I wish this kind of courses were mandatory for all undergraduates in our post-truth era.
It's not like people suddenly decided to disregard truth and not believe in actual truths.
It's that we have just realized that interpretation is not the same as truth and have now been made aware that there are other interpretations of the facts than our own.
We don't live in a post-truth world, we live in a world were the truth is confused with difference of opinion.
"post-truth" doesn't mean people have decided to disregard truth, it means that factual truth is no longer a relevant factor in in the effectiveness of political arguments for many people. See Karl Rove's quote about the "reality-based" community (which may or may not be apocryphal) versus the American empire which simply creates whatever reality it likes.
It mostly means:
"Some people can't accept Trump got elected, so when e.g. criticism of him being sexist/rapist etc because of some comments back in the day is discarded, they call it a post-truth world. At the same time, it's not post-truth when the same people discard allegations of rape for Bill Clinton and his wife helping with cover up".
Or, as I'd put it:, both party voters could not give a rats arse about the truth, but the Democratic party has a better stronghold on academics, columnists, intellectuals and "hi-bro" journalists, etc., the sort of people who would just single out the others' disregard of the truth as "post-truth".
Turns out there is good money in just making up crap and printing it.
The only two things I could identify as uniquely a problem today that weren't problems in the past are A: the money is coming out of journalism faster than it can adapt to it and B: the incredibly immediate pressures to be first and get the most clicks. The latter being a thing that has always been present to some degree, since journalists have always made money by attracting eyeballs in one form or another, but the immediacy of the pressure today I'd say is a quantitative change that becomes a qualitative change by sheer size.
But I'm still unconvinced this is a new low, rather than one that we're detecting. Journalism has some nasty stuff in its history. It certainly hasn't reached a new low if you step outside of the United States. The press still hasn't quite reached Pravda lows, but I will conceded it is currently engaged in a full burn towards it.
What people often forget is that at the same token lies can be spread so can corrections to those lies.
There is no objective transcendence between facts and politics decisions.
You can believe that climate change is created by humans and still decide not to do anything about it because you also believe that technology will solve most of those problem, or that there are bigger problems (astroid hitting earth for instance) etc.
We are absolutely in a new mode of politics, one that transcends mere differences of opinion. To pretend otherwise does everyone a disservice.
"I never had sexual relations with that woman".
"Read my lips: there will be no more taxes".
"It depends on what the definition of is is".
"I will close down Guantanamo Bay".
> "I never had sexual relations with that woman".
Wait, there's a sex tape of Bill Clinton?
In all seriousness, quotes are all good, but you would benefit from saying what it is you hope to achieve by them.
Because no one sure didn't seem to care about the numerous Trump ones.
Apparently not.
So by all means. Prove me wrong.
I would love for you to show me how people cared as much about truth now.
People didn't vote on Trump because of those things that politfact measured. There weren't watching the debates to figure out who was the most well argued person based on some basic idea of their rhetorical skills.
They voted on trump for all the things that Politifacts didn't measure but which matter to people and on those he was not lying.
Also Hillary won the popular vote so even on that account she won and he didn't.
Nothing new here.
> People didn't vote on Trump because of those things that politfact measured. There weren't watching the debates to figure out who was the most well argued person based on some basic idea of their rhetorical skills.
I have not mentioned "well argued" nor talked about rhetoric. I've talked about speaking the truth or lying. You can speak the truth as an illiterate 5 year old.
Are you deliberately changing your arguments/moving goal posts between all your responses?
which is meaningless.
And he was impeached for that, which is exactly the point.
Besides the question was whether truth mattered more in politics. The decision to take his law license was from some state bar, not related to some political process.
Nothing's changed.
To be fair, it seems like he tried. He just failed?
He was playing it too safe to bring about the drastic measures needed to close gitmo.
Or don't care. Some people in the US are so far under water, they are desperate for change; such that they'd back Trump whatever.
Sexual allegations? Who cares if he can actually tries to bring back my job...
Note, I say this without any implication of whether the allegations are true. My point is, people might not care either way. A sexual predator that fixes things is better than an someone virtuous that does nothing.
The only disservice is to claim that things are somehow different when they are in fact the same.
Some people say that this age was in the '50s. Others, the 1880s. Some even claim it was the 1790s.
Mostly, they're just barking mad.
The idea that politics is or should somehow be based on facts is misguided. We have science for facts what we choose to do with those facts is were politics come in.
> We have science for facts what we choose to do with those facts is were politics come in.
The second sentence explicitly contradicts the first one. By your second one you are saying that politics is based on the facts that science provides. Or rather, should be.
But facts aren't the only things which are used in politics.
What you seem to want to have is a technocratic system.
Is that an "elite" approach then?
Of course, what I describe above is an ideal - politics is a mucky business and the essence of a democracy is essentially that we get to choose between the liars. However, what I do have difficulty with is the idea that reasoning from actual factual data or scientific hypotheses has no role in politics.
Not because we are uniformed but because our perspectives are different and our perspectives are different because it affects us differently.
And so the real danger here is to go along with this romantic notion that facts used to be more meaningful when in fact it was only that perspectives were more aligned than they are today.
No you can't. This is why we are living in "post-truth". Meaning it's not truth anymore.
You are right in that either one can win, but only one can be true.
Of course both sides can put forth true arguments in a political debate. I'm having a hard time coming up with a real world example, both because I don't want to push buttons that force you down a knee-jerk path on the button I push when I don't really care about it, and because we're really not used to seeing honest debates in the political arena.
But when society faces a decision A or B, each side can completely honestly tout the benefits of their decision and the costs of the other decision, both of which will exist. And God Almighty could come down from on high and hand us the exact, true, and full consequences of each decision, and those who benefit from one decision can completely honestly argue in its favor while those who may not benefit could completely honestly argue against it, which could be completely different sets of people for each decision. (There's almost never a decision that benefits everybody, even before we get into questions like relative amounts of benefit, or how society as a whole benefits.)
An argument containing elements of truth, or even somehow consisting entirely of truth, does not make it correct, because it still won't be the complete truth, which may well contain a superior argument for a different decision in it. But we don't have access to complete truth.
I was stating that two opposing arguments can't both be true, because then there is no truth.
We are not talking about some rhetorical analysis of language and I never meant it in that sense which the context of this discussion should have made clear. If not then I am remedying that now.
I would urge you to give me examples in politics which can't have two different political outcomes both potentially true.
Climate change.
There have always been made up stories and lies and propaganda and conspiracy theories it's nothing new it's just become much more obvious now and thus actually allowed us to live in a more truth based world rather than the previous ignorant believe that there are only one way to look at things.
Politics is about choice not about truth.
Before the media/Democrats can credibly criticise "fake news", they first need to regain the people's trust.
When Obama was elected they said Post-racial america, and we now know how much it is not.
So, now some butt-hurt people from election came up with Post-Truth, even though people were constantly conned into stuff that is untrue, like WMDs or you can keep your doctor.
After much thought, I forward the motion for Post-Post-Prepending Era.