really depends on the source and if it makes sense in the first place.
Depends on the source and the weight of the claim. My fattest friend tells me the new Italian place slaps? Fact. The smartest person I know tells me there’s a newly discovered planet? Worth looking into if it comes from them, but I’m skeptical.
when science backs it up.
Science rules!
What happens when “science” backs up two opposing ideas with sufficient evidence and logic to make either seem plausible?
Have you got an example?
Off the top of my head string theory is a good example of numerous competing hypothesis that seem plausible given the data.
Then the science isn’t done evaluating the opposing ideas. That’s the beauty of science, it can be proven wrong and still work.
How can Science be proven wrong and still work? That is not at all how Science works.
Yeh it is.
Proving that a scientific theory is wrong means we don’t understand enough about the thing. And we know we need to look at other theories about the thing.
Proving things wrong as well as failed hypothesis is as important (even if it is disappointing) as proving things correct and successful hypothesis. It rules the theory out, and guides further scientific study.
With published papers, other scientists can hopefully see what the publishing scientists missed.
Scientists can also repeat experiments of successful papers to confirm the papers conclusion, and perhaps even make further observations that can support further studies.You may want to read what I said and try again.
It depends. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
A couple kilobites, minimum.
Hume had something like the wise apportion their confidence to the evidence, and Carl Sagan’s extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence can apply. So if those are true the quality and type of data is going to depend on the claim of fact (friend says they bought a dog vs a dragon), and the amount of evidence depends on the claim and your general standard of evidence. If you’re lowering or raising your standards for a specific claim that’s usually going to mean there’s a bias for or against it.
tl;dr 42 pieces of data
This is exactly how science works. It self corrects as new information becomes available.
It honestly depends more on the source to me. I’d like to claim to rely on data but life is short and there is no way I can verify even a fraction of all the truths I have come to accept.
A sufficient amount
is it a fun fact that impacts nothing? i’ll accept it as fact immediately and without question
is it a fact that has some weight to it? i’ll probably double check and if i find a reliable source that also claims it to be fact i’ll accept it (if i’m reading about it from a reliable source i will accept it immediately)
is it a fact that contradicts my current beliefs/understanding of the world? i’ll do some research on it, check if there’s any recent articles like “that thing you thought was right? is not!”, and depending on the nature of the fact think about why it’s been debunked and how that changed my perception on the world
I have a model of everything. Everything I am, my understanding of the world, it all fits together like a web. New ideas fit by their relationship to what I already know - maybe I’m missing nodes to fit it in and I can’t accept it
If it fits the model well, I’ll tentatively accept it without any evidence. If it conflicts with my model, I’ll need enough proof to outweigh the parts it conflicts with. It has to be enough to displace the past evidence
In practice, this usually works pretty well. I handle new concepts well. But if you feed me something that fits… Well, I’ll believe it until there’s a contradiction
Like my neighbors (as a teen) told me their kid had a predisposition for autism, and the load on his immune system from too many vaccines as once caused him to be nonverbal. That made sense, that’s a coherent interaction of processes I knew a bit about. My parents were there and didn’t challenge it at the time
Then, someone scoffing and walking away at bringing it up made me look it up. It made sense, but the evidence didn’t support it at all. So my mind was changed with seconds of research, because a story is less evidence than a study (it wasn’t until years later that I learned the full story behind that)
On the other hand, today someone with decades more experience on a system was adamant I was wrong about an intermittent bug. I’m still convinced I’m right, but I have no evidence… We spent an hour doing experiments, I realized the experiments couldn’t prove it one way or the other, I explained that and by the end he was convinced.
It’s not the amount of evidence, it’s the quality of it.
I have a model of everything. Everything I am, my understanding of the world, it all fits together like a web. New ideas fit by their relationship to what I already know - maybe I’m missing nodes to fit it in and I can’t accept it
Same, and I would add the clarification that I have a model for when and why people lie, tell the truth, or sincerely make false statements (mistake, having been lied to themselves, changed circumstances, etc.).
So that information comes in through a filter of both the subject matter, the speaker, and my model of the speaker’s own expertise and motivations, and all of those factors mixed together.
