Thank you for taking on their checkered “facts,” eugyppius.
I coined the terms “fact-choker” and “fact-choking” in response to an el gato malo challenge (probably a couple of years ago now) and have been using them ever since. I encourage everyone to use those terms whenever encountering these MoT Winston Smiths to expose this fraudulent practice and help propagate that understanding through the power of reframing.
Part of the purpose of the fact checkers isn't to get people to read them directly, it's to provide cover to other people who want to point at someone and say "but their position has been officially debunked". And occasionally, at that point, to get the "debunked" point taken offline, or get the org that put it out debanked or otherwise defunded.
🎯 I can attest that when I've presented evidence for a particular point, the Covidian troll I'm arguing with will then spend one-and-a-half seconds looking up a fact-choking link, which they then paste in without having read and, like a pigeon playing chess, "just knock over the pieces, poop all over the board and then strut around like it won the game."
That's the less nasty form of it, though it's nasty enough. I meant more along the lines of how the SPLC will declare some group to be a "hate group", often on very flimsy pretexts, and then other organizations (like PayPal, or Visa and MasterCard) will use that declaration as justification to cut the maligned group off from banking services. Or what the Feds were doing with the Stanford Internet Observatory, and then using the claimed debunked misinformation as a lever to have social media remove the post, or even the poster.
BTW: Love "philanthropath", will read the series later. Lunch is almost over, so it's back to the bitmines for me for now...
Oh yes, I knew exactly what you meant, and I agree that is a far more sinister usage.
Haha, glad you like "philanthropath" and enjoy the series when you have time! You may also like the piece I wrote to accompany my Corona Investigative Committee presentation on that topic (it includes a truncated version of the series, so you can skip over that part as it cuts out the fun parts from the original version ;-)
Also if every AI model programmed to trust 'official' sources more (and they are) then flooding the internet with nonsense fact-checking articles can bias every AI model.
Side effect of too many good thinkers who flooded in as censorship refugees that more is unread than found but super sorry that missed me until now.. fantabulous twist, terminology variant is fab substitution.. gonna add to top hits list begun w Paul Craig Roberts 2014ish presstitutes.. still love the tar out of it & will proliferate fact chokers kudos & thanks<3
Indeed, PamelaDrew, and I love “censorship refugees”!
So Paul Craig Roberts is the source of “presstitutes”? I’ve always appreciated that but didn’t know the originator!
Feel free to add “philanthropath” and “philanthropathy” to your glossary as well. I coined it last year in my “Anatomy of a Philanthropath” series and have been thrilled to see it gain such wide traction—including by Neil Oliver in a couple of his recent monologues!
Closely related, and I am sorry but unable to cite the source: "pathological altruism". Prevalent here in the US among the AWFUL set, especially those of Scandinavian origin.
The facts are rarely in dispute. The "fact chekists" are there to make sure their audience comes to the correct conclusions, no matter how irrational. In other words, they're thought police.
Imagine being a paid liar like this, what kind of soot accumulates on a soul whose sole purpose is to ratfuck the brains of millions of naive dummies. Imagine condemning yourself to hell for this lmao
This is what our public schools and especially our universities are for. Especially the latter are exceptional at that. I pray to God my sons go into engineering or some other tech field, and that only after learning on the job. They're smart enough to go the direct route, but I'm not sure I will be able to whip the nonsense out of them again for 5+ years.
After the first few examples, it became clear to me that "fact checkers" are not checking facts at all. The facts are rarely in dispute. What they are "checking" is the conclusions . . . by trying to rationalize an irrational narrative. In other words, they are the thought police.
Yep, the fact checkers are just the useful idiots whose babble the Tech censors can point to as "justification" for censoring "misinformation". However, there are also other organizations like the "Election Integrity Project" who have direct hotlines to the Tech censors.
I look at all this fact checking nonsense in two ways:
1. It is the establishments counter measure to critical thinkers, like us here, who are calling out the lies, contradictions and propaganda. It is meant to clogg up our minds with a bunch of bologna thrown at us all the time. We are supposed to waste our time dealing with the fact checkers and take our focus off the real target.
2. It is for the average citizen who has no clue what and whom to believe. The fact checkers are a comfortable tool for them to feel good in what to believe. "It has been independently fact checked, I can trust that and don't have to think on my own."
