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by ThomPete 3445 days ago
In politics truth doesn't matter as such and never have. Politics is about getting it your way not about being right. It's about interest and choices.

The idea that politics is or should somehow be based on facts is misguided. We have science for facts what we choose to do with those facts is were politics come in.
2 comments
croon 3445 days ago
> The idea that politics is or should somehow be based on facts is misguided.

> We have science for facts what we choose to do with those facts is were politics come in.

The second sentence explicitly contradicts the first one. By your second one you are saying that politics is based on the facts that science provides. Or rather, should be.

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ThomPete 3445 days ago
No I am saying that facts are used in politics and that we choose to use those differently.

But facts aren't the only things which are used in politics.

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arethuza 3445 days ago
Of course, I agree that politics isn't based on facts but the idea that politics shouldn't be based on relevant facts is, to me, an appalling idea.
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ThomPete 3445 days ago
But again who decides what are relevant facts? This is the crux of the matter here.

What you seem to want to have is a technocratic system.

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arethuza 3445 days ago
Ideally I'd expect politicians to pick and choose "facts" that suit there arguments (or on a rare occasion actually have their arguments informed by data) and to ideally reference the sources so they can be checked by anyone who cares.

Is that an "elite" approach then?

Of course, what I describe above is an ideal - politics is a mucky business and the essence of a democracy is essentially that we get to choose between the liars. However, what I do have difficulty with is the idea that reasoning from actual factual data or scientific hypotheses has no role in politics.

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ThomPete 3445 days ago
But thats the problem. You can have two argument which are both true but politically only one of them can win. This is why we argue.

Not because we are uniformed but because our perspectives are different and our perspectives are different because it affects us differently.

And so the real danger here is to go along with this romantic notion that facts used to be more meaningful when in fact it was only that perspectives were more aligned than they are today.

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croon 3445 days ago
> You can have two argument which are both true but politically only one of them can win.

No you can't. This is why we are living in "post-truth". Meaning it's not truth anymore.

You are right in that either one can win, but only one can be true.

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jerf 3445 days ago
"You are right in that either one can win, but only one can be true."

Of course both sides can put forth true arguments in a political debate. I'm having a hard time coming up with a real world example, both because I don't want to push buttons that force you down a knee-jerk path on the button I push when I don't really care about it, and because we're really not used to seeing honest debates in the political arena.

But when society faces a decision A or B, each side can completely honestly tout the benefits of their decision and the costs of the other decision, both of which will exist. And God Almighty could come down from on high and hand us the exact, true, and full consequences of each decision, and those who benefit from one decision can completely honestly argue in its favor while those who may not benefit could completely honestly argue against it, which could be completely different sets of people for each decision. (There's almost never a decision that benefits everybody, even before we get into questions like relative amounts of benefit, or how society as a whole benefits.)

An argument containing elements of truth, or even somehow consisting entirely of truth, does not make it correct, because it still won't be the complete truth, which may well contain a superior argument for a different decision in it. But we don't have access to complete truth.

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ThomPete 3445 days ago
no thats not why people claim we are living in post-truth. They claim that because they claim that truth doesn't matter anymore but truth never mattered in politics and people aren't discarding truth.

I would urge you to give me examples in politics which can't have two different political outcomes both potentially true.

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