Due Diligence
Fact-finding is a very tough job, as is fact-checking. Facts have to be solid, solidly grounded and/or solidly sourced, in order to support the scaffolding of belief and hypothesis that humans use daily.
The problem is that there are people who are factitious: they are manufacturers of factoids and factualish substance who are actually supporting counterfactual and antifactual factions. In effect, they create fake scaffoldings and promote false beliefs.
If only such people could be as diligent as the facts deserve! The problem with the lack of diligence is that it creates the need for even more work in establishing the truth, much as demolition of an existing eyesore is needed in order to build a worthy architectural addition on the same site.
Over at the Citadel, many such eyesores accrete, built on rumour and gossip. Nobody bothers to check the facts or establish them in any way apart from hearsay. It is enough if one of the chief narrative-spinners says it is so.
I too am the beneficiary of such intelligence. But in my case, I have taken pains to ask, and ask, and ask again — the Law of Three, referred to in the social sciences as the 'process of triangulation', is the minimum due diligence in such matters. And what various sources tell me gets labelled appropriately: hearsay, circumstantial evidence, physical evidence, numerical data, statistical argument, and so on.
It is the least I can do. But for some people, it seems like more than they can handle.
The problem is that there are people who are factitious: they are manufacturers of factoids and factualish substance who are actually supporting counterfactual and antifactual factions. In effect, they create fake scaffoldings and promote false beliefs.
If only such people could be as diligent as the facts deserve! The problem with the lack of diligence is that it creates the need for even more work in establishing the truth, much as demolition of an existing eyesore is needed in order to build a worthy architectural addition on the same site.
Over at the Citadel, many such eyesores accrete, built on rumour and gossip. Nobody bothers to check the facts or establish them in any way apart from hearsay. It is enough if one of the chief narrative-spinners says it is so.
I too am the beneficiary of such intelligence. But in my case, I have taken pains to ask, and ask, and ask again — the Law of Three, referred to in the social sciences as the 'process of triangulation', is the minimum due diligence in such matters. And what various sources tell me gets labelled appropriately: hearsay, circumstantial evidence, physical evidence, numerical data, statistical argument, and so on.
It is the least I can do. But for some people, it seems like more than they can handle.
etched with acid at 1:54:00 pm
2 Comments:
Sir,
1)triangulation sounds like something from king and pawn endgames. =)
2) i'm by no means a good topologist, but i understand that in topology they say that in sufficiently high dimensions a manifold can be embedded with no self-intersections because so to speak, there is enough space to pull things apart (to speak very nonrigorously). (a klein bottle in 4 dimensional space as opposed to 3 dimensional space.) analogously, metaphorically, one feels that the space of metaphysical statements out there that can possibly be made is so large, and even after attempted elimination of as many statements as possible through armchair philosophising remains so large, that, to speak facetiously, the set of statements that are in reality really true has "zero density" or "measure zero" in the set of statements that remain after attempting to eliminate what one can through armchair philosophising!
thus the reason for this phenomenon you describe; i agree with your view.
tfoo: 1) yes, that too; 2) the idea is that adding more dimensions adds more degrees of freedom that any given point can have — unfortunately, in the Citadel's case, adding more degrees of freedom merely loosens the bowels, it seems. :)
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