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JUSTICE_FROM_TRUTH

                                                   March    20, 2018
                                                   November 11, 2018

I'm someone who long ago
placed my faith in reason.         A "joke" which is so old with
                                   me I haven't stuck it in the
                                   doomfiles yet.

Talking to Nicholas Gruen, I was making
the claim that before you can get to
"ought" (policy positions) you need to
get the "is" down, and that frequently
the "ought" flows from the "is";
knowledge of how things are makes
what should be done obvious.

I (usually) back the belief that "the
truth will out and justice be done";
that justice flows from truth...

   If the global warming "skeptic"
   position were completely unbelievable
   and unengaging, then we'd be
   much further along to a solution.


There are many other standards of value
out there besides truth (or in addition
to truth?).

An example I've been thinking about of late
is the old Werner Earhardt line (ignore the
hint of plagarism here for now):

   "If not you, who?
   If not now, when?"

Well: "somebody else" and "later", right?
So from one point of view, that's a pretty
inane thing to say.  But if someone listening
to it goes out of the room feeling like
"That's right!  *I* can do it!" then the line
did it's job.


     Trying to judge inspirational
     messages by a standard of "truth"
     may be missing the point.


So you can have a different standard of value in play:

Someone who says engaging things that make people feel
better is something you might expect of a therapist,
(though it's also something you expect of a con-artist...).

   People with an interest in psychology
   and psychoanalysis often seem to have
   trouble grasping that there's a difference       THE_ANTI_FREUD_CREW
   between "makes people feel better"
   and "scientific truth".

       An emotional standard for belief?

       If what's said makes you feel
       better, it's good, if not...


Another standard is "politeness"
or "civility".

I don't have to listen to you if you're rude about it.

   In a typical reddit group,
   calling a stupid person stupid is
   guaranteed a few dozen down-votes.

   Stupid is accepted, Rude is not.


Not long ago I pointed out to a renewables-enthusiast
that they were exaggerating their case, and they
responded something like "well, people need to hear
positive stories".  You could take that to mean
he wasn't interested in truth.

It's a very common idea these days that I
see come up in multiple different contexts:
"people aren't persuaded by facts, instead
we need to come up with a new narrative, a            THE_STORY_OF_STORIES
new story."

 Do you care more about persuasive speech than truth?

 If you're an "activist" what does that say about your
 intellectual integrity?

        And that's an old one of course, going back to
        Plato and criticisms of "rhetoric"--





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