The people who do the fact checking I look at as people who had no real career and never would have made it in the working world. They will do and say yes to anything and anyone, in order to rise to higher positions. It is wanted that these people are incompetent, so they won't be ever a thread to the establishment that put them into place.
Good summary. I think the basic incompetence of these people is a hindrance, however, not least because the “plan” they are promoting is not really very appealing. And people are noticing this.
"... it’s hard to believe Siggelkow have many readers." I like this little grammatical slip because it suggests that we refer to all idiot "fact-checkers" with a collective noun, "Siggelkow", as in "after work, the Siggelkow of the ARD mainly congregate in vegan fetish clubs to be beaten with Sojawürstchen", or "Siggelkow are rarely invited to parties and seldom procreate" etc.
Oh very good. I suggested below that Siggelkow could be verbed - suggesting the pointless activity of contradicting any statement not approved by current paymasters
The idea of fact checking is built on the idea that there is one version of truth.
This ignores the fact that in each of our experiences, truth is personal. We know that we don’t share the idea of truth with our closest family members, let alone some fact checker.
Most people do see through the fact checking scam in theory…but in practicalities, The Truth is peddled very effectively by those in Kontrol, so that other views are suppressed effectively even if we all know that it is probably wrong.
Everything is becoming politicized now, so health and climate are political matters, and we can expect more AI-based efficient and effective suppression of alternate views of The Truth.
I see it in health research, which I do. Where even common views of things like cancer and what causes it are obviously false. But if you present alternate views of The Truth, with studies and backup, you are ruthlessly censored, cancelled and even arrested.
And it's been very revealing that the corrupt, senile idiot Biden is seldom if ever "fact checked." Nor are all his "lies" compiled, even though he's told some absolute whoppers. It's surreal, and scary.
Neither beliefs are false. You both believe them. I can't say to a flat earther "You don't believe the world is flat" because they do. However, regardless of what the flat-earther believes, the earth is round. Politicians are corrupt...this is a truth as well. If I believe that all politicians are corrupt then my belief is a true belief...but objectively all politicians may not be corrupted.
Truth may be absolute, but most "truths" may never be known with absolute certainty. Hence, it is a justifiable claim to make that most beliefs are based in a subjective and personal notion of current "truth valuations", where the priors conditioning various beliefs vary from person to person.
I may be objective and you may be objective, but from my point of view, you are acting subjectively unless of course you magically happen to agree with everything I say.
There are personal truths and there are objective truths.For instance, regardless of what you think, the sky is blue, if the sky over your head, is in fact, the color blue.
How you feel about that truth is completely subjective to you. The problem comes when people mistake their personal truth as objective truth. Regardless of whether or not you like masks or not, they do exist, and people wear them as a talisman against a disease. Also whether or not masks work is also an objective truth, regardless of how we feel about it. A third truth is that no matter if you are masked or unmasked, you chances of infection are equal and the mask has nothing to do with it.
One of the differences between scientific truth and poetic truth is that science, in order to arrive at a conclusion, must identify and control for confounders, it must reduce and contro for variablesl, which, inevitably, makes for a contingent or partial truth. Poetic or symbolic truth becomes deeper the more polyvalent it is, the more it is saturated with history, or personality, or usage, or meanings, or alternate meanings. It becomes richer in a way exactly opposite to scientific seeking after truth, or so it seems to me. Both are kinds of truth. But I also think axiomatic presuppositions have to be identified and outted, particularly in the case of what is a moon bat conspiracy theory and what is potentially credible. It all depends on the meta paradigm. If panpsychism is true, it might be that some superstition is an ethnic expression of an elementary process, e.g. the evil eye.
Then there's Godelian incompleteness. I think we all have different idiosyncratic axiomatic presuppositions, and since the pandemic, many of those have changed. We do not know what technologies actually exist, for instance. I think this issue needs a sort of structuralist attention with as much magnitude as is possible, given Godel, if we are all not to live in separate belief systems and truths. Sorry to go on and on, lol, but I've just been trying to convince really bright relatives not to get the booster and having no success.
“There are trivial truths and there are great truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true.”
I'd frame it differently. 'Reality' is objective. Light waves of a certain wavelength coming down from the sky to our eye is part of reality. Including our sense perception and memories, our mind constructs a mental model of reality, to serve as our map, given that we are agentive beings who need to navigate reality intelligently. Our perception of color is part of our mental model of reality, and it is subjective. For all I know, your perception of 'blue' might be more like my perception of 'red', but we both look at the clear sky above and call it 'blue', so we are effectively in agreement in our respective maps of that section of reality.
