Truth Decay

[typhoon44]

You have GOT to be kidding

You can't get much more biased than CBC . . .

Just because you don't like what they say doesn't mean they are biased. If this is your opinion then you are not centrist.

[BC Landlord]

Just because you don't like what they say doesn't mean they are biased. If this is your opinion then you are not centrist.

True, not everyone likes their "journalism". However, everyone has to fund it. That's a big difference. I don't mind you liking them, but don't make me agree with you by paying for it. I bet you, their narrative would change dramatically, if they depended on their viewership rating.

[Sparki55]

Just because you don't like what they say doesn't mean they are biased. If this is your opinion then you are not centrist.

So just because you say they are centrist they are. Got it.


https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/cbc-news ... adcasting/
https://abacusdata.ca/canadian-news-med ... icroscope/
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/opinio ... sm-problem

It's so easy to label a news site a conservative site. There's no arguing it. It's almost impossible to call something left of center, it's always redefined as the middle ground lol.

I'm not here to argue about your favorite place to get news. If they post your opinion and you think you are center and choose not to pay attention to the widespread opinion that is your choice. Don't be surprised when there are facts posted about the other opinion and you have nothing to pull facts from that support you other than consistently posting your opinion with zero facts.

[Omnitheo]

Your example of gravity is exactly why scientists do not deal with "Truth" but rather theory supported by fact.

When one defines truth as fact - fact IS truth. Therefore, scientists DO deal with truth, as defined "that which is true or in accordance with fact or reality".

Our understanding of gravity has changed several times, from Newton, to Einstein to modern science and quantum physics. Acting like something is "True" leaves no room for new information. It proposes that something is finite, and that there can be no better understanding. Science always leaves room for improvement, for refinement, for new information which can better explain the phenomenon.

It does not seem to me to be accurate to suggest a scientist who accepts a law of science as "true" MUST therefore "act like something is true". Also, in physics, there is a difference between a law of science and a scientific theory:

In physics a law describes a natural phenomenon, but does not attempt to describe how it works. [Newton's law of gravitation] is a law because it describes the force but makes not attempt to explain how the force works.

A theory is an explanation of a natural phenomenon. Einstein's General Theory of Relativity explains how gravity works by describing gravity as the effect of curvature of four dimensional spacetime.
https://socratic.org/questions/is-gravi ... -or-theory

Broad acceptance of Einstein's theory did not in any way affect the "truth" of Newton's law, and it seems to me scientists are always free to consider the "if". Scientists would get nowhere if there were no facts to accept as true, no truths upon which to rely.

Just as we all need truths upon which to rely in order to have honest discussions and lead productive lives. Plain language and a commitment to truth and honesty, versus deceit and dishonesty in defense of a narrative or agenda.

Until recently, science had the ability to speak in plain language in discussions BECAUSE science constantly strives to understand THE truth.

This striving for THE truth is the polar opposite of the deceits employed in discussions of "morality" and "social justice", which are focused on maintaining a narrative or supporting an agenda - as you've described here:

When religous leaders claim something based on second hand retellings hundreds of years after the source material and then translated multiple times over the centuries to be "True" then what happens when something contradicts? IE like a discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls? How can both things be "True".

People believe things to be true. I'm not interested in beliefs, because people and the beliefs they hold are fallible, susceptible to biases and fallacies. Objective fact however remains fact. And the more facts you have, the better the theory which can be built.

We can easily identify many examples of believing what secular "leaders" claim to be "true" despite contradictions, as presented in the OP. Under the guidance of our secular leaders, the media consistently uses subjective language and biases to manipulate public opinion despite the contradictions - and people routinely make excuses for accepting this subjective language and bias as "inevitable" rather than demanding truth.

Worse, people who ought to know better routinely argue with those who do not accept what today's secular equivalents to "religious leaders" tell us we must accept because "everyone knows", and what we must do "for the greater good of all".

Rustled, you've made it quite clear over the years that you do not understand science. Scientists do not deal with Truth, no matter how hard you try to twist it. You're just digging yourself deeper here. Here's just one scientist to explain it. I can provide more if you'd like.

And all our models and theories are representations and approximations of reality as we see it. That is not truth.

The biggest giveaway is that scientific theories change with time. As we acquire new information or new data, we have to update all of our beliefs. And how can a belief be true if it is subject to change at a moment's notice?

Science represents reality, and we try to be as faithful and accurate as possible so we can get an ever deeper and ever more fundal fundamental understandings of of the way the world works.

