Meh. I see the point being made (and I definitely agree with the skepticism about blockchain fact pools and fact-checking services), but it seems a bit... lightweight?

Like, it doesn't seem to tackle evidence, or facts-as-provisional-beliefs. He also doesn't seem to distinguish between the way general members of the public use "it's a fact" and the way an expert on a topic might use it, the later of which (at least in a scientific context) I've generally found to implicitly be saying "this is the only position reasonable to hold based on our current understanding and evidence", which comes with an implicit invitation to rebut with additional information.

Any discussion of this topic needs to be account for statements with very clear, and easily verified truth conditions. While I don't think the author is encouraging a perspective of complete truth-relativism, the framework he's constructed seems unable to escape it. Perhaps if he'd dug more into the context portion of his triangle, and interrogated how true statements interact with selective framing, he might be able to make a better distinction?

I don't like the use of "Trust" here and would much rather have "Reliability" because it can be grounded in statistics.

I did skim over a few parts towards the end, but it was a pretty good read. Thanks for sharing.

Yeah for sure. It’s certainly not comprehensive. Definitely going to look more into Wittgenstein

But I think for such a brief read this post is pretty good value epistemologically

I thought of it like..

If the moon is shining through my window and I hold my fist up to it and compare - I can objectively say that my fist is bigger than the moon. I could probably even get a ruler and take some measurements to prove it. So I can say that it’s a Fact that my fist is larger than the moon. The context I’m omitting here, obviously, is that the moon is 200 thousand miles further away. That’s why you need the trust part. You have to trust that the curator of a fact has omitted context that frames truth in a way that is useful and enlightening instead of obfuscating

That doesn’t mean truth is relative, but observations and measurements definitely are

From a pragmatic persepctive.

Our democracies hinge on the quality of the national debate/conversation. The quality is degraded to breaking point when people have alternative facts, there's no chance of resolving two arguements based on alternative facts.

Pre-'the internet' our facts were in a sense curated, because all media outlets (TV news / News papers) were responsible and liable for what they said. This meant that a fact was something that could be proven legally.

Obviously that wasn't a perfect situation, certainly not in a philosophical sense but it was a much higher bar than that set in online communities these days.

The legal and political instutions which set and applied liaible law were trusted. In Britain they've guided the national conversation for nearly 200 years in close to their current form. In which time living standards and freedoms have been protected and enhanced (compared to themselves in the 1820's).

I fear for next 200 years if the current alternative fact blizzard of whitlessness is allowed to continue unabated

Just an observation.

I can't tell if they're serious about that "extraterrestrials have been visiting earth" part or not

Totally misses the point the older Wittgenstein made against the younger Wittgenstein, i.e. meaning holism destroys the possibility of atomic facts.

"Trump Tweets have shown us that access to, obviousness of, and even universal agreement on the facts often achieves nothing for public discourse. Everyone agrees on the exact words he said, but their interpretation remains individual and tribal." imagine a blog post containing these words getting 41 upvotes on a philosophy subreddit. absolutely laughable.

I think the author is unfamiliar with the concept of "shared pool of meaning". Part of interacting is comparing our individual pool of meaning with another to see where we match or don't and going from there to refine our shared pool of meaning in order to coordinate.

Context, nuance, and circumstances always matter.

If I ask someone to "describe water". It might seem like an "easy" task. But the complexity become apparent when we think more broadly. You might describe it by it's chemical formula H2O. You might describe how it behaves under various circumstances (boils at 100°C and freezes at 0°C - under "normal" atmospheric pressure, at sea level, on Earth - those temps are different at elevation or on another planet with different atmospheric conditions) and if someone isn't familiar with the Celsius scale, those number wouldn't "mean" anything to them. There is prerequisite knowledge that builds off other prerequisite knowledge, which is why advanced classes often have prerequisites to make sure the learner has a foundational understanding of the underlying concepts before building upon that foundation.

This is why science gets documentation. It allows us to expand our collective shared pool of meaning beyond our lifetimes and update our understanding as we build upon those foundational tenets.

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Interesting take, although i would say this applies more to the soft sciences than hard sciences. Hard science can use instruments that meassure generally on a materialist basis while social sciences put out logical systems of ideas based on social phenomena; meaning that innovation from a capitalist view in relation to a wellbeing and health from a socialist point of view is a matter of prioritization in the tribe u belong to - and therefor u trust a political "fact" based on the tribe (or blockchain) u belong to.

"Science holds all knowledge as tentative and uncertain" is an untrue statement.

Facts are the dimensions (in the sense of things along which information is conserved) which constitute the map, which, remember– is NOT the territory.

Language cannot be used to get around that.

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I'm sorry, 2 + 2 = 4 is an objective fact.

Interesting, but I'm not going along with it.

The assumption that nobody considers epistemological factors and issues of framing when weighing facts is patently absurd. The author demonstrates this by forcefully arguing for their consideration himself.

This feels like an exercise in equivocation. The worry about facts causing religious zeal is ass backwards, because anybody who thinks of facts with epistemological factors and framing considerations in mind is de facto able to consider various points of view.

I would be a lot less hostile to this sophistry if it held the promise of a better approach to rigor, but it does not. All it does is is grant license to believe whatever the hell you want.

I am sorry, but I actually do feel a moral obligation not to believe things that are untrue, to the best of my ability. This entails using all my powers of deduction, induction and abduction to plumb out trust and framing surrounding those data by which I determine what is true. I need no new word for "fact" to keep these considerations in mind.