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Today's column: "Show me the FACTS!!!"
(picture spit flying at the monitor in the troll's basement...)

This is the go-to response of the fool with no argument.
If you have an observation to assert, just say it. Your opinion has value, ignore the trolls.
Your point is either reasonable or it's not. If you make the assertion and support it with some rationale that led you to that conclusion, that's enough for two or more intelligent people to rationally discuss a topic.
If your reasoning or your conclusion can't be disproved with sound logic, then it remains just as valid. Not proved, of course, but just as valid as potentially true.

Progress comes from synthesizing conclusions from the implications of previously-accepted propositions or empirical observations, and then testing those inferred conclusions to see if they're sound. Testing an assertion begins with making the assertion. Anyone who attacks the act of initiating the process, doesn't understand the process.
Just ignore the trolls who think every single opinion brought up in informal conversation needs to be accompanied with a peer-reviewed thesis paper to be considered valid. That's just their way of avoiding the topic by hiding behind a nonsensical pretense of unearned superiority... like they do.

There seems to be a school of thought emerging among these spoon-fed pseudointellectuals, who worship a reified "Science" that they don't even understand, that all valid knowledge must be empirical.
If you don't "show them the FACTS!!", then they believe that proves your claim cannot be true.
Also, and ironically, they like to demand sources... relying on the unverified "authority" of somebody they don't even know, for conclusions that they certainly don't understand let alone possess the capacity to assess critically; conclusions that they, themselves, will proffer as "FACTS!!" if, and only if, they happen to fit into their ideological insert-the-shapes box.

But, "Authority" is not an argument. Arguments are arguments.
If you have some sound reasoning that leads to a certain conclusion, just say it. If you can point out some actual empirical observations that support it, great... do that too. But your conclusion will either be true, or not true, regardless of the presence or the absence of empirical data or "authoritative" agreement.
"Authorities" have historically been wrong about 95% of the time, anyway. And, yes, 95% is a guess.
All of Modern Science is based on the presumption that the "scientist's" conclusion is wrong, and historically that presumption has almost always been discovered to be correct eventually. The whole point of peer-review is to pick away at an hypothesis to discover... not "if" it is wrong, but where it is wrong and why; and ideally to thereby refine it into a better conclusion that is "less wrong"; incrementally approaching a soundly-supported and verifiable truth... hopefully... someday.
Any conclusion that has survived such scrutiny, so far... is accepted as "scientific fact", meaning simply that it hasn't been disproved yet. A real scientist remains prepared to throw it out, along with every conclusion that relies on it, upon the discovery of new information that refutes it.

Regurgitating a few "FACTS!!" that seem to support a conclusion is a ridiculous and ignorant mockery of that entire process. Facts do not prove an assertion. Facts can support an assertion, but only if you have gathered ALL of the facts that are relevant to the conclusion, and ONLY the facts that are relevant. Even simply identifying ALL of the facts that are relevant to an issue of any complexity can be a lifelong endeavor. To look for that in casual conversation is just idiocy.
A single fact that you've left out could invalidate your entire conclusion... even if every other known fact in the universe supports it.
And, conversely, your assertion could be 100% correct whether you actually prove it or not, that's a separate activity.
Furthermore, there is an entire universe out there both physical and metaphysical, the scope of which we can't even guess at, that is full of "truths" for which we have no empirical information whatsoever; and no way to gather it... at least not yet.
Those truths are no less true, regardless. And any indicators that seem to reveal these truths, conclusive or not, are dismissed only by fools; not by "realists". An actual realist recognizes the reality that we don't even know the extent of what we don't know. And, an actual scientist dismisses nothing that could be relevant. They'll start with whatever indicators seem to be relevant, acknowledge the limitations of their assumptions, and proceed from there. If you're waiting for an apple to hit you in the head, you're probably not going to accomplish much... ever.

But, back to our trolls: unsound, lazy logic that is supported by an incomplete set of "facts" and ignores others is far more prevalent than sound, conclusively-supported logic. And, too many people simply don't know the difference; which is why it is so prevalent I guess.
The idiot who demands "FACTS!!" before he'll consider any proposition, doesn't even know what he's demanding. He'll never "know" anything other than what's been spoon-fed to him by somebody else; some of it may even be true... most of it probably not. He doesn't know, and he never will. As a consequence, he'll just eventually die having contributed nothing at all to the slow progression of human awareness that is marked by observation, synthesizing an hypothesis, imagining the implications, testing them to validate your hypothesis... (repeat.)
This is a creative process as much or more-so than it is objective. Observation, or pointing out "FACTS!!", is only the first step.

