The problem with "objective facts" is that they are often carefully selected or pulled out of context to bolster the arguer's position. I'm sure everyone can think of objective facts related to covid that both make the disease seem more deadly, and also objective facts that make it seem less deadly.
Appeals to emotion with subjective experiences have the same problem. You can use them to bolster support for the arguer's position even if it's only representative of a tiny sample.
The actual optimal policies we should be making over a wide variety of issues (environment, immigration, healthcare, and more) are very difficult to ascertain from objective facts or subjective experiences alone since both reflect the agendas and biases of those presenting them.
For any given issue there will be enough facts and stats to tell the story you want to tell, and for any given issue there were be some heartwrenching experiences of how someone was screwed over by the issue/policy.
> [0] For example (and this is just one example), I remember last year stories about how covid-19 victims were going into mass graves in New York City. And while that was a true and an objective fact, important context was left out. The context that was missing was that they were being buried on Hart Island, which is literally a mass grave site designated for unidentifiable persons dying of any cause, not just covid. But if you leave that part out it seems like the bodies are piling up so fast and so high the authorities had no choice but to dump the corpses in mass graves. Whereas in truth only unidentifiable/unclaimed covid victims were buried on Hart Island, and the same fate happens to any of NYC's homeless when they die for any reason and nobody claims the body.
Except even your "objective fact" lacks the context.
Hart island is and was a mass grave for unidentified/unclaimed bodies... however the number of dead going to that island was way way higher than years before during normal times. Hell even in october of last year at a time where the virus was more under control there was still 4 times(360 vs 90) the number normally going to that island. the number buried there through october was over 2 times the total buried there from the previous year with two more months to go in the year.
even people who discount covid as a bad, made up thing also can't escape the fact that the year is far more deadly from deaths of any cause than prior years:
So either people are dying from something else at an alarming rate that defies predictions or covid is something worth taking seriously(also, the fact that death is not the only outcome and there are people with serious long term negative effects).
I ended up deleting that example because I knew someone was going to quibble about it. More people were buried on Hart Island in 2020 than previous years but more people were buried everywhere in 2020. That doesn't change the fact that Hart Island existed pre-covid and will continue to exist post-covid and that the "mass graves" stories were based on carefully selected out-of-context facts in order to paint covid in a deadlier light.
Fair enough i didn't notice that you deleted that.
> That doesn't change the fact that Hart Island existed pre-covid and will continue to exist post-covid
sure. i don't take issue with that. it was just one of many reports on the anomaly events like the refrigerator morgues and other events. Fact of the matter this disease is very deadly and the articles of the time show it.
here's articles from both sides of the aisle during that time period:
Both show proper context and highlight how different the burials were. (neither of them are AP stories) fox notes that burials went from one day a week to five days a week. both offer the history of the island and what it's normally used for. I see a fair article from both of those ideologically opposed orgs.
And, while I don't debate the premise of the OP's article, the big redeeming virtue of objective facts is that we can dig into them - exactly like we're doing here.
This was the biggest lesson I learnt when doing my PhD. One of the sections I had to look at what factors led to successful software projects within companies. This could be anything, from going with Open Source, buying the right software from the right vendor, management involvement, 10X developer in the company or even something as simple as user training. You can practically pick whatever factor suits your bias and you will find the data that supports your argument.
You are right. The problem comes when it is time to weight which one is most important when making a decision. Open source Vs of the shelf all these "true"facts are brought to the table. It often ends up being what head honcho wants or going with IBM/Microsoft. No one ever got fired for making that decision
Sure, this is the obvious takeaway if you are solely interested in how to persuade others and advance your agenda. But the reason why personal experiences are better at bridging moral/political divides is because shared experience makes it possible for to hear another viewpoint. If all you get from this study is an improved approach to advancing your issue, that's a shame.
I have lots of shared experiences with my parents, but there is no bridging our moral/political divide. The assumptions they use in their model of the world, as well as the data, are completely inappropriate. At least to accomplish my goals.
I think unless conversations agree on the assumptions and agree on the data sources and data itself, and even the logic, it’s going to end in disagreement. My parents can hold conflicting viewpoints simultaneously, in sentences one after another, and have no problem with it.
"My parents can hold conflicting viewpoints simultaneously, in sentences one after another, and have no problem with it."