I'm not the one to tell you what truth is. And neither are scientists - at least when it comes to speaking about science. We know what we know about the universe through observation, and those observations are flawed and subject to bias and interpretation and experimental uncertainty. And yes, some observations can be flat out wrong and will later be corrected or updated in the future.
-Paul Sutter, astrophysicist

[typhoon44]

Just because you don't like what they say doesn't mean they are biased. If this is your opinion then you are not centrist.

So just because you say they are centrist they are. Got it.


https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/cbc-news ... adcasting/
https://abacusdata.ca/canadian-news-med ... icroscope/
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/opinio ... sm-problem

It's so easy to label a news site a conservative site. There's no arguing it. It's almost impossible to call something left of center, it's always redefined as the middle ground lol.

I'm not here to argue about your favorite place to get news. If they post your opinion and you think you are center and choose not to pay attention to the widespread opinion that is your choice. Don't be surprised when there are facts posted about the other opinion and you have nothing to pull facts from that support you other than consistently posting your opinion with zero facts.

Congratulations. You just posted the link proving that CBC news is consistently low biased and factual.
The other opinion pieces are not factual. Facts matter, you know.

[Sparki55]

Congratulations. You just posted the link proving that CBC news is consistently low biased and factual.
The other opinion pieces are not factual. Facts matter, you know.

And you still won't concede that if a site chooses to only show facts that benefit the left that they are highly factual left bias. They don't spin facts to the left. They do leave out stuff that harms the left's agenda.

Again it's like listening to only the prosecutor, not the defense. Sure everything was 100% factual... But only half the facts were shared.

[rustled]

It does not seem to me to be accurate to suggest a scientist who accepts a law of science as "true" MUST therefore "act like something is true". Also, in physics, there is a difference between a law of science and a scientific theory:

• In physics a law describes a natural phenomenon, but does not attempt to describe how it works. [Newton's law of gravitation] is a law because it describes the force but makes not attempt to explain how the force works.
  
  A theory is an explanation of a natural phenomenon. Einstein's General Theory of Relativity explains how gravity works by describing gravity as the effect of curvature of four dimensional spacetime.
  https://socratic.org/questions/is-gravi ... -or-theory

Broad acceptance of Einstein's theory did not in any way affect the "truth" of Newton's law, and it seems to me scientists are always free to consider the "if". Scientists would get nowhere if there were no facts to accept as true, no truths upon which to rely.

Just as we all need truths upon which to rely in order to have honest discussions and lead productive lives. Plain language and a commitment to truth and honesty, versus deceit and dishonesty in defense of a narrative or agenda.

Until recently, science had the ability to speak in plain language in discussions BECAUSE science constantly strives to understand THE truth.

This striving for THE truth is the polar opposite of the deceits employed in discussions of "morality" and "social justice", which are focused on maintaining a narrative or supporting an agenda - as you've described here:

• " Omnitheo wrote:
  When religous leaders claim something based on second hand retellings hundreds of years after the source material and then translated multiple times over the centuries to be "True" then what happens when something contradicts? IE like a discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls? How can both things be "True".
  
  People believe things to be true. I'm not interested in beliefs, because people and the beliefs they hold are fallible, susceptible to biases and fallacies. Objective fact however remains fact. And the more facts you have, the better the theory which can be built.

We can easily identify many examples of believing what secular "leaders" claim to be "true" despite contradictions, as presented in the OP. Under the guidance of our secular leaders, the media consistently uses subjective language and biases to manipulate public opinion despite the contradictions - and people routinely make excuses for accepting this subjective language and bias as "inevitable" rather than demanding truth.

Worse, people who ought to know better routinely argue with those who do not accept what today's secular equivalents to "religious leaders" tell us we must accept because "everyone knows", and what we must do "for the greater good of all".

Rustled, you've made it quite clear over the years that you do not understand science. Scientists do not deal with Truth, no matter how hard you try to twist it. You're just digging yourself deeper here. Here's just one scientist to explain it. I can provide more if you'd like.

And all our models and theories are representations and approximations of reality as we see it. That is not truth.

The biggest giveaway is that scientific theories change with time. As we acquire new information or new data, we have to update all of our beliefs. And how can a belief be true if it is subject to change at a moment's notice?

Science represents reality, and we try to be as faithful and accurate as possible so we can get an ever deeper and ever more fundal fundamental understandings of of the way the world works.

