[HlessClaudesman]

To insist that all points of view are valid, and that truth is somehow unknowable is a viewpoint very common in academia.

Using the scientific method, meta-studies and suchlike our species has built an enormous corpus of knowledge, I'm happy to let that evolving concensus be the basis of our decisions.

For example the fact that vaccines do a more good than harm by an order of magnitude is no longer up for debate. There is a lunatic fringe who disagree, their unfounded fiction should not be shown to curious first time parents on google.

To insist that everyone can pick and choose reality and that we should all be wary of "facts" is to cause real harm.

[briholt]

You're bringing up the other extreme (postmodernism), which I wouldn't agree with either. I'm arguing against certainty. We are stumbling along trying to communicate information as accurately as we can in order to produce predicted outcomes we deem desirable. Hopefully the evidence on an issue becomes so overwhelming that we can broadly reach a reasonable consensus. However, that consensus is subjective and dynamic. There is no objective process that will perfectly delineate "fact" from "fiction" as our Google News overlords would have you believe.