Facts versus opinions and values. A primer for a post-fact society.

This Aristotle discussion is a great example of facts.

- Aristotle said that force is needed to cause a motion at a constant speed for objects where the motion is "unnatural". If the object's motion was "natural" then it required no force.

- Newton said that an any object would remain at a constant speed with no force, and that an unbalanced for causes an acceleration. He pointed out that the acceleration is proportional to the unbalanced force.

One of these two world views can be used to build an airplane or send men to the moon. The other world view is useless for any practical purpose.

If I am having a discussion about Physics, it is pretty important that the other person accept the basic principles of Newton. If not, there is really no way to have a productive discussion.

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

1. Aristotle never said that objects need "constant energy input to remain in motion at a constant speed". You are making this up. Aristotle believed that there was "natural" motion and "unnatural motion" based on what the object "wanted". The former, according to Aristotle required no force.

I learned that somewhere. If I was falsely informed about Aristotelian science, then my facts are wrong. We can only go by reports we receive from others, except where observation is direct.

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2. By your logic of "independent facts"... the "stork theory" of human reproduction that your mom told you (that the large birds bring babies to married couple) is correct because sperm (like stokes) have tails.

There's a difference between facts and explanations. Explanations narrate facts and there is a lot of leeway in how narratives convey ideas.

A very famous story about Jesus is when Nicodemus asks Him how a person can be 'reborn' except by going back into their mother's womb. Jesus explains that there is birth of flesh and birth of spirit.

To a person who only thinks in terms of flesh and other material forms, birth of spirit doesn't make sense; so they will argue that it's a fictional concept. Yet by the same logic, a person who didn't understand how Newton could explain both falling objects and heavenly motion as gravitational phenomena would argue that the moon doesn't fall down so it can't be affected by the same force as a falling apple.

It is a fact that the moon doesn't fall down and that apples don't remain in a sustained orbit (unless their in the ISS); but explaining those two facts with a theory of gravitation is a narration of facts, not factual direct observation itself.

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If Aristotle can be considered to be correct.... then you can twist any theory ever to be correct.

You can't say a theory/explanation is either correct or wrong in an absolute sense. It just depends in what sense the explanation is meant. Whatever reason Aristotle had for explaining natural and unnatural motion differently, as you're claiming, he must have had good reason, which he tested using various deductions and observations.

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

This Aristotle discussion is a great example of facts.

- Aristotle said that force is needed to cause a motion at a constant speed for objects where the motion is "unnatural". If the object's motion was "natural" then it required no force.

- Newton said that an any object would remain at a constant speed with no force, and that an unbalanced for causes an acceleration. He pointed out that the acceleration is proportional to the unbalanced force.

One of these two world views can be used to build an airplane or send men to the moon. The other world view is useless for any practical purpose.

Practical applicability is not the same as factuality. Lies can be effective on a practical level, but that doesn't make them true. Likewise, a true fact can be practically inconvenient, as Al Gore's movie title suggests about the inconvenience of greenhouse gas facts to the practice of industrial capitalism.

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If I am having a discussion about Physics, it is pretty important that the other person accept the basic principles of Newton. If not, there is really no way to have a productive discussion.

Goethe disagreed with Newton, but he was basing his ideas on direct observations of light separating through a prism. Facts are facts and inference, analysis, etc. are not automatically right or wrong just because they make reference to facts.

In other words, facts can be spun in ways that result in various levels of veracity. The big lie that is abused in political discussions (including those regarding scientific theories/explanations) is that the veracity of a fact automatically validates the theory/explanation that is built in reference to it.

Newton's laws can be right in some ways and wrong in others, depending on how they are interpreted. In a fictional scenario where objects can move within a total vacuum, momentum is sufficient to sustain constant velocity. In reality, there is always friction, however slight, to gradually slow the object down. Newton's laws account for this by describing 'external force' as impedance for otherwise-unobstructed inertial motion; but from a certain perspective we could say that Newton lies a little by construing the inertial motion separately from the external force that causes friction for it, because in reality 'every action has an equal and opposite reaction.'

We can either say that Newton's theory is flawed due to the internal contradiction between unimpeded momentum and equal-and-opposite reactions, or we can say that its heuristic value lies in the creation of a hypothetical state of unimpeded momentum for moving objects, so that it becomes possible to think of momentum and friction in terms of comparison with a hypothetical ideal state of motion in a vacuum.

Either way, the explanation/theory is a separate issue from the veracity of facts.

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@livinglava,

I skimmed over this, I dont know if it worth the time to respond. You jave some basic misunderstandings of high school physics.

You really don't understand Newton's third law.

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This is not really new. Since shamans peddled their mumbo-jumbo tens of thousands of years ago and througbout history right up to the present, truth has been whatever people could be convinced to believe, while facts have been the handmaidens of manipulated predilections and prejudices. There truly is nothing new under the sun. Move along, folks, nothing to see here.

