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.
This is exactly how science works. It self corrects as new information becomes available.
when science backs it up.
What happens when “science” backs up two opposing ideas with sufficient evidence and logic to make either seem plausible?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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?
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
It’s not the amount of evidence, it’s the quality of it.
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
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.
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?
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.
If I can find three reputable sources that say the same thing
They used to say ALL cholestrol was bad, every doctor said it. But then someone discovered about HDL and LDL
Also, doctors used to say smoking doesn’t cause cancer.
It is itself extremely biased, you believed an authority that isn’t neutral.
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”?
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?
From their own description of Al Jazeera
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”.