I'm not the one to tell you what truth is. And neither are scientists - at least when it comes to speaking about science. We know what we know about the universe through observation, and those observations are flawed and subject to bias and interpretation and experimental uncertainty. And yes, some observations can be flat out wrong and will later be corrected or updated in the future.
-Paul Sutter, astrophysicist

My understanding of science is not the topic under discussion here, though: the topic is "truth decay". In fact, Paul Sutter is specifically describing theories and modelling here - he is not discussing the difference between a theory and a law of science. Do you think he would tell us there's NO truth to Newton's law of gravity - or that it is ONLY a subjective truth? Laws are on very strong ground, subject always to the "if".

As I said before, until recently science had the ability to speak in plain language in discussions BECAUSE science constantly strives to understand THE truth. The true nature of a virus, the true nature of a black hole, the true nature of everything. Ignoring this or pretending it's otherwise would be preposterous. In a thread where we are trying to get to the heart of why people increasingly refuse to use plain language - and increasingly rely on deceit instead - you seem to be putting considerable effort into convincing me ALL truth is entirely subjective, as though there could be nothing we could collectively agree to as being truth.

This is poppycock.

The belief that ALL truth is subjective is the sort of fuzzy thinking that makes it easy for manipulative folk with agendas to tangle gullible people up in knots over the difference between practical solutions to measurable problems, and the creation of unnecessary problems through the use of emotional language and the rejection of reason. Religious leaders have no corner on the use of emotional manipulation to subjugate reason in the masses - it's rampant everywhere, and people who believe themselves to be too well educated to be affected quite often show themselves to be far less impervious than those they denigrate.

[edmskeptic]

@rustled.
you hit the nail on the head.
everyone should read your post very carefully.
the debate of reality vs relativism goes back centuries, nietzsche, machiavelli, hitler.

relativism taken to it's logical limit has been the justification for atrocities and genocide since the dawn of post enlightenment civilization.

In good time new thread will follow.

[Omnitheo]

Rustled, you’re again demonstrating your misunderstanding.

Scientific laws are not “truth" either.

Laws are developed from data and can be further developed through mathematics; in all cases they are directly or indirectly based on empirical evidence. It is generally understood that they implicitly reflect, though they do not explicitly assert, causal relationships fundamental to reality, and are discovered rather than invented

Many laws have been refined and updated with new discoveries and understandings. Again Sutter’s point stands, Truth provides no room for improvement. It supposes that the understanding is final. While as you state: science strives towards what you would consider "the truth", that doesn’t mean it can ever reach it. Only continue to get closer. To claim to have the truth is to be closed minded to other possibilities. People can only have what truth they know, and people are flawed and subject to psychological biases, therefore truth itself is fallible (yes all truth). A colourblind man can tell you truthfully that a light is green when it’s in fact yellow, and a cultist can tell you truthfully that they are not in a cult and that a spaceship is coming to take everyone away after they drink the kool-aid. People quite simply don’t know, or don’t believe themselves to be wrong. That is why you cannot trust "Truth". The highest confidence must be given to that which is most verifiable. Like Reagan himself said, in a proverb borrowed from Russia, “Trust, but verify". Too often people simply trust "the truth"

[rustled]

Rustled, you’re again demonstrating your misunderstanding.

Scientific laws are not “truth" either.

Laws are developed from data and can be further developed through mathematics; in all cases they are directly or indirectly based on empirical evidence. It is generally understood that they implicitly reflect, though they do not explicitly assert, causal relationships fundamental to reality, and are discovered rather than invented

Many laws have been refined and updated with new discoveries and understandings. Again Sutter’s point stands, Truth provides no room for improvement. It supposes that the understanding is final. While as you state: science strives towards what you would consider "the truth", that doesn’t mean it can ever reach it. Only continue to get closer. To claim to have the truth is to be closed minded to other possibilities.

Again you are demonstrating the deceit required to support the nonsense narrative "all truth is subjective".

Yes, science is the pursuit of truth - and along the way, scientists pursuing truth are quite likely to agree to many, many truths rather than reject them as you seem to be suggesting. "No room for improvement" is a nonsense argument - there's no reason to be closed-minded to other possibilities while accepting some things as true.

An uneducated person would be quite comfortable believing it is true that if one simply drops a bowling ball from one's grasp it WILL fall toward the earth. I have no doubt any scientist worthy of our respect would also believe just the same and agree it's true, and not engage in pointless arguments about whether or not one can know for certain that the dropped bowling ball will fall toward the earth.