'True', to me, means that our mental model is a homomorphic projection of the reality we are tracking; i.e., we have a reliable map. That map, of course, is not necessarily comprehensive, but to its level of granularity, it will not lead us astray. 'Truth', then, is neither the objective reality nor the subjective mental representation of it, but the valid agreement of the model with the thing itself.
What you call a 'personal truth' is what I would call a belief, or a personal conviction.
That's a great way to calibrate yourself as well. We all have ideas and models, I know I do. I am constantly wrong, and at times find myself alternately disappointed and very much amazed as well. One of the great things about fiction is that in addition to sharing amazing fantastic notions not born of reality, it also can reveal agreements in models and the thing itself. Other times it can also lay to bare ridiculous notions and false models of the world that when shown in fiction in fact reveal how false they are, and how laughable and contrived they are as a "truth."
I see Fact Checkers wherein instead of attacking the premise itself, they attack proposed ridiculous conclusions that the article itself does not bring up, then attack those. For instance, during Covid, there was a story about masking I believe where the general purpose of the article was showing masks don't work. The fact check on the article stated that "this led to the idea that possibly mask wearing made people sicker and this is what the fact checking article objected to."
If this were a conversation it would go something like this:
"Masks are not effective in stopping the spread of Covid-19."
They very well might, but it was never touched on in the article. It was as if what the fact checker was reporting was not the article itself, but someone reading it and making comments like "Not only do masks not work, they make you sicker."
My observation is that I think these fact checkers are exposed to a lot of crazy conspiracy theories in orientation and told "we need to fight against this misinformation, and in order to do that, we have to stop it at its root."
I actually think it's deflection. For example, whenever I get into a discussion with a Lefty about the Biden's alleged crimes, the conversation is always shifted by them to Trump. If you talk about the proven effectiveness and safety of Ivermectin, they start talking about horse-dewormer and chlorox injections. If you point out that Russia is NOT on the brink of defeat in Ukaine, you are a Putin-stooge. If you have no argument, change the subject, even if only slightly. The Fact-Cheka does this for you, so that you don't need to exercise your rational faculties and continue with your emotional catharsis. All you need to say is "That's been debunked".
This past week I was on twitter over a number of days debating someone on what I assessed to be the overcounting of Covid deaths that was then used as a rationale to scare the masses into compliance for the vaccine and the other ridiculous restrictions. They argued and came at many angles assuring me that the most immediate event was the cause of death. I argued chronic vs. acute disease, and underlying conditions that make other less mild diseases lethal.
The original debate was someone asserting that someone who was obese with a heart condition who had a Covid infection was a Covid death, not an obesity death. My immediate response was that it was an obesity death. I confess to falling for the framing of the tweet which began with the "purpose to incite" clause of "I don't know who needs to hear this but..."
And that was when the third party jumped on me. After numerous days I finally said "The original post said that the only three things we know about the Covid death is that the person had a heart condition, was fat, and died after testing positive for a Covid infection, why is it you didn't actually also go after him for his posting?"
At that point it was like watching someone stab the wind.
Man Bun is a very tiresome writer -- I couldn't even finish reading this summarized list. Every article is the same bland predigested pablum, "No, you're wrong, the Govt is correct. Listen to the Govt and not your weird friends, you idiot." The credibility of the fact-finders would go a long way if just once, they said, "Actually, the vaccines DO seem dangerous...."
I found it equally hard to get through his boring, acquired views. Fact checking is not supposed to be simply parroting others take on any subject. It’s supposed to be a nuanced endeavour, and number one on his list has to be the government for crying out loud!
Looking at the selection you present, we can summarise the job of Pascal Siggelkow very well with Matthew 7:3.
"And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?"
And in English:
Whatever our faction says is true, by definition. We analyse what our opponents say until we find some little detail that could be dubious. If we find it, no matter how tenuous, we can dismiss the entire argument.
“Dying societies accumulate laws like dying men accumulate remedies.”
Anarcho-tyranny is the selective application of these ludicrous laws so that your friends can do anything they like (for instance burn down half of America), while your enemies can’t engage in political protest (for example, being let into a public building).
