[jaimeyap]

This. The march to authoritarianism accelerates when people accept the meme that the truth is unknowable. So they simply accept the reality put forth by the autocrat.

The most basic kind of truths are facts. We at least need to agree on those as best we can first. And then apply critical thinking on the the squishier stuff on top.

[jlg23]

> The most basic kind of truths are facts.

Except for that for a lot of "facts", according to Rousseau, we already have 4 truths: what you say, what I say, what we agree upon and what really happened.

So, while the pursuit of truth is important, I'd argue that respect towards each other even when we cannot agree is the most important thing.

[TeMPOraL]

Maybe we need to start teaching people to habitually attach provenance and confidence information to every fact (really: belief) they report, at least as much as practically possible?

"Iraq had WMDs in 2000s" != "I strongly believe Iraq had WMDs in 2000s" != "I find it plausible that Iraq might have had WMDs in 2000s" != "According to that UN report, Iraq had WMDs in 2000s" != "According to NYT, which quotes that UN report, Iraq had WMDs", etc.

A lot of problems are caused by people who say "X" when they should say "I strongly believe X", or "I think I read somewhere that X", or "I'm not sure, but I think X".

[SkyBelow]

I generally speak like this and find it causes problems with others because they view this as a weak form of speech. It makes you appear uncertain, which should be a good thing, but our society seems to value undeserved confidence far above cautious uncertainty.

[dotancohen]

This is my experience 100%. Blatant lies, told confidently, are far more convincing than the truth with a source.

[__MatrixMan__]

I find it helpful to spend a bit more cycles on keeping track of audience and a bit fewer on perfect conveyance of certainty levels.

Once you've set the bar re: certainty for a particular discourse neighborhood, you can just make claims at that level thereafter without feeling dishonest. As long as you're sensitive to cases where others may have joined without enough context to know that you're out on a limb.

[dhimes]

Yes- intellectual dishonesty is at the root of this. When I was raised, the integrity of a "man's" word was a measure of the "goodness" of the person. Now, we hear things like "he said what he had to say" and a basic acceptance of lies if the person is on our side of the debate.

It's depressing.

[mkr-hn]

I've tried to get into this habit. Qualifications are great too because when someone comes back to say "you said X! You lied!" you can remind them of how carefully you qualified your statement.

This is Circle of Competence applied[0]. It's admitting what you know you don't know so you don't make mistakes by being overconfident.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_of_competence

[TeMPOraL]

It's even more than that. By qualifying your statements, you let others evaluate them correctly.

So, for instance, if 'tptacek here says a factual statement about security (and there's no large thread contesting it), I'll treat it as gospel. But if he says he's unsure about it, or he read it somewhere, I know to attach less weight to it. I'll code in it my brain as "uncertain, but passed the sniff test of a relevant expert". Etc.

The same principle works in more mundane aspects of life. Whether a person believes something (and how much), or whether they're just reporting something they've read elsewhere, matters a lot for evaluating a factual statement independently.

[RussianCow]

The one thing with this is that you have to be consciously careful of who you view as an authority on different subjects, or whose opinion on something is relevant. For a simple, everyday example, it's easy to follow a friend's recommendation to eat at a particular restaurant, even if that friend has completely different tastes in food than you do (which, in all likelihood, will result in a poor dining experience for you). Likewise, I think even smart, educated people often make the mistake of treating the word of powerful individuals as fact even if those individuals have absolutely no experience with or authority on the matter.

[guelo]

> "NYT, which quotes that UN report, Iraq had WMDs"

You left out the last step,

!= Bush administration says Iraq had WMDs

[nradov]

That is a major part of the formal training program for professional intelligence analysts. Of course they still often get the probabilities wrong.

[jlg23]

Let's just talk in Quechua then, evidentiality is engraved in their grammar!(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quechuan_languages)

[asjw]

They are just 4 different angles of the same fact.

Lying and misreporting are two different things.

[buboard]

The world s autocratic countries (russia china turkey etc) don’t rely on fabricated news, they rely on hiding the truth and placing a biased spin on it. They know that outright lies will actually harm their image.

[asjw]

And killing journalists, and imprisoning political opponents, and controlling the media and, yes, straight up lying, because no other voice can be heard, so it's impossible to publicly fact check their lies.

[jcranberry]

That's a few autocratic countries. Such a statement is obviously not true in general. For starters you have dictatorships which have been based upon absurd and shameless lies. North Korea currently, Haiti under Papa Doc, Turkmenistan under Niyazov. In addition I'd imagine hiding news is the first line of defense, but if that fails none of these autocratic governments are not above lying (and I'd bet you find the dictators of those countries have lied many times when it suited them, if evidence is available).

[buboard]

I m talking about specifically “fake news” , lies that are generally obvious yet for emotional reasons persistent

What s different about autocrats is that they will unscrupulously plant evidence and kill everyone who knows

[richmarr]

Autocratic countries like... ones that ignore and undermine their own judicial system and appoint family members to positions of power?

[YarickR2]

Any evidence to your words ? Or this is just a lie you made up to spread your FUD ?

[buboard]

What FUD?

Here s an article about typical media strategies https://theconversation.com/four-things-you-need-to-know-abo...

Such countries will usually fabricate stories by implanting evidence or killing witnesses, not just by repeating them

[__MatrixMan__]

But if the truth is unknowable, how does the autocrat know it?

I've only met a few people who are skeptics about the existence of facts--but I find that they're likely to be skeptics about other things too.

I think that if it's a position you arrive at via honest philosophical inquiry, it's not a hazard at all.

The position to be wary of is where you still believe in the truth, but are so beleaguered by the cacophony of voices claiming to know it that you're willing to accept that somebody else has access to it if it means that you get to just peacefully be on their side and don't have to bother sorting through it all anymore.

That is too say: claiming to know the truth is often a proxy for being too intellectually lazy to bother forming a good argument, and I think that nihilism is preferable.

[golemotron]

> This. The march to authoritarianism accelerates when people accept the meme that the truth is unknowable.

How do you know?