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

I skimmed over this, I dont know if it worth the time to respond. You jave some basic misunderstandings of high school physics.

You really don't understand Newton's third law.

You can say that, but you can't actually back it up with anything except your claim that you worked in physics at the university level. You are basically proving that people abuse educational attainment to get the status to tell others they're wrong or stupid without actually explaining anything relevant that would benefit anyone by adding to their understanding of anything.

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@livinglava,

I could explain how Newton's Third Law really works, and why you are wrong. I will do so if you feel it would actually be useful to you. As a Physics teacher I taught Newton's laws to many students. The problem is that you are here to argue against science. That makes it rather difficult for you to learn anything.

Newton's Laws work perfectly well in any real world circumstance (where speeds don't approach light speed). Newton's laws work with airplanes traveling through the air, or boats travelling through water or space craft with almost zero friction. We know this because scientists use Newton's laws to design both aircraft and cars and space craft.

You can continue believing that Newton's laws work everywhere(*) because there is some conspiracy among educated scientists. Or you can accept that they work because we've tested them and they explain how reality works in case (other than with near light speeds).

Would it be worthwhile for me to explain how Newton's Third Law works? Maybe this would be another thread. The students in my Physics class actually ran the experiments, we set up a number of different types of collisions and other interactions between objects. The students measured that Newton's Third Law applied perfectly in each case.

There are right answers in Science. You learn them by education. Newton's laws give you the correct answer (and the only correct answer) in any circumstance not involving near light speeds.

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@maxdancona,

The problem is that the science doesn't make sense to you because you don't understand it. There are two ways to fix this problem.

1. You can study to learn the science to the point that it starts making sense.
2. You can reject it and decide that anything you don't understand is wrong.

In my opinion the first is the better choice, but to each his own.

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@maxdancona,

I started a thread on Newton's laws. I don't intend to argue them.... they are what they are and they work. But if you are interested in correcting your understanding of how they work, it's here.

https://able2know.org/topic/528500-1

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

I could explain how Newton's Third Law really works, and why you are wrong. I will do so if you feel it would actually be useful to you. As a Physics teacher I taught Newton's laws to many students. The problem is that you are here to argue against science. That makes it rather difficult for you to learn anything.

You don't understand science. To you it is just another authoritarian culture.

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Newton's Laws work perfectly well in any real world circumstance (where speeds don't approach light speed). Newton's laws work with airplanes traveling through the air, or boats travelling through water or space craft with almost zero friction. We know this because scientists use Newton's laws to design both aircraft and cars and space craft.

We were talking about factuality and truth. Now you're talking about practical application. They are not the same thing.

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You can continue believing that Newton's laws work everywhere(*) because there is some conspiracy among educated scientists. Or you can accept that they work because we've tested them and they explain how reality works in case (other than with near light speeds).

Again, you posted a thread about a 'post-fact society' and now you are skirting the issues of truth and factuality in favor of practicality.

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Would it be worthwhile for me to explain how Newton's Third Law works? Maybe this would be another thread. The students in my Physics class actually ran the experiments, we set up a number of different types of collisions and other interactions between objects. The students measured that Newton's Third Law applied perfectly in each case.

That doesn't address how Newton modeled motion in terms of a hypothetical vacuum populated by interacting (and reacting) objects.

The first law is a teaser suggesting that such a thing as totally-frictionless motion through a vacuum is a possible occurrence in reality. Then, in the third law, he accounts for friction by noting that every action includes an equal and opposite reaction.

You have to take the first and third law together to get a true theory about how real motion works. The first law alone could not stand up to empirical testing, because no object in any situation could ever move through a vacuum without encountering equal-and-opposite reactions that cause it friction.

The idea that an object is moving through a frictionless vacuum intermittently between isolated moments in which it encounters equal-and-opposite reactions that counteract its momentum is extremely useful to facilitate quantification and math, but in reality there are no actual moments of frictionless motion. Motion is always in dialogue with some form of friction or other. Can you acknowledge that as a fact or would you need to send students around the universe for a few thousand years testing for friction in relatively vacuous spots?

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There are right answers in Science. You learn them by education. Newton's laws give you the correct answer (and the only correct answer) in any circumstance not involving near light speeds.

It's not about the math and how well it works. It is about the relationship between the theoretical laws and whether real, observable motion actually ever occurs in a vacuum "until it encounters external force."

If no such situation ever actually occurs in reality, that doesn't make the theory any worse in terms of its predictive strength, but it just means that the first law can't stand up to empirical observation without taking account of the third law as well.

