Comment by threatofrain | Hacker News Reader

Comment by threatofrain | Hacker News Reader

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Evolution and natural selection are not facts. I understand why you use the word fact. It's because too many people are playing word games ("belief, opinion, theory!"), that you feel you need to counterattack by using such a solid word like fact.

In the vernacular, fact also has another meaning: true. Not conclusively true, not noisily true, but Simply True. Unrevisable. Unimprovable. Just Truth. And that's the game you've decided to be a part of. "It is a FACT that I am standing here right now." Some groups are well aware of this confounding of terms and they deceitfully abuse it.

But facts are data points. They are the things which you combine to formulate a theory. If all you have are facts, then all you have is a bundle of disconnected trivia. Theory is true power over facts, but in the vernacular, theory means opinion. Theory is weak. Theory is revisable. Theory is improvable. How do you know your theory won't change tomorrow? But Fact is Truth. It won't change tomorrow, or ever.

But in science, theory is power. Theory is sexiness. Theory is freedom from a huge bundle of disconnected, incoherent facts. "You have no theory, all you have are facts!", is a damning statement.

Historians have a lot of difficulty producing a decent theory of history. They have tons of facts, but where's the general theory of civil war? Everything in history is retrospective hyper-domain-specific explanation. So some people appreciate the difficulty of theory.

Maybe if people don't play these word games, then they also lose. But I don't currently believe that. I think the other side that plays word games is dishonest, and that those who join with me on this opinion should resist such immoral PR tactics. These are people who pervert the good instruments of societal transaction and improvement, because winning is everything to them. Whatever the damage to public relationship to science, whatever the cost to language, whatever -- let the kids of the future clean it up after we've won the "war".

As a college educated biologist, I understand what you're saying, even if it's not 100% accurate. However, when discussing with laymen, you need to speak the language of the laymen. A doctor won't tell you to take some methocarbomol when you have a back ache, they'll tell you to take Robaxaset or a muscle relaxant. For colloquial speech, we should be using colloquial terms. Every field of specialization has lingo, but when interdisciplinary conversations occur, it's better to find a common usage and understanding.

I now write software professionally, and if I didn't do this, then the number of misunderstandings would be far far greater. I needn't make the product owners speak using tech terms for them to understand the concepts. Getting too technical confuses someone who has no interest in understanding the underlaying technology.

Also, to a physicist, the statement "I am here" is not a fact. You were there, but between the earths rotation on it's axis, the orbit of the earth around the sun, the movement of the solar system within the galaxy, and spacial expansion puts you in a completely different place from when you started the statement compared to where you ended it.

In Chemistry, we're all taught the Bohr model. It's not what's actually happening, but it's a good model to get a rudimentary understanding of orbits.

When I'm saying "I am here" is a fact, I'm saying that to the layperson, that is how they express their understanding of the word. Fact is truth, and not something to be iterated on, added to, or improved in any way. So to many, saying that "God is a fact." is very agreeable, if not obvious.

When you talk about approximate geometry, physics, or chemistry, that is very different from the deceitful language games being played by groups in American society. And when we say that evolution is fact, that's not even playing the game right, and it is said in bad faith.

When someone can equate God with Fact and get wide agreement, or agreeably express their understanding of fact by saying, "I am here. That is fact." (arguing against this is a trap), you will lose if you say that evolution is a fact, because evolution cannot stand on the same place as God, and saying so is a cultural violation.

Furthermore, facts can never be changed or improved upon, nor reframed. When someone says that God is Fact, they mean to say that God is unquestionably true in an unchanging and objective way. If you say that evolution is fact, someone will ask how the THEORY of evolution has changed over time, and how a changing theory can be fact. They are deliberately switching back and forth between technical lingo and vernacular. If you try to elucidate with anything less elegant than how the conversation went so far, you will lose.

This game, this abuse of language, this struggle for political power and social configuration, is very far and apart from the pedagogical motives of approximate models in physics, chemistry, or geometry. It is done in bad faith. It is done as a game. And even if you were fully cynical and believed that gaming is the right way forward, even then this is the wrong move. The stronger play would be to instill this contrary framing of language at an early age through an authoritative institution -- schools.

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