It is one of the best explanations of the way the West functions I am aware of.
Ok. I agree with the concept, but the name is a play of words. Proper anarchy does not have laws the people in charge can selectively apply, because in a true anarchical system there are no people in charge.
You’re the first person I have ever found who has pointed that out!
You’re completely right of course, and the “anarchy” part of anarcho-tyranny is in fact a careful decision NOT to apply the law.
I suppose the reality of the situation is that we have the complete inversion of authority for the benefit of the powerful. This is interesting and is in many respects a phenomenon only previously seen in actively revolutionary periods. But our regime seems to want a permanent revolution or a “lotta continua” against the people.
My favorite fact check of all time was a Reuters piece addressing the question “did Joe Biden eulogize a grand wizard of the kkk?” ... this was declared false of course with the Reuters warriors for truth carefully explaining Robert Byrd was not a grand wizard, he was only a exalted cyclops who recruited 150 members of his community to found a new kkk chapter. Ah okay I guess I stand corrected! Had me laughing for days ... since then I carefully read the fact checks which so often depend on technicalities like grand wizard not equal to exalted cyclops to debunk enemy fire. Anything to get that precious “false” designation! The left really exposes its weakness of position with fact checks.
I looked it up. What a joke: Democrat Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia was a KKK organizer and executive, and Joe Biden DID eulogize him. The Democrats have never, ever shed their roots as the party of racism. They are obsessed with it.
The difference is that now the leftists of the democrat party utilize minorities to consolidate their own white power. It is disgusting and i dont see how it continues for so many decades. I suppose the handouts have locked the poor in place quite a bit
It was such a great essay I should have written something clever and serious but I just loved that these fact checkers are writing their stupid nonsense for their own gratification and what better way to describe it!!
Eugyppius hit just the right tone using ridicule to roast this guy. The abysmal examples of Paschal’s work product stand alone to condemn, but I immensely enjoyed the enhancements of nuggets of humour splattered throughout Eugyppius’ missive. This is not a piece Pascal can recover easily from and thank god because the guy sounds like an absolute ‘abysmal idiot’.
Fact Cheka
Plural: Fact Chekists
Perfect. Just perfect!
Love it
I see what you did there, Comrade.
Next level punning. I'm jealous.
Indeed.
BING BING BING! We have a winner.
*applause*
Thank you for taking on their checkered “facts,” eugyppius.
I coined the terms “fact-choker” and “fact-choking” in response to an el gato malo challenge (probably a couple of years ago now) and have been using them ever since. I encourage everyone to use those terms whenever encountering these MoT Winston Smiths to expose this fraudulent practice and help propagate that understanding through the power of reframing.
Part of the purpose of the fact checkers isn't to get people to read them directly, it's to provide cover to other people who want to point at someone and say "but their position has been officially debunked". And occasionally, at that point, to get the "debunked" point taken offline, or get the org that put it out debanked or otherwise defunded.
🎯 I can attest that when I've presented evidence for a particular point, the Covidian troll I'm arguing with will then spend one-and-a-half seconds looking up a fact-choking link, which they then paste in without having read and, like a pigeon playing chess, "just knock over the pieces, poop all over the board and then strut around like it won the game."
That's the less nasty form of it, though it's nasty enough. I meant more along the lines of how the SPLC will declare some group to be a "hate group", often on very flimsy pretexts, and then other organizations (like PayPal, or Visa and MasterCard) will use that declaration as justification to cut the maligned group off from banking services. Or what the Feds were doing with the Stanford Internet Observatory, and then using the claimed debunked misinformation as a lever to have social media remove the post, or even the poster.
BTW: Love "philanthropath", will read the series later. Lunch is almost over, so it's back to the bitmines for me for now...
Oh yes, I knew exactly what you meant, and I agree that is a far more sinister usage.
Haha, glad you like "philanthropath" and enjoy the series when you have time! You may also like the piece I wrote to accompany my Corona Investigative Committee presentation on that topic (it includes a truncated version of the series, so you can skip over that part as it cuts out the fun parts from the original version ;-)
• “A Mostly Peaceful Depopulation” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/a-mostly-peaceful-depopulation)
Also if every AI model programmed to trust 'official' sources more (and they are) then flooding the internet with nonsense fact-checking articles can bias every AI model.