In fact, the hypothesis of unimpeded momentum maintain speed on its own purely by inertia is an extremely useful concept - but didn't you say that Aristotle had actually already described such inertial motion as 'natural motion' or something to that effect?

edit: I just googled it and it seems that 'natural' and 'violent' classify motion according to whether the motion is propelled by an objects inherent inertia or whether it is being propelled by external force. This is a logical differentiation that need not take account of 'equal and opposite reactions' to the extent that friction must be assumed in all situations. It seems the major issue for Aristotle lay in whether the object would move through a medium by force of its own inertia/momentum; or whether external force was required to move the object in a situation where friction would otherwise impede motion.

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@livinglava,

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The first law is a teaser suggesting that such a thing as totally-frictionless motion through a vacuum is a possible occurrence in reality. Then, in the third law, he accounts for friction by noting that every action includes an equal and opposite reaction.

This is complete nonsense. You are just making stuff up.

I will explain what they really say in the other thread.

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@maxdancona,

I've been sucked into conversation by what he calls logic previously as well - despite how many times I pointed out his 'logic' flaws, his aversion to critically thinking about anything that disagrees with his views, his hypocritical application of reason and/or morals, and at times almost blatant intellectual dishonesty. It never did any good.

It's fine to look at a set of facts, critically & honestly evaluate them, and arrive at different conclusions...ask yourself if that is what he is doing here.

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@maxdancona,

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Facts are supposed to be objective. They should be true no matter what your political ideology is; political liberals and political conservatives should be able to agree on what the facts are. This is often not the case. There is a set of facts believed by political liberals and a completely different set of facts believed by political conservatives.

Facts are fact. They have no interpretive value outside of how they affect people / what they mean to people. People may try to be objective about them, but in the end it still comes down to "What does this mean to you"

Politicians don't deal in facts. They deal in the interpretation of facts. To be more clear, they almost always tend to deal in the interpretation of facts that favour them (or diminish others)...often leaving a whole swathe of facts unaccounted for, that would give a bigger picture.

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@vikorr,

vikorr wrote:

Facts are fact. They have no interpretive value outside of how they affect people / what they mean to people. People may try to be objective about them, but in the end it still comes down to "What does this mean to you"

This is an opinion, not a fact.

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Politicians don't deal in facts. They deal in the interpretation of facts. To be more clear, they almost always tend to deal in the interpretation of facts that favour them (or diminish others)...often leaving a whole swathe of facts unaccounted for, that would give a bigger picture.

That doesn't mean they're not capable of dealing in inconvenient facts. I can be pro-life, for example, yet still be interested in how pro-life people think about fetuses and fetusectomy.

The perspective of your opponent is a fact that you can interpret from your own POV to gain political advantage. So you don't have to lie about the facts your opponents' views are based on, because they dig their own grave with how they interpret the facts they think will win them power.

You could also find out, once you start analyzing their facts and interpretations, that there is validity you hadn't previously noticed; and your opinion/position might change as a result. Many people are so afraid of that happening they misconstrue/strawman their opponents views and facts pre-emptively to avoid the possibility of getting subconsciously brainwashed to join the enemy team.

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@livinglava,

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This is an opinion, not a fact.

There were 3 parts of 'this'. So you could always try:
- stating what part you find to be opinion; and
- make an argument for why it is opinion,
... rather than unclear, and unsubstantiated statements

We might even agree.

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That doesn't mean they're not capable of dealing in inconvenient facts

Are you a politician? And did you not understand it's a general statement about politicians, hence the qualifier 'almost always'?

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@vikorr,

vikorr wrote:

There were 3 parts of 'this'. So you could always try:
- stating what part you find to be opinion; and
- make an argument for why it is opinion,
... rather than unclear, and unsubstantiated statements

Ok, you said:

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Facts are fact. They have no interpretive value outside of how they affect people / what they mean to people. People may try to be objective about them, but in the end it still comes down to "What does this mean to you"

You are stating "what it comes down to in the end." That is an opinion about relative importance. Another opinion might be that different things mean different things to different people, but in the end it all comes down to facts and universal truth. That is a different opinion.

It is a fact that different things mean different things to different people, but it is a matter of opinion how relevant that is.

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That doesn't mean they're not capable of dealing in inconvenient facts
Are you a politician? And did you not understand it's a general statement about politicians, hence the qualifier 'almost always'?

I was providing a different perspective from the one you expressed.

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@livinglava,

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That is an opinion about relative importance.

Not a bad argument...but you are essentially saying the same thing as I did (so we actually agree in a way). I think perhaps you have taken the extreme view of 'what it all comes down to'? (which sounds almost absolute). The completion of the sentence is 'What does this mean to you"....is very distinct about 'how relevant a thing is' - it's relevance is determined by the observer, who could decide 'it means little to nothing to me, or 'this is really important to me'.

