The replies in this chain are just joking around in a geeky and pedantic way (which is one of my favorite ways), but the original comment is serious and has a point.
The point of the original comment is just that we've entered a period where people are aware (perhaps hyper-aware) of any evidence that conflicts with other people's interpretation of events. This often happens to both sides of an issue, and they both denounce the others as hopelessly misled.
This doesn't mean there is no good way to view the overall events in question, and that facts are dead, just that we need to step back and try to view it all from a wider angle, with more facts in general.
Basically, think about history books for semi-recent US history. While they may still be biased in many cases, they generally have a good idea of what both sides thought and their motivations, and can describe them, and have the benefit of seeing how what they were arguing about turned out. That's obviously a hard or impossible view to get during most events, but it is something we can strive for by widening our view to encompass more information and points of view.
rhacker|8 years ago
kbenson|8 years ago
The point of the original comment is just that we've entered a period where people are aware (perhaps hyper-aware) of any evidence that conflicts with other people's interpretation of events. This often happens to both sides of an issue, and they both denounce the others as hopelessly misled.
This doesn't mean there is no good way to view the overall events in question, and that facts are dead, just that we need to step back and try to view it all from a wider angle, with more facts in general.
Basically, think about history books for semi-recent US history. While they may still be biased in many cases, they generally have a good idea of what both sides thought and their motivations, and can describe them, and have the benefit of seeing how what they were arguing about turned out. That's obviously a hard or impossible view to get during most events, but it is something we can strive for by widening our view to encompass more information and points of view.