Side effect of too many good thinkers who flooded in as censorship refugees that more is unread than found but super sorry that missed me until now.. fantabulous twist, terminology variant is fab substitution.. gonna add to top hits list begun w Paul Craig Roberts 2014ish presstitutes.. still love the tar out of it & will proliferate fact chokers kudos & thanks<3
Indeed, PamelaDrew, and I love “censorship refugees”!
So Paul Craig Roberts is the source of “presstitutes”? I’ve always appreciated that but didn’t know the originator!
Feel free to add “philanthropath” and “philanthropathy” to your glossary as well. I coined it last year in my “Anatomy of a Philanthropath” series and have been thrilled to see it gain such wide traction—including by Neil Oliver in a couple of his recent monologues!
• “Part 1: A Mostly Peaceful Depopulation” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/anatomy-of-a-philanthropath-dreams)
• “Part 2: Downloadable Digital Dictatorships” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/anatomy-of-a-philanthropath-dreams-947)
• “Part 3: Yuval Noah Harari: Not the Man We Think He Is?” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/anatomy-of-a-philanthropath-dreams-3fd)
Here are Neil’s monologues featuring it:
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zZPIRtNaqU
• https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/ode-to-a-whistleblower#%C2%A7neil-oliver-used-philanthropath
Closely related, and I am sorry but unable to cite the source: "pathological altruism". Prevalent here in the US among the AWFUL set, especially those of Scandinavian origin.
Awesome thanks! PCR never claimed to have coined it just first popular usage for me! :~)
The facts are rarely in dispute. The "fact chekists" are there to make sure their audience comes to the correct conclusions, no matter how irrational. In other words, they're thought police.
Imagine being a paid liar like this, what kind of soot accumulates on a soul whose sole purpose is to ratfuck the brains of millions of naive dummies. Imagine condemning yourself to hell for this lmao
Remember when the media was up in arms that the "OK" sign really meant "White Power?"
Good times
So so many of these regime apparatchiks fall under this umbrella. Quite sad really
The worst is that he has to ratfuck his own brain first.
He probably was once a curios, smart kid, with good intentions. And now he is an intellectual garbage can.
The regime destroys it's minions first.
A rational mind is difficult to cultivate. A rationalizing mind is easy.
Not sure how smart he ever was, though I agree the moral and intellectual corruption is real
A pseudointellectual practicing in intellectual pornography and mental masterbation.
This is what our public schools and especially our universities are for. Especially the latter are exceptional at that. I pray to God my sons go into engineering or some other tech field, and that only after learning on the job. They're smart enough to go the direct route, but I'm not sure I will be able to whip the nonsense out of them again for 5+ years.
'whip' is a figure of speech, let that be clear...
The quality of their work suggests that they aren't that well paid
After the first few examples, it became clear to me that "fact checkers" are not checking facts at all. The facts are rarely in dispute. What they are "checking" is the conclusions . . . by trying to rationalize an irrational narrative. In other words, they are the thought police.
Indeed, 'fact checkers' are in the main MSM / deep state propagandists - even if they don't realise that.
Yep, the fact checkers are just the useful idiots whose babble the Tech censors can point to as "justification" for censoring "misinformation". However, there are also other organizations like the "Election Integrity Project" who have direct hotlines to the Tech censors.
I look at all this fact checking nonsense in two ways:
1. It is the establishments counter measure to critical thinkers, like us here, who are calling out the lies, contradictions and propaganda. It is meant to clogg up our minds with a bunch of bologna thrown at us all the time. We are supposed to waste our time dealing with the fact checkers and take our focus off the real target.
2. It is for the average citizen who has no clue what and whom to believe. The fact checkers are a comfortable tool for them to feel good in what to believe. "It has been independently fact checked, I can trust that and don't have to think on my own."
The people who do the fact checking I look at as people who had no real career and never would have made it in the working world. They will do and say yes to anything and anyone, in order to rise to higher positions. It is wanted that these people are incompetent, so they won't be ever a thread to the establishment that put them into place.
Good summary. I think the basic incompetence of these people is a hindrance, however, not least because the “plan” they are promoting is not really very appealing. And people are noticing this.
