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Comment by ineedasername | Hacker News Reader

We're not in a post-fact age. We're simply at a time where people are more aware that a given subset of facts can support a narrative the conflicts with the narrative of another subset. Similar to unifying theories in science, we just need to always look for explanations that encompass more facts. Not throw our hands in the air and say, "This is too hard! There are no more facts, only narrative!"

That sort of epistemological nihilism isn't really supported by the facts :)

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> That sort of epistemological nihilism isn't really supported by the facts

It is supported by a given subset of facts though.

To be precise, there exists a subset of facts that supports a narrative of epistemological nihilism.

I have no idea what you are all talking about, can you translate?

The replies in this chain are just joking around in a geeky and pedantic way (which is one of my favorite ways), but the original comment is serious and has a point.

The point of the original comment is just that we've entered a period where people are aware (perhaps hyper-aware) of any evidence that conflicts with other people's interpretation of events. This often happens to both sides of an issue, and they both denounce the others as hopelessly misled.

This doesn't mean there is no good way to view the overall events in question, and that facts are dead, just that we need to step back and try to view it all from a wider angle, with more facts in general.

Basically, think about history books for semi-recent US history. While they may still be biased in many cases, they generally have a good idea of what both sides thought and their motivations, and can describe them, and have the benefit of seeing how what they were arguing about turned out. That's obviously a hard or impossible view to get during most events, but it is something we can strive for by widening our view to encompass more information and points of view.

For elaboration on how cognitive bias causes people to interpret the facts in different ways, I always recommend:

http://blog.dilbert.com/2017/08/17/how-to-know-youre-in-a-ma...

Man, it's too early in the morning to handle to unbelievable level of irony of this coming from Scott Adams of all people.

I can't help but think that his blog on persuasion is an attempt to lead the enlightened through work samples.

It almost feels like at some point he's going to turn around and be "I don't really believe all that, but I convinced you, and persuaded some of you of what I was saying. Buy my book on persuasion!"

I get a weird snake-oil vibe from his blog. It feels more like he's a PR department than an actual outside observer.

"We might soon learn that the Russian Collusion story was mass hysteria in hindsight."

To be fair, the article is from August, two months before Papadopoulos pled guilty as the first in the investigation. Still, it doesn't exactly bode well for his guidelines to spot mass hysteria.

While it is clearly true that cognitive bias causes you to interpret facts in different ways, the article is really not very good at arguing it.

By the author's argument, anyone who believed the nazis were coming to power would have been deemed 'in a mass hysteria bubble'. I mean the ideas that ACTUAL NAZIS could come to power is clearly crazy... but it happened.

His argument almost sounds like a form of denial; "if it sounds really bad, it can't be true!"

It saddens my that Adams blog has devolved into this. While this post has some good points, he hitches it to a partisan wagon so strongly that it's hard to take without feeling like the whole point is to try to persuade you instead of educate you, which makes it feel kind of gross.

The rest of the blog is some mix of how to persuade people (including a reading list for help on that, with his own book included), and more opining on current political events.

It's also leaked into a few of the comic strips in kind of a "gotcha" way.

Sorry Scott Adams, you didn't "get me". I get where you're coming from, but I disagree. That's not the same thing.

An example where he "gets you" by assuming that if you disagree you must have missed a word- no one could have disagreed if they truly understood his message:

http://blog.dilbert.com/2017/06/03/an-example-of-cognitive-d...

Ugh. The comic is fine, and highlights some of the over-vilification the left is known for, but the explanation for what it means is pretty extreme, and actually exhibits the same behavior he's calling out.

I continue to be unclear if he's playing some long con and these are just the easter eggs for the people that see it. Otherwise he's pretty self-unaware, to a frightening degree.

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