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Comment by brigandish | Hacker News Reader

Are you a glass half empty or a glass half full kind of person?

So, it's quite possible to have 2 truths - factually accurate - arise from the same physical reality because the observers are different.

It's also possible that people substitute falsities in exchange for truth based on bad intent or erroneous reasoning (and maybe there are other reasons but these would seem to be the most prevalent of the bad sort).

Since all these are possibilities, would you agree that it's best to apply some charity[1] to those you disagree with before deciding that they are not only wrong, but malign and should be tarred as lunatic?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

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There’s being charitable and then there’s ignoring flat out disinformation.

Let’s not forget that the phrase “Alternative facts” was coined on day 3 of the Trump presidency to defend the lie that he had the biggest inauguration crowd ever.

This wasn’t a glass half full situation, this was someone saying it’s up to the brim when it’s under a half. That in itself to me reflects bad intent: lying from the seat of government about something so easily disproved at the start of your presidency, then spending days trying to back it up, is pure gaslighting.

The Trump administration deserves most of the blame here, but it’s very hard to treat with charity the subset of his supporters who repeat blatant lies like the above, because they are being willfully ignorant at best and acting in bad faith otherwise.

Among the long list of important things to worry about in politics, the number of people at Trump's inauguration isn't one of them, and I wonder what number of his own supporters even care. It must be vanishingly small.

The response to "there can be more than one view of reality that is valid and true" isn't to respond with "lies are lies and using lies in place of truth is lunacy", (to paraphrase the parent comments, perhaps more fairly than the latter deserves) so to remain focused on "Alternative facts" is to be led astray by what amounts to a straw man. That whole debacle was a petty response by a narcissist to a petty narrative line by a media that isn't focused on what matters anyway and anyone repeating the White House line was more than likely acting tribally - as was anyone criticising the numbers. The proverbial storm in a teacup.

Regardless, who is arguing for "Alternative facts" here?

Nobody is arguing for them here. I was saying that the people pushing them should not be given any charity, as they have proved themselves to be acting in bad faith time and time again.

There is a clear line of behavior that began with lying about crowd size and extended throughout the presidency, and yes a lot of it is driven by narcissism. It’s mostly not harmless though. A recent deadly example is how Trump supporters (speaking generally again) act concerning COVID. The president and his cohorts said “masks don’t matter, it’ll disappear soon anyway” for months and months, and his supporters believed it despite factual evidence, which has worsened the pandemic.

Tribalism is the word I was seeking, thank you.

Reading the thread again, I think you may be putting more weight on the use of “complete lunacy” than the poster intended. That was a reference to its parent post, which used the same words while taking “reality isn’t a point of view” out of context to mean “there is only one way to think about reality.” If there’s a straw man here, it’s all the way up there.

Whether the glass is half full or half empty is not a fact, it's an opinion. The glass being, say, 45.67% from full capacity is a fact. The glass being emptied right now at 55 millilitres per second or being filled at 45 millilitres per second is a fact.

It might be a fact that two people can have greatly different kinds of opinions from the same facts, but they both still deserve to know the facts.

Whether you consider the glass to be half full or half empty is not a fact. It's an opinion.

> The glass being, say, 45.67% from full capacity is a fact.

The glass is at 50% capacity. Was it more convenient for you to change the fact of the statement?

You’ve simply substituted one kind of measure for another without providing a distinction between them.

The key point is that a fact has a different effect on different observers that can be discerned from the way the express it. The state of affairs being described is not a belief or an opinion or will magically find less millimetres (as in your comment) by being stated differently.

When the glass is at 50% capacity, one is making an observation of the state of affairs.

When one says that it is "half full" or "half empty" one is already making it into a statement of belief or opinion that reflects one's inner workings and beliefs.

> making it into a statement of belief

I want to get this straight. You’re saying that a glass that exists hypothetically, posited by the speaker, may only be known to be half full as a belief by that very speaker?

> or opinion

Or that it’s their opinion that it’s half full? Even if it wasn’t hypothetical, would you find it at 50% capacity or not?

> that reflects one’s inner workings and beliefs

I can’t tell if that means you read what I wrote or if you didn’t. Regardless, using a relative measure does not turn a factual statement into a belief or an opinion of the explicitly stated fact. That which may be inferred from the way of stating a fact may well be beliefs and opinions but that does not change the fact any more than it would by being stated in English rather than in French. Relative measures are no less factual - or valid, sound, precise or accurate - than absolute measures. Just try restating using absolute measures of pints and millilitres and tell me that makes the statements less factual or that beliefs and opinions cannot also be inferred from them.

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