[lhnz]

  > Within two days of Trump assuming power, White House
  > officials have found themselves embroiled in a
  > scandal over “alternative facts”.

Those weren't alternative facts, those were lies.

Actual alternative facts do exist because we often select the facts we represent based on our tribal affiliations.

I won't be able to reclaim the term now that is smeared. But I wish people could point out when somebody is lying (or misleading) without trying to smear the existence of counterzeitgeist truth.

Aside: why didn't anybody in the Trump administration respond by pointing out that Washington, D.C. is majority democrat, and that Bush's inauguration might have been a better comparison? Quite embarrassing that they would lie when deflating the authority of the comparison would have probably been more effective...

[pc86]

I blame the media for a lot of this, honestly. If someone tells a lie, say "why did you lie about _____?" That's about 90% of why the media exists in the elevated status it has/had.

But when a reporter on CNN says "Why did the Donald Trump tell the Press Secretary to come out and tell falsehoods?" that diminishes what actually happened. The PS lied on national television. Call him out on it. Use the word "lied" or "liar" and stop dressing it up by using terms like "telling falsehoods."

When a liar is said to be "telling falsehoods" it's only one small step for them to reply with "alternative facts."

[shanusmagnus]

Agreed. And this has been Trump's strategy the whole time -- just keep bludgeoning and bludgeoning until whatever bullshit he says is accepted as real, or until the associations are tied where he wants them to be, e.g., whatever your political affiliation, "Crooked Hillary" is resonant now.

This has been a tried and true strategy of con men and salesmen and marketers throughout history. (It was also a tried and true strategy of various NBA teams -- foul so much that that level of fouling seems normal and the refs stop calling it. Highly, highly successful strategy; you basically force the game to unfold the way you want.)

[dgllghr]

I agree with you -- this would help a lot. Good news, NYT story today: "Trump Repeats Lie About Popular Vote in Meeting With Lawmakers".

[anotherturn]

I wonder if the lawyers have a hand in this. Words like "liar" paint a person in a negative light and could lead to a defamation lawsuit. Whereas pointing out that something is a "falsehood" is inviting a comparison of facts - i.e. inviting Trump to prove he wasn't lying.

[a_thro_away]

That is what I understand; lie implies intent, which is impossibly hard to do. IMO the media is trying to being courteous, even delicate, when it is and should be an all out brawl, when the truth and fact are at stake.

[mikeash]

I kind of like the vocabulary they're using. Everybody knows politicians lie, and I don't think that word would have much of an impact. Repeating the term "alternative fact" and using terms like "believes... won't provide any proof" draws attention to just how absurd these particular lies are.

[bookbinder]

It only draws attention for paying who willing to think critically. Lots of Trump supporters are perfectly content with the notion of "alternative facts."

[mikeash]

That's true, but is there any way to reach that group?

[smackay]

Trump's campaign was based entirely on persuasion (populism for want of a better term). That "alternative facts" exists as a thing is just another play in the persuasion handbook to discredit the idea that there any real facts at all - only opinions seem to matter now. As a result any attempt to counteract "Trumpism" with facts and data is dead in the water already.

[mikeash]

Trump doesn't strike me as the sort of boss who enjoys hearing contrary views from his minions. I imagine he told his press secretary to get out there and tell the media off for lying about his record-breaking inauguration numbers, and Mr. Spicer went and did it.

The man is remarkably insecure. Everything he does has to be the "best ever" or it's just not good enough. Having someone like that in charge scares me.

[randomgyatwork]

Technically if you were pressing an alternative theory than you would be using 'alternative facts.' Facts are tools or pieces to build something, such as a theory.

We all experience alternative realities and use our 'alternative facts' to justify our beliefs. We all literally do this every single day.

As a libertarian or a marxist one has 'alternative facts' about the nature of humans, society and the environment, from there they build up their world.

[baq]

alternate beliefs, maybe. my definition of facts doesn't require anyone to exist for them to be true.

[dingaling]

'Facts' don't have an independent objective existence, unfortunately. 'Things that occurred' ( the literal etymology of 'facts' ) always require some form of interpretation in order to bring them into our domain of comprehension, and that's where the fuzziness enters.

In epistimology one discusses 'justified belief'; an apparently valid belief obtained in a repeatable and seemingly rigorous manner. But still subject to interpretation through our lens of 'knowledge'.

Think about the current cosmological debates about Dark Energy. Something like 5,000 papers have been published; it seems to be a 'fact' that Dark Energy exists and exerts an influence, but in 200 years from now we might have a justified belief that it does not as some aspects of relativity were incorrect.

[lhnz]

  > 'Facts' don't have an independent objective existence,
  > unfortunately. 'Things that occurred' ( the literal
  > etymology of 'facts' ) always require some form
  > of interpretation in order to bring them into our
  > domain of comprehension, and that's where the
  > fuzziness enters.

That etymology is exactly how I understand facts, too. But I think many people don't use the term in that way.

For example, "It's 3:56 pm in the UK" is a fact in my mind.

(It won't be the case in a minute of course.)

The way I see it: facts are like memoized predicates. They are statements of truth within a particular context. Often they need to be re-executed to be kept fresh.