They probably say the same about you. The hard truth is that most people hold conflicting opinions. It usually takes about 20 years of being an adult to come to this realization.
Also opinions and perspectives change. I was quite liberal, politically, in my 20s. In my 50s I'm quite conservative, though I would never have thought that could be the case when I was 22.
That seems to be fairly common. School curriculum tends to have a brainwashing element to it. Also, each generation thinks it has all the answers. I remember discussions with older relatives, trying to convince them of something. They turned out to be right more often than not.
Viewpoints are typically the intersection of a number of values. Your interpretation of conflict might just be a function of how your values are weighted vs those of your parents.
...shared experience makes it possible for to hear another viewpoint.
That's specifically why personal experience is a persuasion tool and an effective one - which isn't an absolute bad thing but also doesn't make it an inherently good thing.
The average person, debating on the Internet or off, tends to start in an intensely emotional state. Giving your own personal experience backs them down from that intense emotional state.
Once the person has backed-down a bit you can give your pitch and your pitch can be anything, either a plea for rational inquiry into the situation or your own intensely manipulative, emotional and off-kilter claims.
I personally try to go from polarized emotional shouting matches to "let's make a model of the world and consider what makes sense in it" approaches. I think if you can get someone to start thinking about things that way, you have given them thinking-tools and not simply openness.
Something to think about is that simple openness is by no means an inherently good thing. A lot of New Age ideologies talk about the need to stay open with upshot that people open themselves to all sorts of poisonous and delusional crap. Being open but selective in what you let in is much better.
You're right. This is how people with an agenda misuse facts. But just because specific facts can be misused does not mean we abandon using facts at all. Many facts are biased. All personal experiences are biased. Being less wrong is the goal.
There's a bunch of ads promoting making vaping illegal, on terrestrial radio/tv fear mongering about heavy metals aimed at the 'Karen' crowd. As far as I can tell they are based on a few people who died after consuming grey market THC cartridges and some studies where the scientists intentionally cranked up the wattage above spec to get metal release.
Glycophosphate (Round-Up) allegedly caused cancer in a few workers who, per label, grossly misused it. There have a been a few high profile lawsuits, at least one in CA, over those cancers, and corresponding calls to ban it. This is of course despite both an excellent safety record and lack of safer alternatives, asserted by many studies and meta studies from the FDA and the European equivalent. Glycophosphate though, is 'factually'[0] listed by IARC as a class 2A carcinogen. I'm sure there are few HN threads digging into this one if you have lots of time to kill.
[0]IARC is basically a factory of 'facts' that sound bad but aren't when it comes to cancer: class 2A is the same class as eating red meat.
> This is of course despite both an excellent safety record and lack of safer alternatives, asserted by many studies and meta studies from the FDA and the European equivalent.
Leaded gasoline had an extraordinary safety record for decades before suddenly being recognized as dangerous. The story is actually fascinating. But my point is this is actually not as strong of an argument as you might think, especially since glyphosate is a patented chemical effectively sold by one company.
Glyphosate itself was discovered back in the 50's; patents around that would have expired ~50 years ago.
The patents around glyphosate resistant soybeans expired five or ten years back; someone immediately produced and released an unencumbered version. (I don't think it's as popular as you'd think; the yields are a bit lower than the state-of-the-art varieties available now, and farmers purchase new seeds every year for a lot of reasons beyond patent encumbrance.)
Roundup deserves its bad press, regardless of which exact scandal caused it to penetrate popular consciousness. Monsanto's highest margin R-Up product range is ultra-high dosage pesticides together with crops designed to tolerate the pesticide. It kills all rival plants, as advertised, and through its effect on funghi and bacteria it has plenty of knock-on effects on local ecologies. It's real "Silent Spring" material.
The decision by the EU Parliament to ensure that decisions about permissibility of pesticides are based on open science, rather than the proprietary study model that dominated before, has led to a lot of good research. Cf. e.g.,
Appeals to emotion with subjective experiences have the same problem. You can use them to bolster support for the arguer's position even if it's only representative of a tiny sample.
The actual optimal policies we should be making over a wide variety of issues (environment, immigration, healthcare, and more) are very difficult to ascertain from objective facts or subjective experiences alone since both reflect the agendas and biases of those presenting them.
For any given issue there will be enough facts and stats to tell the story you want to tell, and for any given issue there were be some heartwrenching experiences of how someone was screwed over by the issue/policy.