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Comment by blackeyeblitzar | Hacker News Reader

Fact checkers are often wrong, and often corrupted by the activists that end up working at them. For example I’ve repeatedly noticed articles from Politifact that are blatantly wrong or very misleading. When I look up those authors and their other work, their bias is clear. Community notes on X/Twitter is far more effective and accurate.

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The older I get, the more I realize that people just live in different realities and so many contradictory facts can be true. Obviously this is a source of conflict.

I don't think facts ever contradict each other, it's the stories people create to explain the facts that are at odds. These stories lead people to extrapolate other beliefs which they present as "facts", and it's an organic process of discussion and exposure that changes peoples minds over time.

I personally think aggressive fact checking authorities impedes this process, because people don't change their minds when faced with authoritarian power against which they are powerless, and because they are powerless here, they get angry and they disengage. This ends up which reinforcing their beliefs and now you've lost all chance of change.

Right. Imagine facts as data points on some Cartesian plane, and the narrative surrounding the facts as the curve fit to those points. The data points might all be sound, but by selectively omitting some, or by weighting their "uncertainty" higher or lower, you can fit just about any damn curve you want to them.

One such instantiation of this: https://chomsky.info/consent01/

I also think that simple exposure to a narrative, whether it has any actual facts/data backing it up or not, is likely the primary driver of people believing it.

Now, consider that in most "free speech" societies, those with money can repeat things many orders of magnitude more than others. Over time, this results in influence. Thus, while many countries have "free speech," I'd say they don't have "fair speech." The two concepts complement each other, but one is not the opposite of the other.

The idea of some kind of universal fact is also misleading, some statements of fact are only statements of belief, others are so ill-defined that people end up debating two different things.

Yeah, journalism always has some inherent bias. But to say that the X community is going to be less biased than a fact-checking organization staffed by journalists whose job is to be neutral (within what's humanly possible), is frankly absurd.

Why is it absurd? Journalists don’t think their job is to be neutral. They are among the most biased. They abuse the trust given to them, which is why they don't deserve it. Community notes allows a diversity of opinions to compete, which is a better way to seek truth.

you're confusing fact checking with forum discussions and social media posts

You are giving too much trust to a small authority group to determine what the "facts" are for the rest of the people.

If these "facts" are so obviously facts, we wouldn't need a team of researchers to establish the fact whether they are facts.

The fact that these "facts" need to be "fact-checked" means they are so open to interpretation and depend on context, that we came to the conclusion that this "fact-checking" concept in fact does not really work.

You can still "fact-check" for yourself; do your own research, make up your own mind yourself. Then you will become more of an independent thinker, be less influenced by authoritarian figures.

What specifically is the difference? Other than an appeal to authority?

But they are not claiming to have the facts. That's the big difference.

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