From: mark@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I totally disagree. You are entitled to your own opinion, but not your
facts. Truth is fact. Truth is absolute. There is no gray in truth. You
may not like it, and you may wish it were different, but its there none the
less.
to quote from grumpyoldsod's website
"The fact is that there's no such thing as a fact. I frequently have people
who've read one of my pages emailing me to say “you want to get your facts
straight”. What they actually mean is that I should accept their version of
the truth, not my own.
Take speed cameras, for instance. I was taken to task recently for using the
expression “safety cameras”, because of course they don't monitor safety,
they only measure speed. Anyway, I once talked to a policeman who told me he
wasn't very keen on speed cameras. What he really liked, he said, was to
follow a speeding driver, stop him, and “educate” him. This education would
take the form of a lecture on why speeding is dangerous, and how devastating
the injuries caused by speeding frequently are. It would be in vain for the
errant driver to say that the police's own figures show that excessive speed
is a causative factor in only 7.3% of accidents, and that most of the
dreadful injuries were caused by drink, drugs, or simple inattention. The
policeman would insist: he knew “the facts”, he would tell the driver “the
facts” and “the facts” would speak for themselves.
I watched a wildlife programme the other night, about seahorses. ..Yachtsmen
visiting that particular bay would drop anchor, their anchor chains would
scrape across the sand as the tide swung them round, and the seagrass would
be unable to get a toehold, thus limiting the habitat into which the
seahorses might expand if they wanted. This meant that there were only about
forty seahorses there, when there ought to have been three or four times as
many (it wasn't made clear how the environmentalists knew how many there
ought to be, but I'm sure they weren't guessing. I mean, they were talking
facts, weren't they?) There was no evidence that any seahorse had been
harmed in the making of that particular anchorage, and it wasn't actually
proved that the anchor chains were doing what the environmentalists said,
although it sounds plausible. Still, so far as these worthies were
concerned, the facts were that as usual the wicked humans were destroying
the poor defenceless animals. What was needed was “education”. The yachtsmen
had to be told “the facts”.
When it comes down to it, facts are just what you think they are. Very few
facts are capable of conclusive proof, and facts can change over the years.
It was once a fact that the earth was flat. Then it was a fact that the
earth is round. Now it's a fact that the earth bulges in the middle.
..God is a fact for some, and history tells us that there certainly have
been many deaths to support that fact. Mohammed is a fact for others, so
much that some are prepared to blow themselves up for him. Conan Doyle
believed that fairies were a fact. Facts are just what you think at the
moment. Next year a new set of facts will come along.
It all depends what you want to believe, and where you're standing at the
time. Looking across the room as I type, I'm prepared to state as a fact
that the cat is sitting on the table. She knows she isn't supposed to be up
there, and has the good grace to look a little shifty.
But is it a fact? It might be to me, but suppose I was the cat? She has no
concept of “table”, any more than she understands a left-hand thread or a
piece of Mozart. To her, a table is just a bit more up. Can you really sit
on something that doesn't exist? Is her perception of the world in any way
inferior to mine? She can see in the dark, and I couldn't catch a mouse.
Or suppose I was the table? If the table had any sentience it could well be
thinking “This idiot cat may think she's sitting on me. What she doesn't
know is that I am gallantly holding her up in the air and preventing her
from crashing to the floor and hurting herself. Not that I expect any
thanks, of course”. ...”
The worst offenders are those who know the least, frankly. The more ignorant
you are, the firmer your grasp on those “facts” that suit you, and the more
belligerent you are in forcing them on others. There have been remarkably
few terrorist outrages committed by Oxford graduates, and so far as I know
the membership list of Mensa includes no one with a suspicious bulk under
their jacket and wires sticking out of their trousers.
Scientists ought by rights to have the clearest grasp of the facts. They
seem to spend their lives trying to find out more. But you rarely find a
scientist stamping his feet on the floor and shouting “You want to get your
facts right!” What you do find is scientists saying “Yes, this theory fits
the evidence as we know it, so we assume it is more likely to be a
reasonable explanation. Until a better theory comes along, we'll use this
one.” ..
Then next year they invent a new theory. Salt is bad for you, salt is good
for you, you need to drink 8 glasses of water a day, water is poison, the
earth is warming, the earth is cooling, the Sun is going to explode, the Sun
is heading for a quiet period, the Earth is flat, the Sun goes round the
Moon, space is empty, space is full of stuff, the world is 1,700 years old,
lead in petrol makes engines cleaner, thalidomide the wonder drug, if you
travel at more than 30mph on a train you'll suffocate, rats are created from
dung-hills by parthenogenesis, it's more merciful to torture a non-believer
to death so that they die in a state of repentance and may go to heaven ...
sorry, wandering off the point a bit. They're all facts, though, or have
been at some time.
No, facts suck. I spit on facts. Stick to good old-fashioned prejudice, and
if anyone questions you, just shout louder."
k