The latter goes for politicians as well. You have to be ignorant, evil, dumb and/or ideologically damaged to be allowed to exert any power
"... it’s hard to believe Siggelkow have many readers." I like this little grammatical slip because it suggests that we refer to all idiot "fact-checkers" with a collective noun, "Siggelkow", as in "after work, the Siggelkow of the ARD mainly congregate in vegan fetish clubs to be beaten with Sojawürstchen", or "Siggelkow are rarely invited to parties and seldom procreate" etc.
now I regret correcting it. maybe in future the plague chronicle will refer to fact checkers simply as 'the siggelkow'
Oh very good. I suggested below that Siggelkow could be verbed - suggesting the pointless activity of contradicting any statement not approved by current paymasters
Yes, let Siggelkow stand as the collective name for abysmally idiotic, aggressively stupid fact checkers :)
I prefer the term 'idiot'.
Klasse, Heike! "Siggelkow" they shall always be.
There's stupid and then there's Pascal.
Pascal wagers no future employers will ever see his output.
Like this one
The idea of fact checking is built on the idea that there is one version of truth.
This ignores the fact that in each of our experiences, truth is personal. We know that we don’t share the idea of truth with our closest family members, let alone some fact checker.
Most people do see through the fact checking scam in theory…but in practicalities, The Truth is peddled very effectively by those in Kontrol, so that other views are suppressed effectively even if we all know that it is probably wrong.
Everything is becoming politicized now, so health and climate are political matters, and we can expect more AI-based efficient and effective suppression of alternate views of The Truth.
I see it in health research, which I do. Where even common views of things like cancer and what causes it are obviously false. But if you present alternate views of The Truth, with studies and backup, you are ruthlessly censored, cancelled and even arrested.
It was hilarious when they used to "fact-check" Trump all the time: "No, Mr. Trump, Pakistan is NOT Fantastic!" Hilarious and pointless.
And it's been very revealing that the corrupt, senile idiot Biden is seldom if ever "fact checked." Nor are all his "lies" compiled, even though he's told some absolute whoppers. It's surreal, and scary.
Matt,
I completely disagree. Truth is not personal. It is absolute.
It is possible that both what you and I believe are false, or possibly incomplete portions of the truth.
But if what you believe is true, and it differs from what I believe, then my belief is false (the same applies in reverse).
Neither beliefs are false. You both believe them. I can't say to a flat earther "You don't believe the world is flat" because they do. However, regardless of what the flat-earther believes, the earth is round. Politicians are corrupt...this is a truth as well. If I believe that all politicians are corrupt then my belief is a true belief...but objectively all politicians may not be corrupted.
You are, of course, right. Please consider that I am not a native English speaker.
Different people can "believe" contradictory ideas. But if they are contradictory, one of them (or possibly both) should be false.
You write well for not a native English speaker, and I imagine are far better at your language than I am at yours, being a 'Murican.
Truth may be absolute, but most "truths" may never be known with absolute certainty. Hence, it is a justifiable claim to make that most beliefs are based in a subjective and personal notion of current "truth valuations", where the priors conditioning various beliefs vary from person to person.
I may be objective and you may be objective, but from my point of view, you are acting subjectively unless of course you magically happen to agree with everything I say.
There are personal truths and there are objective truths.For instance, regardless of what you think, the sky is blue, if the sky over your head, is in fact, the color blue.
How you feel about that truth is completely subjective to you. The problem comes when people mistake their personal truth as objective truth. Regardless of whether or not you like masks or not, they do exist, and people wear them as a talisman against a disease. Also whether or not masks work is also an objective truth, regardless of how we feel about it. A third truth is that no matter if you are masked or unmasked, you chances of infection are equal and the mask has nothing to do with it.
I think people mistake their personal feelings about a thing with the objective truth of a thing.
I may feel like I can breathe in space. The objective truth about is quite different.
Excellent summary.
I would also add that your "personal truth" only interests you and your close family and friends. Otherwise, it is completely irrelevant.
Of course, the same applies to my "personal truths", if I indeed have any (which I try very hard to not have).
One of the differences between scientific truth and poetic truth is that science, in order to arrive at a conclusion, must identify and control for confounders, it must reduce and contro for variablesl, which, inevitably, makes for a contingent or partial truth. Poetic or symbolic truth becomes deeper the more polyvalent it is, the more it is saturated with history, or personality, or usage, or meanings, or alternate meanings. It becomes richer in a way exactly opposite to scientific seeking after truth, or so it seems to me. Both are kinds of truth. But I also think axiomatic presuppositions have to be identified and outted, particularly in the case of what is a moon bat conspiracy theory and what is potentially credible. It all depends on the meta paradigm. If panpsychism is true, it might be that some superstition is an ethnic expression of an elementary process, e.g. the evil eye.
