In my mind the difference in definition or understanding of truth drives the epistemic fracture, Eliot Higgins, the founder of Bellingcat talked about. This is his original thread. bsky.app/profile/elio... 2/
Replies
This is my thread on it. bsky.app/profile/bulg... 3/
sep 1, 2025, 7:52 pm • 0 0 • view
Appeal to beliefs (Moore, Parker (1989)*) is a silent killer of truth in the modern society. * I find books on critical thinking published before 1990 particularly interesting and unfortunately according to library records people stopped reading them in 2000s 4/
sep 1, 2025, 7:52 pm • 0 0 • view
Often, people call it argument ad populum or appeal to common belief or (as this admin says "common sense"). This is one of the reasons we now deal with a lot of bots trying to sway public opinion. On the other end is the subjectivist fallacy often defended using the 1st amendment. 5/
sep 1, 2025, 7:52 pm • 0 0 • view
The subjectivists fallacy may seem to contradict the appeal of beliefs fallacy. As Bertrand Russell said "Philosophers may differ as to the definition of "truth", but at any rate it is something objective, something which, in some sense, everybody ought to accept." 6/
sep 1, 2025, 7:52 pm • 0 0 • view
Having a proof resolves this contradiction. However, we also should keep in mind that it does not mean something is not true, if is has no proof yet. It just means it is not proven or disproven yet. This is the area where I see a lot of people getting lost. 7/
sep 1, 2025, 7:52 pm • 0 0 • view
Another interesting book I ran was Churchman. Design of Inquiring Systems (1971). Logical proofs would be represented by Leibnizian inquiring systems relying on factnets. They are not perfect for many reasons - imperfect knowledge, observations, problems with sampling methods, etc. 8/
sep 1, 2025, 7:52 pm • 0 0 • view
Because of this some proofs (especially longer ones) may not necessarily be accurate as errors start to accumulate. But these are not the reason to abandon logic altogether. As we see maga just does not believe in logic. And they learn what to think, not how to think. 9/
sep 1, 2025, 7:52 pm • 0 0 • view
I think this is why we struggle to get on the same page with maga. No amount of arguing with them or justification will change their opinions. No matter how hard we try. They need a different approach. And last, but not least. I'd appreciate have any recs on the topic of definitions of truth. 🔟/🔟
sep 1, 2025, 7:52 pm • 0 0 • view
Eliot's thread and the embedded ones make a lot of sense to me and fit well with my understanding of what went wrong and why, what the stakes are, and how authoritarians and corporation have taken advantage of the collapse of our public sphere. Thank you for sharing all of this!
sep 1, 2025, 8:07 pm • 3 0 • view