Ask Lemmy

Hume had something like the wise apportion their confidence to the evidence, and Carl Sagan's extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence can apply. So if those are true the quality and type of data is going to depend on the claim of fact (friend says they bought a dog vs a dragon), and the amount of evidence depends on the claim and your general standard of evidence. If you're lowering or raising your standards for a specific claim that's usually going to mean there's a bias for or against it.

tl;dr 42 pieces of data

Facts are hard to confirm, bullshit tends to reveal itself.

So I have try not to cling to tightly to any given "fact", in case new evidence arrives.

That said, is can be surprisingly easy to navigate many parts of life simply by avoiding confirmed bullshit.

Logical proof, is it reasonable and do peers agree. That could be a tiny amount of data or a large amount of data. It is specific to the "something".

It's not so much the amount as the quality.

There are very few pieces of knowledge that I'd consider a fact. Rather, I tend to see those as the best current knowledge that might turn out to be false in the future. The fact of consciousness is among the only things in the entire universe that I see as absolutely being true. Pretty much anything else can just be an illusion.

I read proper peer reviewed research. I'm usually not a specialist on the subject, so I am unable to properly process any data available.

Depends if I agree with it.

At least 400 kilobyte.

It depends. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

None. I believe everything. Especially the contradictory parts. It's one of the powers granted to me by my true nature, revealed through the one true Slackmaster, J.R. "Bob" Dobbs.

Depending on the fact I should be able to find sources for it on .ORG and .GOV sites.

If i just find random blog posts, or facebook groups in the search results I take it with a grain of salt.

Like with questions posted in a forum: at least, having little more to read than just its title ;)

I have a model of everything. Everything I am, my understanding of the world, it all fits together like a web. New ideas fit by their relationship to what I already know - maybe I'm missing nodes to fit it in and I can't accept it

If it fits the model well, I'll tentatively accept it without any evidence. If it conflicts with my model, I'll need enough proof to outweigh the parts it conflicts with. It has to be enough to displace the past evidence

In practice, this usually works pretty well. I handle new concepts well. But if you feed me something that fits... Well, I'll believe it until there's a contradiction

Like my neighbors (as a teen) told me their kid had a predisposition for autism, and the load on his immune system from too many vaccines as once caused him to be nonverbal. That made sense, that's a coherent interaction of processes I knew a bit about. My parents were there and didn't challenge it at the time

Then, someone scoffing and walking away at bringing it up made me look it up. It made sense, but the evidence didn't support it at all. So my mind was changed with seconds of research, because a story is less evidence than a study (it wasn't until years later that I learned the full story behind that)

On the other hand, today someone with decades more experience on a system was adamant I was wrong about an intermittent bug. I'm still convinced I'm right, but I have no evidence... We spent an hour doing experiments, I realized the experiments couldn't prove it one way or the other, I explained that and by the end he was convinced.

It's not the amount of evidence, it's the quality of it.

That's the great thing about science.

Things that are considered facts in today's world can be disproven by new experiments and observations (recreated through experimentation and after adequate peer review).

So for me, it depends on what is being evaluated. 2+2 is a fact. Exact age of the moon might be up for more debate.

is it a fun fact that impacts nothing? i'll accept it as fact immediately and without question

is it a fact that has some weight to it? i'll probably double check and if i find a reliable source that also claims it to be fact i'll accept it (if i'm reading about it from a reliable source i will accept it immediately)

is it a fact that contradicts my current beliefs/understanding of the world? i'll do some research on it, check if there's any recent articles like "that thing you thought was right? is not!", and depending on the nature of the fact think about why it's been debunked and how that changed my perception on the world

Depends how interesting or important or complex the thing is. If you tell me that your foot is 25cm long, I'll believe you without question. If you tell me it's 52cm, then you're going to have a hard time convincing me (unless you've already convinced me that you're a talking kangaroo).

This is why it's much more important to be skeptical of people's views on political issues too, because the situations are always complex, and important to different people in different ways.

I remember there was one fact I was really beating my head on; A dishwasher should always have some food or other gunk on the dishes before starting the machine, otherwise the detergent will attack the coloring on the dishes instead.

How has no company solved this problem? It makes no sense. Many people do wash their kitchenware so it doesn't stink up the entire dishwasher if it has been sitting for a while... idk.

I would be happy to hear if anyone can help confirm or dismiss this.

It takes a lot for me to accept something as fact, but I'm okay with living my life on a combination of likelihoods, reasonable plausibilities, and vibes

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