2080 sats \ 3 replies \ @SimpleStacker 3 Jan \ on: The Loss of Shared Facts culture
It's a tough question. "Covid vaccine is safe and effective." Should this have been a shared fact, or not?
I think more important than agreeing on a common fact set is having some humility to know that you might be wrong, being willing to listen to other perspectives, and most of all--respecting the freedom for people to act in accordance with their own beliefs.
Also, a healthy skepticism of the leadership class couldn't hurt either.
Without veering into a vaccine debate, I would differentiate between shared conclusions (like "safe and effective") and shared facts. The facts would be the actual details of the trials.
From a cultural standpoint, I think you're right that people being more humble about what they actually know would go a long way.
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It's a tough question. "Covid vaccine is safe and effective." Should this have been a shared fact, or not?
I think first you need to define "safe" and "effective" since ime, people talk past each other all the time and don't realize or don't care. What one sees as safe isn't safe for the other. Same for effectiveness and basically everything. I think this is also what @Undisciplined mentioned with shared facts vs shared conclusions.
This is definitely related to your argument about humility. It seems like we're not trying to convince others anymore, we're trying to convince ourselves (and our tribe if we blast our arguments into a digital space seen by million followers) that we're not wrong.
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Yes. It turns out that if you try to get really specific about what safe or_effective_ means, you run smack into the full complexity of the universe.
Stuff that seems simple ("define safe") is surprisingly not simple.
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