist and libertarian scholars will never agree on how to interpret political 'reality'. Moral and esthetic values, let alone the sex drive, are not rational in nature. I do not have a rational proof that murder is an unconscionable deed, but I can clearly state that gross uncertainty of life for reasons other than human agency (such as organic disease) debases life by making it grossly insecure. Such is horrible to me, but that is a subjective judgment.
It is possible to apply science and mathematics to political phenomena and economics, but that does not make those studies science.
Quote:I had said we are ALL playing God when we choose to ignore science to determine fact. Anyone who chooses to ally themselves with a "truth" when they themselves have not performed ANY science to come to that conclusion is a liar. What else can they be? They have no basis on which to make their claim. And we now have scores of "experts" who are "testifying" not as Scientists or Experts but as talking heads choosing to sell a spin.
Perhaps an overstatement, as our efforts to make our 'science' fit a superstition or folly cripples us intellectually (Hollow Earth, young-earth creationism) or debases us morally (pseudo-scientific racism). Ideally those in power and influence are in tough with scientific reality and don't simply express their values or sell out for personal gain. Authority as power is incompatible with authority as truth. When authority becomes little more than ability to exploit human vulnerability, as in a Gulag or under an Inquisitor, life becomes horror.
Sure, I enjoy an occasional horror movie as entertainment, but I certainly don't want to endure the horror first hand. For real horror there is the monstrous captivity that such people as Phillip Garrido or Gary Heidnick could impose upon helpless victims -- or that one endured under what Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Satan Hussein, or the Assad or Kim dynasties could impose. Or Apartheid or Jim Crow if one wasn't white. In my book the best horror movie ever is Cabaret because it leaves one with knowledge that the worst is yet to come: Dracula and Frankenstein are unreal enough to allow us some distance from the hazard, and they can end with the death of the horrible entity.
Quote:When people choose to say something with absolutely no demonstrable basis in reality? This was about Fact Checking. The very idea of "checking facts" has become almost a pariah. "Fact Checking" is now equivalent to Witch Hunting. The very idea that to ask a question is wrong or immoral. And then, when we are finally allowed to ASK, we have 5 people saying one thing and 5 people saying the opposite ------ both with their VERSION of interpretation of the information.
Fact checking -- insisting upon two different sources, with one journalist checking up on the other so that what the first journalist says is verified. That is how good journalistic entities keep out hoaxes and fabrications. The only instances in which fact checking is unnecessary is with official sources who announce births, deaths, marriages, criminal convictions and sentencing, and judgments in criminal cases -- or with agencies, private (like the Dow-Jones Index) or private (like the US Census Bureau) that disseminate official statistics.
Quote:I keep pointing to the idea of SUBJECTIVITY v OBJECTIVITY. We can no longer be all of us be SUBJECTIVE (spewing our own views/beliefs with no basis) and we must begin leaning toward OBJECTIVITY. Experts in a court of law are commanded BY LAW to present "evidence" based not on their personal beliefs but what they can prove OBJECTIVELY without personal feelings.
Subjectivity -- I think the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart largely and the sculptures of Michelangelo Buonarotti wonderful. I think it horribly wrong to murder, rape, kidnap, steal, and torture. I prefer the normal weather of San Diego, California to the harsh conditions at the summit of Mount Washington in New Hampshire.
Objectivity -- the laws of science, mathematics, and the logical dialectic. Historical reality as shown in human deeds.
Quote:America right now is being consumed by subjectivity. No one wants to find anything out, really. Or few do. It is easier to keep saying Oswald hit the president with 3 bullets because to say otherwise might force you to ask more questions and you just don't feel like it. Lazy. Unacceptable. It's tearing all of us apart as individuals and a collective nation.
The personality of Lee Harvey Oswald is well-enough known, as are his personal movements on or about November 22, 1963. He had no well-defined loyalty. He was a mixed-up punk. He could as easily have killed Kennedy as a KGB operative or as someone who suddenly became a fascist (there were "Wanted for treason" posters with the image of JFK on them in Dallas at the time, and Oswald might have seen those). Oswald killed the police officer J D Tippitt when the cop was getting too close to recognizing who Oswald was and what he was suspected of. People like Oswald are highly suggestible, cranky, and potentially violent.
It may be ironic, but the assassination attempt would likely have failed had it not been for the rigid back brace that Kennedy was wearing. Kennedy tried to duck but could not; without the back brace he would have ducked and been missed. Snipers usually aim for the chest cavity, and not the head.
Quote:Perhaps this is the nutshell of the Prophet drama; the curse of Perpetual, Unending Subjectivity to the grave!
So say we all?
Objectivity alone at best makes us thinking machines, sophisticated computers. Subjectivity makes us human, for all the faults that that entails.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.