[hectorperez]

"Actual alternative facts do exist because we often select the facts we represent based on our tribal affiliations"

I wrote about this recently:

"When we are interested in a topic and have time, we read about it and contrast different points of views. But when we don’t have time or are not interested in something, we believe what our culture, friends and influencers say. And we are so bombarded with information nowadays that we can’t get informed about everything all the time" [1]

Do you think that a site tracking expert's opinions on important topics might help?

That's what we are doing on AgreeList.com / Wikiopinion.org We haven't decided yet if it should be a for-profit startup or a nonprofit organisation.

Do you think this would help to tackle fake news?

[1] https://medium.com/@HectorPerez/wikipedias-social-network-57...

[matthewmarkus]

You might want to take a look at Hopes & Concerns:

http://www.hopesandconcerns.org/

I'm not super excited about "expert" opinion. An expert, to quote Niels Bohr, "Is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field." A jet engine mechanic is an expert if none of the planes she works on experiences engine failure. A scientist is, almost by definition, not an expert. This is especially the case when experiments cannot be carried out. For instance, we cannot instantiate 1000 earths, vary their CO2 content, and then observe what happens. We can only model, and modeling is based on assumptions, or "alternative facts." Almost everything controversial today (e.g., drug policy, economic interventions, climate change, etc.) falls into this quasi-scientific realm. I'm not sure that there is a quick way to reach a consensus on such issues other than by having all of the interested parties slug it out in public over an extended period. I also believe we must be careful about overzealously applying the precautionary principle to the point that policies that are objectively not working become sacred cows (e.g., the War on Drugs).

[JohnStrange]

Whenever I see 'expert status' debated at universities, where it is debated and criticized a lot, my alarm sirens go up. You can split hairs about what really constitutes an expert for many hours, I've even been to conferences about this topic. But funny Niels Bohr paraphrases aside, it's in reality very simple and not problematic at all who constitutes as an expert:

- Experts have 20-40 years of experience in a particular field within their discipline. Young scholars or those belonging to the academic middle field need not be counted as experts. (They may still be experts, but that doesn't mean you should resort to them for providing expertise.)

- Experts have 20-40 years of continuous publications in peer-reviewed international academic journals about the subject matter, or have been working in the field for that time in a senior role in non-academic fields (e.g. race driving, casino security, etc.).

- Experts are recognized as eminent scholars by the majority of fellow scientists who also work in the field, whether they agree with them or not. Not just scholars or average scholars, eminent scholars.

- The expert's discipline is an actual science and their field of expertise is in fact a subfield of that discipline. Fields are much narrower areas of specialization than disciplines. (Hence, priests are not experts about 'what's good', astrologers are not experts in astronomy and mechanical engineers who muse about special relativity are not experts about special relativity.)

- The expert is given the intellectual independence and has sufficient access to the evidence needed to provide his expertise.

These criteria really suffice to weed out all the pseudo-experts of the world. That's because most if not all pseudo-experts are either laymen or crackpots from related disciplines, and in any case are not recognized as eminent scholars from people of their field. Someone can be an expert without satisfying these criteria, Richard Feynman on the Challenger catastrophe, for instance, but if you want to make sure, the above criteria suffice.

Last but not least, nobody is forced to believe genuine experts, but he should also be prepared to defend his points of view as well as a genuine expert or be regarded a stupid assclown if he doesn't.

[matthewmarkus]

If a racing driver loses too many races, she'll eventually have to leave the field. If a casino security person presides over too many unexpected losses, he'll eventually have to exit his area of endeavor. Their expertise is under constant pressure. A scientist isn't exposed to this same pressure, nor should she be, because failure is part of the experimental process. Thus, I think "scientific expert" is a contrast in terms unless it specifically refers to one's ability to conduct the scientific method (i.e., controlled experiments) within a given domain.

For instance, consider James Hansen. There is no doubt that most climatologists consider him an expert in climatology. He ticks off many of the boxes on your list. That's fine, but the climate models he presented to Congress in 1988 don't match observations since that time [1]. That's not to say climate change (née global warming) isn't happening, but that it is happening differently than originally predicted. This nuance is lost when "expertise" is accorded to the modeler. It is lost even more when we start talking about a 97% "expert" consensus that humans are causing climate change.

Perhaps treating "experts" like predictors and somehow attaching a coefficient of determination to each one would ease my concerns.

[1] https://www.skepticalscience.com/Hansen-1988-prediction.htm

[JohnStrange]

Scientists can be wrong. News at 11. That has nothing to do with the question of whether they are experts or not.

[matthewmarkus]

An expert with a 50% error rate is a coin. A scientist with a 50% error rate is still a scientist, and perhaps an eminent one at that.

When tens of "expert" climatologists with an error rate of say 5% in their field testify in support of a policy that eliminates thousands of expert miners, geologist, etc. with error rates of say 0.01% in their fields, you're going to have resistance. That's a huge perceived inequality in terms of ramifications and consequences.

[mistermann]

I definitely think so, this sounds like what I think might be a big, big part of the solution to this problem.