So no, Omnitheo, the premise "all truth is subjective" is nonsense, and not everyone will be so foolish as to set aside all reason for the illogical musings of those who would cow us into going along with whatever notions are most popular despite the total lack of common sense required.

People can only have what truth they know, and people are flawed and subject to psychological biases, therefore truth itself is fallible (yes all truth).

See above. I guarantee that if you drop a bowling ball, any rational person would move their feet away from the path it's taking. Woe betide the silly dingbat who stands there musing about the fallibility of their belief in what a bowling ball might do when dropped.

A colourblind man can tell you truthfully that a light is green when it’s in fact yellow, and a cultist can tell you truthfully that they are not in a cult and that a spaceship is coming to take everyone away after they drink the kool-aid.

You've conflated perception and belief with truth. If the light is, in fact, yellow as you have claimed, then it is yellow - that IS the truth. And people who are deluded struggle with their perceptions of reality - that is also true.

People quite simply don’t know, or don’t believe themselves to be wrong.

See above.

That is why you cannot trust "Truth". The highest confidence must be given to that which is most verifiable.

What does "verifiable" mean to you? The intent of verification is quite often to determine truth. Veracity.

Like Reagan himself said, in a proverb borrowed from Russia, “Trust, but verify". Too often people simply trust "the truth"

People can trust the truth when it is the full truth - not when it is only half truths, and certainly not the biased "news" presented to us by journalists who certainly could strive to do better: to verify first, to investigate, to present facts without bias.

And that is the point - what the media is presenting is NOT the truth. There is no defense for this. Suggesting journalists are unable to present the truth because "all truth is subjective" is utter hogwash.

[Gilchy]

Thought this may be applicable. In any field outside of pure numbers, the application of knowledge inescapably brings potential biases, assumptions, misgivings or unaccounted for variables. Observation doesn’t bring truth, it brings observational cause-and-effect (“a dropped bowling ball falls”, etc). And that’s for “hard sciences”.

Soft sciences, the study of behaviour, emotion, social structures and interactions, political systems, etc, out of fundamental context, has a degree of subjectivity inherent in it. Tom Flanagan, one of the architects of the Reform Party, is a Political Science professor. Some of Trudeau’s policy wonks are political scientists of a much farther left bent. Both groups have studied the same field, and arrived at very different idealized outcomes.

[Staredintoabyss]

Cbc published a story about racism in Dungeons and Dragons...........yet you still think they are centrist?

Just as a point I think a number of people are missing.
An organization can be factually generally accurate but still be biased in what they choose to publish or who they choose to give a platform to.
It is the representation of that bias that dictates whether it is left, center, or right in orientation.

Cbc is on the left, reliable within that bias. They don't report overt falsehoods but they are selective in what they do and do not choose to report on and how they choose to report.

They are also quite selective in where and when they allow public feedback, comments, and participation on their stories.

[rustled]

Thought this may be applicable. In any field outside of pure numbers, the application of knowledge inescapably brings potential biases, assumptions, misgivings or unaccounted for variables. Observation doesn’t bring truth, it brings observational cause-and-effect (“a dropped bowling ball falls”, etc). And that’s for “hard sciences”.

Soft sciences, the study of behaviour, emotion, social structures and interactions, political systems, etc, out of fundamental context, has a degree of subjectivity inherent in it. Tom Flanagan, one of the architects of the Reform Party, is a Political Science professor. Some of Trudeau’s policy wonks are political scientists of a much farther left bent. Both groups have studied the same field, and arrived at very different idealized outcomes.

It's one thing to recognize "there's a degree of subjectivity inherent in it", and quite another to use "all truth is subjective" as an argument against demanding better from journalists and politicians.

[typhoon44]

Congratulations. You just posted the link proving that CBC news is consistently low biased and factual.
The other opinion pieces are not factual. Facts matter, you know.

And you still won't concede that if a site chooses to only show facts that benefit the left that they are highly factual left bias. They don't spin facts to the left. They do leave out stuff that harms the left's agenda.

Again it's like listening to only the prosecutor, not the defense. Sure everything was 100% factual... But only half the facts were shared.

I would be happy to concede if you did that. You did not.
Truth matters. Facts matter. Try again.

[36Drew]

Almost all media is biased, and journalism itself is dead.

Journalism is the publishing of facts, evidence, and gives equal share to both sides of a story, without interpretation. It permits the viewer or reader to arrive at their own decision, devoid of any bias.

Anything else is an opinion piece or a form of activism.