How much data do you require before you accept something as "fact"?
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I just showed you an example of where “centre” as commonly defined is not between left and right, but opposed by both…
The plural of anecdote is not data.
If your hypothesis is "all swans are white", and I show you a black swan, do you reject your hypothesis?
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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.
(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?
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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.
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How do you know consciousness is "true" and not also an illusion created by the brain?
Even if it is an illusion created by the brain, does that make it any less existent?
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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
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really depends on the source and if it makes sense in the first place.
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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
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(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
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I'm like 90% sure this is sarcastic, but you never know.
Maybe the person in chat is a troll. May e the person is a die hard fanatic.
We will never know...
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I'm like 90% sure this is sarcastic, but you never know.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]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.
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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
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
Using your example, you could be lying.
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
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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.
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I'm like 90% sure this is sarcastic, but you never know.
It's sarcasm
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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
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when science backs it up.
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Reading it once on social media
Yes, but only if it matches my current beliefs.
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If your hypothesis is "all swans are white", and I show you a black swan, do you reject your hypothesis?
Tell you what, you define right and left, I will define the center of it if that will help you wrap your brain around it. Otherwise I have no idea what it is you are trying to accomplish other than starting a zero sum fight so unless you get it together I'm out.
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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?
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when science backs it up.
What happens when "science" backs up two opposing ideas with sufficient evidence and logic to make either seem plausible?
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when science backs it up.
Science rules!