It varies widely depending on a combination of whether it impacts me directly, whether it contradicts or is inconsistent with information I have already accepted as fact, and the source. The source includes being reliable and if the fact could be something that serves the source’s self interest as that would require corroboration.
Until recently, if NASA tells me their current data shows that black holes exist at the center of a galaxy I take their word for it. They have been consistently reliable for decades and their entire mission is about increasing knowledge and sharing it with the entire world. With recent administrative changes I am more skeptical and wouldn’t trust something that contradicts prior scientific discoveries without corroboration from an external agency like the European Space Agency. I would take the ESA at their word currently.
If a for profit company says anything I want corroboration from a neutral 3rd party. They have too much incentive to lie or mislead to be trusted on their own.
Something from a stranger that fits into prior knowledge might be accepted at face value or I might double check some other source. Depends on how important it is to me and whether believing that would lead to any obvious negative outcome. I will probably also double check if it is interesting enough to want to check, and I’ll use skepticism as an excuse.
That covers actual factual stuff that could possibly be corroborated by a third party. Facts like the Earth orbits the sun or Puerto Rico is a US territory type stuff.
Then there are other things that can be factual but difficult to determine and that is a combination of experience and current knowledge, plus whether believing it would be a benefit or negative. If someone tells me the ice isn’t thick enough based on their judgement I will treat it as a fact and not go out on it unless I had some reason not to believe them. If they told me apples were found to be unhealthy I would check other sources.
Thank you for such a detailed answer.
It depends. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
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
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
A couple kilobites, minimum.
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
Facts are overrated
really depends on the source and if it makes sense in the first place.
A sufficient amount
It’s not so much the amount as the quality.
I’m not sure how I would even quantify this.
But I could qualify this: having a consensus across multiple trusted sources.
It isn’t quantity. It is the quality and logical reasoning.
I would argue that quantity is just as important as quality and logical reasoning. The Triforce of Science, if you will.
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.
Depends if I agree with it.
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.
How do you know consciousness is “true” and not also an illusion created by the brain?
Because consciousness is where illusions appear. The unconscious mind can’t experience illusions.
I’m using Thomas Nagel’s definition of consciousness: the fact of experience - that it feels like something to be from a subjective point of view.
Even if we’re living in a simulation and literally everything is fake, what remains undeniable is that it feels like something to be simulated. I’d argue that this is the only thing in the entire universe that cannot be an illusion.
The unconscious mind can’t experience illusions.
How do humans dream?
“Unconsciousness” as a clinical term is different from the absence of consciousness in the philosophical or phenomenological sense.
A sleeping person may appear unconscious to an outside observer, but from the subjective point of view, they’re not - because dreaming feels like something. A better example of what I mean by unconsciousness is general anesthesia. That doesn’t feel like anything. One moment you’re lying in the operating room counting backwards, and the next you’re in the recovery room. There’s no sense of time passing, no dreams, nothing in between - it’s just a gap.
Thomas Nagel explains this idea in What Is It Like to Be a Bat? by saying that if bats are conscious, then trading places with one wouldn’t be like the lights going out - it would feel like something to be a bat. But if you switched places with a rock, it likely wouldn’t feel like anything at all. It would be indistinguishable from dying - because there’s no subjectivity, no point of view, no experience happening.
Some studies on dreams under anesthesia.
What do you disagree with here exactly?
A better example of what I mean by unconsciousness is general anesthesia. That doesn’t feel like anything. One moment you’re lying in the operating room counting backwards, and the next you’re in the recovery room. There’s no sense of time passing, no dreams, nothing in between - it’s just a gap.
I am not disagreeing. I am providing you something that demonstrates the premise you built your idea on is false.
Even if it is an illusion created by the brain, does that make it any less existent?
If you see a mirage of a spring in the desert can you quench your thirst?
The fact that there is word for this experience demonstrates that the experience itself objectively exists, which only serves to prove my point.
Answer the question.
I have absolutely no idea why you are being so weird about this since obviously if the spring does not exist then it cannot be drunk from. However, what you are working bizarrely hard to go out of your way to miss is that, regardless of whether the spring itself exists in objective reality, the experience of seeing it has objective existence.
Phrased in a different way: if you see something that looks like a spring in the desert, then that might not mean that you will be able to drink from it, but you can be certain that, in that moment, you are seeing something that looks like a spring in the desert.
Do Unicorns exist?
ill tell you this, the amount of data would require for anyone accept a statement or idea as fact is related to their emotional assessment of the idea. See it all the time with trump supporters that think that trump is actually fighting to cut tax on overtime pay simple because he said it on the trail and there no evidence (and they have no evidence) that is happening, on the other hand it would take an infinite amount of evidence that trump took bribes even as he openly appointed Elon after spending millions of dollars.
so its weird that you have to propagandize the facts just to get people anywhere near a reasonable level of skeptism.
but for me I just say anything is valid unless I know how its wrong, which is limbo of acceptance then afterwards it can become a scoreboard where for and against. maybe a source doesn’t 100% line up with a statement, hell even video/audio evidence can be incongruent with a statement (as in its similar to what’s said but doesn’t back up a statement). I think the claim that Floyd overdosed but the video doesn’t show a overdose from opioids, so you’d have to rule out overdose simple because video doesn’t match the description of an overdose.
it wouldn’t take much, generally new information has to be consistent with what I know. the hard part is understanding the new information. no one is randomly disprove gravity or that things have mass, but someone can prove to me how a myth is meant to be interpreted for the intended audience