So as an example, let’s say my friend tells me that there’s a new Chinese restaurant in town that’s really good. I have to ask myself whether the friend’s taste in Chinese restaurants is reliable (and maybe I build that model based on proxies, like friend’s taste in restaurants in general, and how similar those tastes are with my own). But if it turns out that my friend is actually taking money to promote that restaurant, then the credibility of that recommendation plummets.
(it wasn’t until years later that I learned the full story behind that)
Okay, I can’t be the only one that’s kinda curious about your trainwreck neighbors. Obviously they fell down a conspiracy rabbit hole, but was there more?
Sorry to disappoint, I meant I learned the story behind the myth of vaccines causing autism. They seemed to be pretty good parents, before they moved away their kid was often outside on his bike… He seemed happy and healthy to me.
We had a significant age gap so we never interacted, but he was on the sidewalk frequently and never in the street when I was driving… Take from that what you will
It’s not the amount of evidence, it’s the quality of it.
Quality evidence has an inherent quantity wouldn’t you say?
No? I don’t care if the whole world is wrong, some evidence is strong enough to convince me forever, even if it’s subjective
Quality is all that matters. One incontrovertible fact I can poke and prod myself means more than millions of subjective accounts. Or even all of science - I’ll rearrange my entire model around a new fact if it’s compelling enough
One quality study is enough to convince you of something, even if it has never been reproduced or reviewed?
Sure. If it fills a gap in my model, I don’t need any proof at all. Why would I? It just makes sense. Of course I’m going to tentatively fit it in
And if a study convincingly disproves it, I’ll just as quickly discard the tentative idea. Why wouldn’t I? It made sense, but it didn’t math out.
But this is all in the context of my model. It’s a big web of corroboration
You can’t convince me global warming isn’t happening, because I’m watching it in real time. No amount of studies are doing to do more than inform the facts of my lived experience… I’m the primary source, I was there
What if you wake up from the Matrix and it turns out the world actually descended into an ice age?
I mean, it’s a silly, kinda extreme scenario, but we’re talking about big picture stuff and you can’t ever convince me would cover it as well.
Oh, that would fit in my model perfectly. Because it’s another world… Obviously. My model isn’t disproven if I wake up in another world, my model is just physically removed from my new world. Universal things still apply until they don’t, but there’s no conflict
If global warming hits 2.5C then flips around to an ice age…I don’t understand it, but it’s happened. My old observations aren’t disproven, new ones disprove the theories around them
Squaring that circle would take effort, but if it’s true it’s true, and truth sometimes takes time to understand
Facts are hard to confirm, bullshit tends to reveal itself.
So I have try not to cling to tightly to any given “fact”, in case new evidence arrives.
That said, is can be surprisingly easy to navigate many parts of life simply by avoiding confirmed bullshit.
I’m not sure how I would even quantify this.
But I could qualify this: having a consensus across multiple trusted sources.
At least 4.
ill tell you this, the amount of data would require for anyone accept a statement or idea as fact is related to their emotional assessment of the idea. See it all the time with trump supporters that think that trump is actually fighting to cut tax on overtime pay simple because he said it on the trail and there no evidence (and they have no evidence) that is happening, on the other hand it would take an infinite amount of evidence that trump took bribes even as he openly appointed Elon after spending millions of dollars.
so its weird that you have to propagandize the facts just to get people anywhere near a reasonable level of skeptism.
but for me I just say anything is valid unless I know how its wrong, which is limbo of acceptance then afterwards it can become a scoreboard where for and against. maybe a source doesn’t 100% line up with a statement, hell even video/audio evidence can be incongruent with a statement (as in its similar to what’s said but doesn’t back up a statement). I think the claim that Floyd overdosed but the video doesn’t show a overdose from opioids, so you’d have to rule out overdose simple because video doesn’t match the description of an overdose.
it wouldn’t take much, generally new information has to be consistent with what I know. the hard part is understanding the new information. no one is randomly disprove gravity or that things have mass, but someone can prove to me how a myth is meant to be interpreted for the intended audience
