That last is something everyone should consider when thinking about how they see and interpret events and behaviors, especially large-scale behaviors. The reconciliation of 'objective truth' and the now-fashionable 'personal truth' into something resembling a 'truth' most people can agree on much depends on this.
No fun. But necessary. Props for putting it out there.
That last is something everyone should consider when thinking about how they see and interpret events and behaviors, especially large-scale behaviors. The reconciliation of 'objective truth' and the now-fashionable 'personal truth' into something resembling a 'truth' most people can agree on much depends on this.
No fun. But necessary. Props for putting it out there.
"Man is the measure of things... of things that are, as to how they are and of things that are not, as to how they are not."
Protagoras (not Pythagoras, totally different guy).
One of the distinctions that people fail to make is the role and scope of subjectivity WRT truth. People confuse subjective truth and objective truth.
When you say something like, it's really hot in here, that is a subjective truth--you are talking about the truth of your experience. To you, it is hot. Someone from the tropics may find it cool and they would also be correct.
The description and meaning is purely subjective in anything other than edge cases (every human is going to think a 210 F room temperature is hot--that is an extreme edge case).
This is what Protagoras refers to.
If you say that it's 76 F in the room, that is an objective truth. It does not depend upon your experience and is not defined by it.
Much of political discourse is concerned with and/or framed in terms of the abstract--of things that exist only within human comprehension and narrative.
Terry Pratchett (one of my favorite authors) explained this very well in a book called Hogfather.. to paraphrase:
If you ground up the universe to the finest possible powder and sieved it through the finest possible sieve you would not find one atom of mercy or justice or love or hate... these are human things, things of our imagination.
And also:
Only beings who were incredibly self centered could think that a place (the universe) where the overwhelmingly vast majority of it would instantly kill them could think it was created for them.
The combination of these two things--abstraction and extreme self-centeredness leads to a lot of problems with truth.
We can say objective things about a lot of human activity.. because we CAN observe and measure the effects. When we make value judgements on those effects is where we run into problems, because value is subjective.
I don't believe/think/feel that X is Y is a subjective truth ONLY in that it truthfully describes (if you are being truthful) what YOU believe/think/feel....
In many cases (not all) there ARE criteria to determine whether X is Y. It is something that CAN be established. It IS an objective truth.
And, if you want to be bayesian about it--some things definitely are more probable than others.
Well, no. an unfortunate by-product of the very weak critical-thinking curriculum in schools is the pervasive idea idea that all opinions are roughly equal. An opinion backed by no facts in context, evidence and logic,k is of no value. Well-formulated, well-defended opinions are of great value. The key is to have strong opinions, weakly held, not weak opinions, strongly held.
Subjectivity is bound up in personal experience and viewpoint. The feelings, experiences, and judgments are important--because, in reality, that is all we REALLY have and this is what our decisions are based upon.
The danger is when we think these things are truths for anyone other than ourselves and are true in a context outside of personal experience.
There ARE objective truths--but that truth is outweighed by how people FEEL about them. We will overthrow that truth (if we can) in favor of something that makes us feel better. It doesn't make the truth any less true... or the lies we choose in their stead any less false.
We get away with it because, in the majority of cases, our truth falls into the realm of the merely human, the narrative, the experiential, the illusionary and subjective good and bad.
Whereas believing that gravity holds no sway over you and you can fly will probably kill you.
"Say it loud, say it proud, we're all Bayesians now."
Math aside, if you're trying to get productive work done, a bubble insulating from outside distractions has advantages. My young bubble included "bleeding heart libertarians":
To those already confident that free markets are inevitably captured by the oppressors, the "bleeding-heart libertarian" motto, "Free Markets & Social Justice", sounds like the worst possible joke. In my bubble, though, it was producing results.
Soon after college, I met some lawyers working for the Institute for Justice's Chicago small-business clinic. Of course, IJ is backed by wealthy donors who consider deregulation in their own financial interest, and who want to make deregulation look better by publicizing the cases where deregulation increases equity. Thing is, there *are* tons of regulations favoring the more privileged at the expense of the less, and when you strike those down, even if only to make deregulation in general look better, you, well, strike them down.
Most IJ staff are probably right-wing ideologues. Some, though, are political progressives who see the particular work they do at IJ as anti-racist, and are more than happy to siphon of a bit of the Kochtopus's funding for what they sincerely believe are anti-racist ends.
A little bubble like that can be productive for specific policy changes that (hopefully!) improve people's lives, precisely because it shuts out the sentiments driving electoral politics more broadly. But in a representative government, that's also its weakness, if you're trying to figure out what electoral coalitions are really about.