Then there's Godelian incompleteness. I think we all have different idiosyncratic axiomatic presuppositions, and since the pandemic, many of those have changed. We do not know what technologies actually exist, for instance. I think this issue needs a sort of structuralist attention with as much magnitude as is possible, given Godel, if we are all not to live in separate belief systems and truths. Sorry to go on and on, lol, but I've just been trying to convince really bright relatives not to get the booster and having no success.
“There are trivial truths and there are great truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true.”
― Niels Bohr
I'd frame it differently. 'Reality' is objective. Light waves of a certain wavelength coming down from the sky to our eye is part of reality. Including our sense perception and memories, our mind constructs a mental model of reality, to serve as our map, given that we are agentive beings who need to navigate reality intelligently. Our perception of color is part of our mental model of reality, and it is subjective. For all I know, your perception of 'blue' might be more like my perception of 'red', but we both look at the clear sky above and call it 'blue', so we are effectively in agreement in our respective maps of that section of reality.
'True', to me, means that our mental model is a homomorphic projection of the reality we are tracking; i.e., we have a reliable map. That map, of course, is not necessarily comprehensive, but to its level of granularity, it will not lead us astray. 'Truth', then, is neither the objective reality nor the subjective mental representation of it, but the valid agreement of the model with the thing itself.
What you call a 'personal truth' is what I would call a belief, or a personal conviction.
That's a great way to calibrate yourself as well. We all have ideas and models, I know I do. I am constantly wrong, and at times find myself alternately disappointed and very much amazed as well. One of the great things about fiction is that in addition to sharing amazing fantastic notions not born of reality, it also can reveal agreements in models and the thing itself. Other times it can also lay to bare ridiculous notions and false models of the world that when shown in fiction in fact reveal how false they are, and how laughable and contrived they are as a "truth."
I see Fact Checkers wherein instead of attacking the premise itself, they attack proposed ridiculous conclusions that the article itself does not bring up, then attack those. For instance, during Covid, there was a story about masking I believe where the general purpose of the article was showing masks don't work. The fact check on the article stated that "this led to the idea that possibly mask wearing made people sicker and this is what the fact checking article objected to."
If this were a conversation it would go something like this:
"Masks are not effective in stopping the spread of Covid-19."
"You're wrong, they do not make you sicker."
Further ironically; They actually may have.
But your point about disingenuous arguments being used as "fact checking" is well made.
They very well might, but it was never touched on in the article. It was as if what the fact checker was reporting was not the article itself, but someone reading it and making comments like "Not only do masks not work, they make you sicker."
My observation is that I think these fact checkers are exposed to a lot of crazy conspiracy theories in orientation and told "we need to fight against this misinformation, and in order to do that, we have to stop it at its root."
I actually think it's deflection. For example, whenever I get into a discussion with a Lefty about the Biden's alleged crimes, the conversation is always shifted by them to Trump. If you talk about the proven effectiveness and safety of Ivermectin, they start talking about horse-dewormer and chlorox injections. If you point out that Russia is NOT on the brink of defeat in Ukaine, you are a Putin-stooge. If you have no argument, change the subject, even if only slightly. The Fact-Cheka does this for you, so that you don't need to exercise your rational faculties and continue with your emotional catharsis. All you need to say is "That's been debunked".
It is deflection.
This past week I was on twitter over a number of days debating someone on what I assessed to be the overcounting of Covid deaths that was then used as a rationale to scare the masses into compliance for the vaccine and the other ridiculous restrictions. They argued and came at many angles assuring me that the most immediate event was the cause of death. I argued chronic vs. acute disease, and underlying conditions that make other less mild diseases lethal.
The original debate was someone asserting that someone who was obese with a heart condition who had a Covid infection was a Covid death, not an obesity death. My immediate response was that it was an obesity death. I confess to falling for the framing of the tweet which began with the "purpose to incite" clause of "I don't know who needs to hear this but..."
And that was when the third party jumped on me. After numerous days I finally said "The original post said that the only three things we know about the Covid death is that the person had a heart condition, was fat, and died after testing positive for a Covid infection, why is it you didn't actually also go after him for his posting?"
