Facts are anything but concrete.
But first, let me give a point of reference by offering a few dictionary definitions from Miriam Webster. A fact is something that has actual existence, an actual occurrence, a piece of information presented as having objective reality, the quality of being actual. I wish there was an addition in there that included some reference to time because a fact that was true hundreds of years ago. We do not deem a fact. Today
Mark Ward
@AskMarkWard · 0:13
Okay, I hear what you're saying, but I still say if we throw a woman in the water and she floats, she is a witch. That's a fact
You don't even get, like, two words into that. And I'm already anticipating the joke. Where's this going? Where's this going
Gene Albertson
@GeneA · 0:53
But I think, too, when we're talking about facts and evidence that we also have to remember that the words that we use to describe these things are or their symbols. And we don't all agree on what those words mean. And it's really difficult sometimes to be certain about something which it's all relative, as you said. And then the evidence two different people can look at the same evidence and use the same word. And it can mean completely different things
Yes. Sometimes I wonder how we ever communicate with each other because the vocabulary is so nebulous and everevolving it's really a wonder
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 3:34
We have been become more critically thinking society because we've enjoyed a certain amount of freedom and an expanse of our education over the past 100 years. So we are able to analyze and question more. And what comes with that is this sort of existential explosion of maybe this fact is not really a fact, but that's where I think science is comforting. I think art is comforting because art is not asking you for facts
Dewuan .
@FryedOreo · 3:08
It's just that through the evolution of man and woman and our technology, we are getting ever so much closer to what a fact is. But a fact is with an asterisk because we don't have the algorithmic code or the equation to know everything. Only then can we truly say something that's 100% factual. But as you stated, things that we thought were factual then are changing now
I know that, boys, welcome to The Swelly Verse. You made some rather fascinating points. I think I need to think on for a bit more. It's nice to see you around here about thanks for jumping on here
Caleb Paul
@tooshy · 4:39
Maybe something. Maybe like if the bus is going like one. Maybe if the plane is going 1 mile an hour, just an example. Maybe the rock is changing, like 1 second. Maybe the rock is changing so slowly that you're going to start to notice the changes in the rock after 20,000 years, 50,000 years. Maybe I'm just giving an example because it's like everything is getting older. But some things are getting older faster than some other things. Just like the turtle
Caleb Paul
@tooshy · 4:59
It's like they have some kind of approximation. And maybe that's the reason why in applied mathematics or physics. So we have all these approximations because not because theories are wrong, but because we don't have the actual, exactly appropriate technology to merge to verify our calculations. Maybe that's why we have all those approximations. And what you say is really interesting, really interesting
Bernie Goldbach
@topgold · 0:52
Christina, you offer a very strong affirmation of the realm of alternative facts as articulated by Kellyanne Conway. So it's a dangerous, dangerous and slippery slope, much more dangerous than throwing witches into the water. I'll tell you that the world swims with alternative facts. All you have to do is watch the flow of my Facebook news. So many alternative fact based realities exist, and all around us, you don't have to go to Merriamwebster to justify it
Shammi Mohamed
@shammi · 4:19
While the scientific concepts and processes and science go through the whole hypothesis and then experimentation and then concluding facts from that mathematics is a little different. Proofs are derived usually from first principles and are irrefutable. So enough of geeking out on the technicalities of fact, et cetera. Facts and proof. Even with the technical definition of fact being something that is observed and recorded occurrence under current circumstances. What I find really annoying is that there are several observed and recorded and validateable occurrences that I would like to consider
But even if there was one non slave owner in that room, that person had to have seen the irony there of saying they thought all men were equal and yet still owning men. But through their world lens, they thought it was true. Even if you take scientific research studies, you have to have a bit of faith in the perspective of the scientists, the method that they go about, the choices that they make. Thankfully, we've incorporated that concept of peer review
The more I came out of that belief system, and the more I learned, the more massive and insanely impressive became the universe. Anyway, I will stop before I ramble on forever because I could
Retro Hipster
@Retro_Hipster · 5:00
So I think that you can say something is true or is fact when you're talking about some philosophy and mathematical constructs. But I think that the word fact is a bit imprecise. It doesn't necessarily deserve to be used in science or philosophy, because in science, I think that since we've graduated to have the modern scientific method, I think that we've basically continually understood that hypothesis is something that we have proven to the best of our abilities, and we think is factually true
I love how you've tidied this up as well as expanded on it. So many excellent points in there a question for you. You know how some languages have words for things that the English language just does not have. So do you think we could benefit from having and we, as an English Speaker, could benefit from having more than one word for the concept of fact
Retro Hipster
@Retro_Hipster · 5:00
I think you're much more likely to if we came up for another word that just meant that this thing is as close to scientifically true or as close to true as what we observe in reality. I think if we came up with another word like that, that people would just use that word to try to support core beliefs and things like that, and then it would just turn into the same sort of word as fact in general, I'm not sure that would be the case with most words
Alyssa Ardenhardt
@AAdenhardt · 4:59
I'd like to start by saying that what makes the fact a fact is the difference between knowing something and believing something. This entire thread has been about epistemology, which is a philosophy concerned with of knowledge. How do we know what we know? And that has been something that has been talked about for ages
And more specifically, if you look at philosophy of science, there have been a lot of very good thinkers like Thomas Cowan, who talks about in the structure of scientific revolution, how what is known as factual kind of changes and their paradigm shifts and our knowledge grows. And what was true before does not necessarily become false but becomes like a special case. For example, when theory of relativity came, Newtonian mechanics became a special case that velocity is much less than velocity of flight
Chris Cowan
@StunningNBrave · 1:09
We had a perception that gravity brings everything down, but that doesn't change the fact that gravity is much more complex than that. And relativity and all that comes into play. So the fact that our perceptions can change and we can have a limited understanding and insufficient information and a lack of ability to fully know or comprehend the fact does not change the fact