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Comment by anon73044 | Hacker News Reader

>comfortable with non-binary truth

Careful, getting a bit too postmodernists in here. If you look at it too hard all "truths" become false eventually, and that can pave the way to apathy.

>And it's okay to be make a mistaken evaluation, just reevaluate and adjust the simplified "truth" assessment model based on more recent data.

And how many politicians on both sides of the aisle double-down on an issue just to remain consistent to their base? Or worse, change their position thanks to millions of dollars worth of lobbying or the promise of a high-up position once they're out of office?

>And a so-called "neutral" person is, by not taking action, implicitly supporting the dominant narrative, which may be a lie after all.

Maybe the Stoics were on to something. If the masses believe the lie, doesn't it become the truth?

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> If you look at it too hard all "truths" become false eventually, and that can pave the way to apathy.

Isn't the point of seeing the truth as non-binary that they cannot become false? Just less likely to be true?

This seems intrinsically more amenable to changing one's mind on the truth of something, though I agree that not having an opinion on the truth of something is apathetic. Just because you strongly believe that you're about 60% sure that something is true doesn't make it less strongly held.

I do this all the time in scientific analysis... estimating how likely I am to be correct is part of the job.

I think what they mean by truths becoming false is rather that all certainties become uncertainties. Delving too deep in postmodernism is like taking all of your legos and melting them.

If I want to have a conversation about free speech, and a postmodernist begins questioning if we even actually have free will, or if it's even valid to discuss morality if it's entirely possible we exist in a simulation...you haven't actually advanced anything. You've just made soup. Postmodernism is a tool for turning building blocks into soup, and that is more often than not extremely counterproductive. Though it is, to some degree, necessary.

I think the fundamental problem is that aggressive postmodernism will often disregard presuppositions with absolutely no interest in understanding the utility/value of the presupposition.

I would turn that around and say antipostmodernists are upset that they can't have their presuppositions without justifying their utility/value first.

"If you look at it too hard all "truths" become false eventually"

My opinion is that many apathetic people become that way because of being treated unfairly (in their view) or feeling helpless, and way less people become that way because of thinking too hard.

"Or worse, change their position thanks to millions of dollars ..."

Well, I see new data: lobbying $$$ that could make a previously trusted politician biased. Time to update my simplistic model on his related political ads to being less likely to true. There might be another politician who changed positions based on new or emerging body of evidence - maybe this person is more trustworthy this time. New data -> updated evaluation.

"the masses believe the lie, doesn't it become the truth"

I'm not familiar with post-modernism or Stoicism. But I sure hope that the proportion of people who believe one thing does not ultimately determine its truthfulness. The way I would initially simplify this is to rely on the likely proportion of unbiased people who hold one position versus the opposite. And by unbiased, I simplify that by not trusting greedy people, or people who have not studied the policy or history of it or other places who've tried different approaches. I think these initial simplifications will already cut down many viewpoints and voices that I do not need hear, in order to make an informed voting decision.

I think postmodernism leads straight to linguistics, not apathy. Much of politics is based around words like “democracy”, “freedom”, “the middle class”, “big government”. There is no truth around these things because they mean whatever is politically convenient in the moment. I mean sure you can define a pretty good general purpose term for your own use, but that’s not going to be how politicians use it. These should be seen as rhetorical terms, not inherently meaningful outside of the context of, say, a speech or and ongoing public discussion. It is far easier and cheaper to redefine yourself out of commitments than it is to actually stand for concrete values. The fix is to stand for concrete values that everyone can easily identify and discuss in concrete terms. It should be easy, then, to determine the difference between “waffling” and adjusting to a new situation because everyone can adjust together around a value consensus.

Note, PR takes literally the exact opposite tact to communication. We’re barreling deep into a post-truth world with an incredible amount of money fueling this. See also: non linear warfare, hypernormalization, Edward Bernays, why to buy a newspaper when it never makes money.

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