That last is something everyone should consider when thinking about how they see and interpret events and behaviors, especially large-scale behaviors. The reconciliation of 'objective truth' and the now-fashionable 'personal truth' into something resembling a 'truth' most people can agree on much depends on this.
No fun. But necessary. Props for putting it out there.
"Man is the measure of things... of things that are, as to how they are and of things that are not, as to how they are not."
Protagoras (not Pythagoras, totally different guy).
One of the distinctions that people fail to make is the role and scope of subjectivity WRT truth. People confuse subjective truth and objective truth.
When you say something like, it's really hot in here, that is a subjective truth--you are talking about the truth of your experience. To you, it is hot. Someone from the tropics may find it cool and they would also be correct.
The description and meaning is purely subjective in anything other than edge cases (every human is going to think a 210 F room temperature is hot--that is an extreme edge case).
This is what Protagoras refers to.
If you say that it's 76 F in the room, that is an objective truth. It does not depend upon your experience and is not defined by it.
Much of political discourse is concerned with and/or framed in terms of the abstract--of things that exist only within human comprehension and narrative.
Terry Pratchett (one of my favorite authors) explained this very well in a book called Hogfather.. to paraphrase:
If you ground up the universe to the finest possible powder and sieved it through the finest possible sieve you would not find one atom of mercy or justice or love or hate... these are human things, things of our imagination.
And also:
Only beings who were incredibly self centered could think that a place (the universe) where the overwhelmingly vast majority of it would instantly kill them could think it was created for them.
The combination of these two things--abstraction and extreme self-centeredness leads to a lot of problems with truth.
We can say objective things about a lot of human activity.. because we CAN observe and measure the effects. When we make value judgements on those effects is where we run into problems, because value is subjective.
One additional thing:
I don't believe/think/feel that X is Y is a subjective truth ONLY in that it truthfully describes (if you are being truthful) what YOU believe/think/feel....
In many cases (not all) there ARE criteria to determine whether X is Y. It is something that CAN be established. It IS an objective truth.
And, if you want to be bayesian about it--some things definitely are more probable than others.
Yep.. and they all have the same value--which is basically none. :)
Well, I mean, it's valuable for our alimentary canal to have both an in end and an out end, especially since we've got taste buds.
Well, no. an unfortunate by-product of the very weak critical-thinking curriculum in schools is the pervasive idea idea that all opinions are roughly equal. An opinion backed by no facts in context, evidence and logic,k is of no value. Well-formulated, well-defended opinions are of great value. The key is to have strong opinions, weakly held, not weak opinions, strongly held.
True.
Subjectivity is bound up in personal experience and viewpoint. The feelings, experiences, and judgments are important--because, in reality, that is all we REALLY have and this is what our decisions are based upon.
The danger is when we think these things are truths for anyone other than ourselves and are true in a context outside of personal experience.
There ARE objective truths--but that truth is outweighed by how people FEEL about them. We will overthrow that truth (if we can) in favor of something that makes us feel better. It doesn't make the truth any less true... or the lies we choose in their stead any less false.
We get away with it because, in the majority of cases, our truth falls into the realm of the merely human, the narrative, the experiential, the illusionary and subjective good and bad.
Whereas believing that gravity holds no sway over you and you can fly will probably kill you.
I've never jumped off a cliff I hadn't seen a buncha frat boys jump off first and swim away unharmed.
That's why I said probably ;)
"Say it loud, say it proud, we're all Bayesians now."
Math aside, if you're trying to get productive work done, a bubble insulating from outside distractions has advantages. My young bubble included "bleeding heart libertarians":
https://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/
To those already confident that free markets are inevitably captured by the oppressors, the "bleeding-heart libertarian" motto, "Free Markets & Social Justice", sounds like the worst possible joke. In my bubble, though, it was producing results.
Soon after college, I met some lawyers working for the Institute for Justice's Chicago small-business clinic. Of course, IJ is backed by wealthy donors who consider deregulation in their own financial interest, and who want to make deregulation look better by publicizing the cases where deregulation increases equity. Thing is, there *are* tons of regulations favoring the more privileged at the expense of the less, and when you strike those down, even if only to make deregulation in general look better, you, well, strike them down.
Most IJ staff are probably right-wing ideologues. Some, though, are political progressives who see the particular work they do at IJ as anti-racist, and are more than happy to siphon of a bit of the Kochtopus's funding for what they sincerely believe are anti-racist ends.
A little bubble like that can be productive for specific policy changes that (hopefully!) improve people's lives, precisely because it shuts out the sentiments driving electoral politics more broadly. But in a representative government, that's also its weakness, if you're trying to figure out what electoral coalitions are really about.