[LINK] Fake News

Rick Welykochy rick at vitendo.ca
Wed Dec 7 16:32:30 AEDT 2016


No need for the modifier "empirical" when discussing reality. Reality is well defined.

As our friend Wikipedia says, "Psychosis is an abnormal condition of the mind
that involves a 'loss of contact with reality'."

Those who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality..."
are those who create, research, innovate, discover, explore, define, conclude and produce.

Saying "That's not the way the world really works anymore" is garbage, a fallacy
of the order of a hasty generalisation. Vacuous self service.

Unfortunately, as you you have found, there is little to be gained by intelligently arguing
using reality against the foil of unfounded supposition.

What comes to mind is to point out that practically everything your opponent uses in
daily life is the product of science, rationalisation, insight and, yup, a general application
of the results of investigating the reality in which we live.

I doubt that there is a single example of someone using magic thinking or self-serving
falsehoods or fake news to produce anything of any use.

Are we living in the pose-truth era? If that is so, I am afraid for the success of future
applications of research into computing and intelligence, physics, chemistry, medicine,
architecture ... you get the picture.

Take hope in defending reality and sticking to your guns. The truth will out.


warm regards,
rickw



David Boxall wrote:
> I recently updated a blog post that I started in an effort to get my head around modern-day Conservatism. Among what my research turned up was this gem:
>> The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." 
>> I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore,"
> <http://david.boxall.id.au/201611/#alternativerealities>
>
> Increasingly, it seems our government is divorced from empirical reality. Isn't that characteristic of psychosis?
>


-- 
--------------
Rick Welykochy

The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that
the taxidermist leaves the skin.
     -- Mark Twain




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