[Anecdotal evidence]

Via Smudged Up

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A lot of people who think they're saying "[actual fact]" are really just stating "[subjective opinion]" and call any criticism of their opinions "[incoherent rage]"
- Actual fact: The democrats don’t control the weather and create hurricanes to destroy Florida.
  
  Actual fact: abortion is a life saving medical procedure
  
  This is funny because I read it as "Democrats don't control the weather and [they] create hurricanes to destroy Florida."
  Media literacy strikes again. You could state what you stated and yet someone will still believe they create hurricanes without the ability to control weather.
  
  You can control the weather to some degree and governments do, do it. Its just the word 'control' implies significant amount of control when in reality it is very minor.
  Often these conspiracies are rooted in actual facts, just that facts get distorted insanely. Even if one person in the chain made a mistake, everyone else after them will also make the same mistake.
  (Just an article on could seeding if anyone is interested )
  
  It could be argued that the democrats enabling of capitalism drives climate change. Although not expressly for the purpose of destroying Florida
- [freedom of speech]
  
  [incoherent rage]
- [[Hyperlink blocked]]
- Which is this?
  
  There are more than three things
- so a way to incorporate sources into the posts and judge them accordingly?
  
  Not everything that is worth discussing has a source. Abstract ideas and hypothetical scenarios (among other things) have their places in rhetoric and communication.

[Coment attempting to have an intelligent and witty take on the conflict dispite two typos from either lazyness or stupidity]
- [permanent ban]
- [Drunken rambling story agreeing with this comment because of an experience 20 years ago]
  
  [Excited agreement 7 years later]

Anecdote isn't worthless, it just takes a lot of it to become credible.
Like, think of an anecdote like a single study - doesn't carry much weight, but may indicate that further investigation is called for. A shit ton of anecdotes all making a similar claim - now we've got peer review that may actually add up to something significant. It also may not, but the more it builds momentum without being debunked, the more likely it is to be actually getting at something real.
- On the other hand, when someone claims something is impossible/something has never happened before/something happens every single time, but you have just 1 anecdote from a credible source that contradicts that claim, then that 1 anecdote is enough to know that they are wrong.
  Example: some pundit states: our government has never executed an innocent man. You just need proof that they have executed a single innocent man to show that the pundit has no credibility on the subject and that it's thus not an impossibility that other executed men were also innocent.
- Doesn't a "lot of anecdotal evidence" eventually become a sample set?
  
  Not unless someone methodologically captures all the accounts through interviews and surveys and turns it into one.
- I agree that anecdotes aren't worthless, but for different reasons. There's actually a saying that goes, "the plural of anecdote isn't data." Anecdotes are just stories. They aren't data points and they aren't peer reviewed. If you want to turn anecdotes into data, you have to do the proper interviews and surveys to actually build a dataset and then get the peer review, but at that point we aren't talking about anecdotes anymore.

A fact is not enough - your audience will form an opinion based on it. That prevents objectivity.
You need to select your facts (pro and contra a point of view). And in the process you express your opinion which is based on the mentioned facts. It's very hard to be objective and quite easy to do framing.
- What about some platform that has as many facts as people can enter?

Welcome to the Internet!
- Real life*
  People on the internet will actually go out of their way to prove you wrong with factual evidence
  
  I'd say it goes both ways. Some people are presenting anecdotal evidence and conjecture as fact, arguing against actual facts.
  
  Family Dinners

Personally I'm all about objective opinions.

Your daily lemmy experience. Better make sure the only facts you quote are "oild rigs are weather machines", "twitter is now worth 25% of what musk paid for it".
Don't you dare quoting facts like "Trump has only half of the popular vote". You'll be chased and, maybe, banned.
- “Trump has only half of the popular vote”
  What's divisive about that? Honest question, I'm genuinely oblivious.
  
  He didn't even have half of the popular vote when he got elected. This is recorded historical fact. Clinton received 3m more votes.
- I haven't heard anything but mockery about the "Democrats control the weather" thing. Are there Lemmy communities that have actual idiots spouting this? Other than the few famous trolls who are basically doing a bit at this point?
- I wish this was only on Lemmy. I live this life. I am surrounded by this daily! I am scared in my own country.
- twitter is now worth 25% of what musk paid for it
  is the actual number more or less than that

What's epistemology? What is object/subject dualism? What is Gödel's incompleteness theorem? Idk, I just know other people are stupid
Some of y'all have a piss poor education in humanities and it shows
- Is the incompleteness theorem humanities? I thought it was comsci?
  Edit: Oh God I'm dumb it's not comsci idk why I said that lol, but it is still mathematics.
  
  Yeah I thought that too, but it has strong epistemic/ontological implications. Kind of a mix imo

How do you know it's objective fact and not just your subjective opinion? Can any opinion about the world you perceive through your senses be objective, if your senses are themselves subjective?
- Sounds like an argument to make yourself feel superior to all groups without adding anything concrete to the conversation to me.
  You seem to confuse subjectivity of perception with the objectivity of external facts. While our senses interpret the world, objective facts remain true independent of individual perception. For example, gravity exists whether or not one perceives or "believes" in it.
  
  You only know that gravity exists through your subjective perception.
- how can mirrors be real if our eyes aren't real
  
  When did I ever say mirrors were real?
- I haven't read much on the topic, so forgive me for my ramble:
  I agree with this sentiment. And find myself particularly cringing to people I agree with, espousing something as a FACT, as a part of their argument.
  To me, science (my personal philosophy) is the best way we have to determine what is likely to be true, and the best way we have to describe the world in which we live.
  When people start saying things like "and that's a FACT" like it somehow makes their position more credible, annoys me greatly.
  Getting ahead of the semantics, I don't have an issue with the word itself, as being "something true". Just that when people use it as something being self-evident. And I see it happening a lot, even with people saying something I agree with.

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