I would really hope that there's a threaded discussion component, and I would hope that differing opinions/theories are allowed (and critiqued, obviously).

[hectorperez]

Thanks for the feedback!

Do you mean a threaded discussion per topic or per opinion?

[mistermann]

It's a very tough problem.

Of course, there's going to be the typical reddit-like absolute nonsense bickering, deceit, lying, disingenuousness, half-truths, etc. But within this mess there is frequently some extremely good information.

And then there's the academic/professional opinion, which would tend to be less verbose and higher quality, but then we know from experience that now and then these people are a little casual with the truth.

I would like to see a site where people can go to (as much as is practically possible) solve disagreements on popular topics. Take climate change: I would like to see the problem clearly described in (as much as is practically possible) layman's terms, so the average voter can understand it. For those interested in more detail or technical depth, drill down hierarchically into deeper levels of documentation.

Also, I would like to see any issues or loose ends raised by those who are not completely on board (aka "deniers", because only certain thoughts are allowed these days) debunked thoroughly, or left with a status of "we don't know how this fits into our theory".

To me it would be tremendously more efficient if rather than bickering on the internet, we could simply link to the objective (reviewed by both "sides") facts. Wouldn't having a resource like this been a good idea for the Clinto campaign, rather than hiring people to infiltrate internet forums? It makes me wonder why this approach wasn't taken.

[trombone22]

The administration itself named their blatant lies "alternative facts", though I guess the media could be blamed for not reminding us strongly enough that we are discussing obvious lies.

[lhnz]

Yes, that is my point. Lies are lies. Facts are facts.

The indiscriminate usage of the term by the mainstream media is a strategic mistake since they are giving ground to the frame of all facts being subjective and equally applicable. Remember that 'fake news' was quickly and effectively used by the alt-right to tarnish mainstream media. I expect 'alternative facts' will eventually be used against them, too.

Also 'alternative facts' might be a position that the mainstream media needs to defend, if the current administration upped their game and began to mislead through selective usage of facts rather than more overt lying.

[BlackFingolfin]

"... of all facts being subjective and equally applicable"

I guess you meant to write "objective" there instead of "subjective", at least otherwise I can't make sense from what you write...

The thing is: Facts are, by definition, obective: "a thing that is known or proved to be true". However, their interpretation is not, and it may well be influenced by additional facts being revealed -- thus, whenver somebody says "given the facts, it is clear that XYZ holds", what they really mean (whether they are aware of it or not is another question) is "given the facts I am aware of, XYZ holds".

But again: these are additional facts, not alternative facts.

So all in all, I don't think your suggestion about an eventual legitimate need for the term "alternative facts" holds gound.

[lhnz]

Well, I think you misunderstand me.

Subjective facts as-in those with different sources or ways of measuring information. For example, people can choose the scientific studies that they draw attention to, and find an expert that agrees with them. (Also, the way in which people use the term 'fact' often relates to empirical observation and this can be miscalibrated: what was considered objective fact sometimes gets disproved or constrained.)

Alternative facts as-in alternative selections of facts. Not merely a case of adding facts, but also in not acknowledging the facts that you don't like.

Aside: @smackay's comment is very close in meaning to what I wrote (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13480772). You might find it easier to understand.

[delecti]

Reread the sentence:

> The indiscriminate usage of the term by the mainstream media is a strategic mistake since they are giving ground to the frame of all facts being subjective and equally applicable

They're saying that the media using the term "alternative facts" is giving ground to the very people who initially began spreading the lies, and in doing so is giving them an opening to exploit. Those people want to portray facts as subjective and all equally applicable. They aren't, and we should expect the the same people who started spouting "alternative facts" (read: lies) to begin branding actual facts as "alternative facts".

[danieltillett]

Because this would require making a comparison to others.

[netnichols]

Hehe, exactly. "We had yuge crowds! The biggest crowds! At least when compared to Bush..."

[redler]

There are only three possibilities I can see:

1) The President and his staff are mistaken, but honestly believe what they say

2) The President and his staff are lying, and know they are spreading falsehoods

3) The President and his staff are delusional

What other options are there?

If (1) is the case, and the actual facts are presented and they refuse to believe them, that would also seem to imply (3).

[iconjack]

4) The President and his staff are correct, despite prevailing opinion of scientists and media.

[redler]

That's possible, but the premise of these three points is how they deal with facts that they -- ok, almost certainly "he" -- does not like.

That they are willing to outright lie to the world about simple facts that are plainly obvious even to a child (e.g. crowd size in photographs) does not bode well for their representation of complex, nuanced, and consequential information.

I suppose there is a fourth possibility: this is a dominance game for the President, forcing staffers to lie about his hobbyhorses, knowing millions will accept the pronouncements as truth, and winking at his infuriated opponents. If he'll say his crowd was the largest in history when it's plain to all that it was not, what will he say about some new "Presidential voter fraud investigation" whose conclusions will be used to further suppress the vote and "make him correct"?

Edit: clarity

[davexunit]

No, that's not possible.

[munificent]

> Actual alternative facts do exist because we often select the facts we represent based on our tribal affiliations.

There are no alternative facts, only additional ones.