Phrased closer to you - what it all comes down to is the meaning & relevance of a thing is determined by the individual.

No meaning, no relevance to the person.

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I was providing a different perspective from the one you expressed.

I understood that. But offering your own experience, when talking about politicians, and you not being one, makes for a poor example. We're all human, but the environment we work in, and the inclinations that draw us to that environment result in a number of 'common' (not universal) character traits while conducting that work. Good comparison in human behaviour (if challenging a claimed trait in a group) require similar source examples, or things get skewed.

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@vikorr,

vikorr wrote:

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That is an opinion about relative importance.
Not a bad argument...

Here you're expressing an opinion instead of simply acknowledging or refuting whether what you're commenting on is factual. You are basically skirting the issue of truth-value by reference to opinion.

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but you are essentially saying the same thing as I did (so we actually agree in a way). I think perhaps you have taken the extreme view of 'what it all comes down to'? (which sounds almost absolute). The completion of the sentence is 'What does this mean to you"....is very distinct about 'how relevant a thing is' - it's relevance is determined by the observer, who could decide 'it means little to nothing to me, or 'this is really important to me'.

Relevance can be based on logic or opinion, depending on the context. E.g. if you're analyzing why a machine broke, you could say that it has not been used gently or that you didn't like the machine anyway. The first is logically relevant to how the machine broke, but the second is an opinion about how bad it is that it broke. You could say both are relevant in their own ways, but only the first is logically relevant to why/how the machine broke. The other is just an opinion about it breaking.

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Phrased closer to you - what it all comes down to is the meaning & relevance of a thing is determined by the individual.

To you that's relevant. To someone else, it might be irrelevant. It's your opinion, not fact.

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No meaning, no relevance to the person.

Not true. Someone who doesn't understand mechanics can have their appliance break and the mechanical explanation of how the machine broke might mean nothing to them, yet the fact they can't use their broken appliance is nevertheless relevant to them.

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I understood that. But offering your own experience, when talking about politicians, and you not being one, makes for a poor example.

It doesn't matter whether one is a politician or not. Experience is a source of knowledge, but not the only one.

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We're all human, but the environment we work in, and the inclinations that draw us to that environment result in a number of 'common' (not universal) character traits while conducting that work. Good comparison in human behaviour (if challenging a claimed trait in a group) require similar source examples, or things get skewed.

I think you've pursued a bad line of philosophy, which you're trying to apply. You can't prove that some people are more or less capable of understanding certain things because of their experiential histories. The only way you can prove factuality is by objective testing.

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@livinglava,

Are you at all replying to my original post, or have you just started tying yourself in knots? The following appears very confused.

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Here you're expressing an opinion instead of simply acknowledging or refuting whether what you're commenting on is factual. You are basically skirting the issue of truth-value by reference to opinion.

Actually - what I was commenting on was your attempt to use logic to articulate your objections - where you basically said the same thing that I did, without realising it, though in a different way...rendering any point you were trying to make, confusing.

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To you that's relevant. To someone else, it might be irrelevant. It's your opinion, not fact.

If this is an objection, then it appears to have no relation to what you were responding to...though perhaps you were once again, saying the same thing I was saying (because it's a reword of what I said). If so, I'm not sure why, because your whole post appears to be aimed at an objection. Either way, it's confusing.

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Not true. Someone who doesn't understand mechanics can have their appliance break and the mechanical explanation of how the machine broke might mean nothing to them, yet the fact they can't use their broken appliance is nevertheless relevant to them.

You're confusing yourself. Once again, - this is an example of what I said.

The italicised is what I've said. The bolded is also what I've said, as reworded it reads "The fact that their machine is broken has meaning to them."

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It doesn't matter whether one is a politician or not. Experience is a source of knowledge, but not the only one.

It's almost like you've never had to sit down and understand why people in certain professions share some traits in common, or develop a similar skill-sets. That said, why you object to what I said isn't clear. You offered your experience, which says nothing about whether or not what I said was right. Even if your example was relevant (that is not said in a sarcastic manner), I did say 'almost all' politicians, and you offer only your sole example, even though you're not a politician.

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@vikorr,

vikorr wrote:

Are you at all replying to my original post, or have you just started tying yourself in knots? The following appears very confused.

Most everything you post appears very confused.

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It's almost like you've never had to sit down and understand why people in certain professions share some traits in common, or develop a similar skill-sets. That said, why you object to what I said isn't clear. You offered your experience, which says nothing about whether or not what I said was right. Even if your example was relevant (that is not said in a sarcastic manner), I did say 'almost all' politicians, and you offer only your sole example, even though you're not a politician.

Facts are facts. You are going off on a discussion tandem about professional commonalities and differences, but if you want to discuss that, why don't you start a different thread?

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Facts versus opinions and values. A primer for a post-fact society.

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