At that point it was like watching someone stab the wind.
I agree. I just thought it was a humorous example, given the reality. 😁
These fact checkers justify the non awake to stay asleep.
Man Bun is a very tiresome writer -- I couldn't even finish reading this summarized list. Every article is the same bland predigested pablum, "No, you're wrong, the Govt is correct. Listen to the Govt and not your weird friends, you idiot." The credibility of the fact-finders would go a long way if just once, they said, "Actually, the vaccines DO seem dangerous...."
Yes, nothing says “I’m a dumbass” more eloquently than sporting a man bun.
On him it's a Bitch Buiscit.
I found it equally hard to get through his boring, acquired views. Fact checking is not supposed to be simply parroting others take on any subject. It’s supposed to be a nuanced endeavour, and number one on his list has to be the government for crying out loud!
Looking at the selection you present, we can summarise the job of Pascal Siggelkow very well with Matthew 7:3.
"And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?"
And in English:
Whatever our faction says is true, by definition. We analyse what our opponents say until we find some little detail that could be dubious. If we find it, no matter how tenuous, we can dismiss the entire argument.
It’s the application of anarcho-tyranny to writing
I love the impossible concept of anarcho-tyranny.
Care to elaborate what it might be?
Delighted! As Nicolas Gomez Davila says:
“Dying societies accumulate laws like dying men accumulate remedies.”
Anarcho-tyranny is the selective application of these ludicrous laws so that your friends can do anything they like (for instance burn down half of America), while your enemies can’t engage in political protest (for example, being let into a public building).
It is one of the best explanations of the way the West functions I am aware of.
Ok. I agree with the concept, but the name is a play of words. Proper anarchy does not have laws the people in charge can selectively apply, because in a true anarchical system there are no people in charge.
Finally, I have found the other person on the internet who understands that "anarchy" and "chaos" are not properly synonyms... 😁👍
Good point. Do know enough Greek to get the same term using "chaos"? Would it be chaoto-tyranny?
Welcome to the two-person club!
You’re the first person I have ever found who has pointed that out!
You’re completely right of course, and the “anarchy” part of anarcho-tyranny is in fact a careful decision NOT to apply the law.
I suppose the reality of the situation is that we have the complete inversion of authority for the benefit of the powerful. This is interesting and is in many respects a phenomenon only previously seen in actively revolutionary periods. But our regime seems to want a permanent revolution or a “lotta continua” against the people.
Who said anything about it being proper?
Beautiful. Thank you.
Gatomalo recently posted on this guy who went around cutting off man buns.. he didn’t finish the job
https://open.substack.com/pub/boriquagato/p/kitten-corner-manbunny-foo-foo?r=pceva&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
“Abysmal idiot” hilarious.
My favorite fact check of all time was a Reuters piece addressing the question “did Joe Biden eulogize a grand wizard of the kkk?” ... this was declared false of course with the Reuters warriors for truth carefully explaining Robert Byrd was not a grand wizard, he was only a exalted cyclops who recruited 150 members of his community to found a new kkk chapter. Ah okay I guess I stand corrected! Had me laughing for days ... since then I carefully read the fact checks which so often depend on technicalities like grand wizard not equal to exalted cyclops to debunk enemy fire. Anything to get that precious “false” designation! The left really exposes its weakness of position with fact checks.
I looked it up. What a joke: Democrat Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia was a KKK organizer and executive, and Joe Biden DID eulogize him. The Democrats have never, ever shed their roots as the party of racism. They are obsessed with it.
The difference is that now the leftists of the democrat party utilize minorities to consolidate their own white power. It is disgusting and i dont see how it continues for so many decades. I suppose the handouts have locked the poor in place quite a bit
Yep.
100%
"Ideological masturbation" ha ha ha ... sounds so much more exciting the way you describe it. (Shit I'm so childish I'm ashamed)
I love that too
It was such a great essay I should have written something clever and serious but I just loved that these fact checkers are writing their stupid nonsense for their own gratification and what better way to describe it!!
Eugyppius hit just the right tone using ridicule to roast this guy. The abysmal examples of Paschal’s work product stand alone to condemn, but I immensely enjoyed the enhancements of nuggets of humour splattered throughout Eugyppius’ missive. This is not a piece Pascal can recover easily from and thank god because the guy sounds like an absolute ‘abysmal idiot’.