These trolls will never have anything to offer that they didn't just hear from somebody else, so you may as well start ignoring them now...

rway 7 Nov 26
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I don't really understand the point you are trying to make, a fact is a fact regardless of what anyone asserts. Eg: it is a scientific fact that Co2 is not a pollutant, yet many assert it is and it is causing 'global warming'. Back in the day, the accepted opinion/assertion was that the sun revolved around the earth but Galileo proved that was wrong with the facts and got hauled up before the Inquisition but it still didn't change the fact that he was right.

Is truth always truth? Some claim it is subjective and can change depending on the perspective but a fact is a fact regardless.

Maybe i'm missing something else, is this specific to an article published somewhere?

I don't know; I'm just ranting about people who get all hung up on facts, and truly seem to believe that makes them more... scientific or something. Facts are obviously useful, but they're just information, not knowledge. Science is an activity that processes facts to distill knowledge... gathering facts is just one of the steps.
An important "fact" may indeed refute or prove an assertion, but demonstrating that proof can be a very long and arduous task... simply pointing it out doesn't cut it. An unproved implication is just an assumption.

e.g., "Co2 is not a pollutant", is not a fact... it's an assertion; one that depends entirely on the working definition, to include defining attributes, for the word pollutant.
Very nit-picky, I know. But there are those people who want to hold you to that standard, while they don't seem very interested in subjecting their own arguments to the same scrutiny.

@rway Co2 is not a pollutant, that is a scientific fact - Co2 or carbon dioxide is a naturally occurring element on earth; it is in everything, plants, animals, the oceans, the land, us, everywhere. As a matter of fact, if there were no Co2, everything would die. We even breathe it in and out. We breathe in 400ppm of Co2 but we breathe out 40,000ppm and as the man says, I don’t think anyone has died from Co2 poisoning while receiving CPR.

@Edain ok... apparently I'm just not making my point very well.
I don't think that CO2 is a pollutant, but this is a good case-in-point.
There is a difference between supporting an assertion and proving it. You have supported your assertion with very reasonable rationale.
You have not proved it.
You could say most of the same things about salt, but salt can also destroy farmland and poison people. That makes salt sound like it might fit the definition of a pollutant, but only under specific criteria, and only if we have a mutually agreeable definition to work with in the first place.
Which is why the first step is always to define your terms.

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I think this is a problem plaguing libertarians and pro-freedomers in general.

Our conclusions (freedom is good, the market works, etc) are philosophical, timeless truths of human nature that can be supported by looking to human experience for verification. Not data-driven. You don't need a study or a command of every possible fact to know that a ball rolls when pushed. You've learned that it does so because you've learned the nature of the object and what it does by interacting with it.

So we go "freedom is good, regulations are causing these problems" and then the enemy of freedom goes "cite your sources, show me evidence" and you're stumped, because you don't have a list of every specific regulation and how it caused a bad outcome. You just know that human beings flourish best when their minds are free to act on their better judgment and that there's a correlation between abandoning reason/freedom and the increasing suffering in society. You can't show them case studies or scientifically tabulated observations for the number of times a balloon has floated upward when filled with helium, but it's a timeless truth that balloons float upward when filled with helium (given that it's in normal air).

I'd say it's a purposefully malicious tactic on the troll's part that we fall for because we're reasonable people who believe that our opponents are reasonable too. They don't use demands for evidence because they would actually change their mind if you presented any. They use demands for evidence because they know nobody on the internet can provide it and the first person to ask for it wins the argument by paralyzing their opponent.

good point. Facts are not knowledge, they're just information. Knowledge comes from figuring out what the facts are telling you. Doing that successfully, and then understanding the implications of that knowledge; will take intelligence, whatever wisdom you've accrued, and some measure of both creative and critical thinking.

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Great post, but I didn’t read the whole thing. Keep them short and make it pointy! I’d hate to imagine I missed your most amazing nugget of inspiration because it got lost in a 3000 word essay.

Thanks for the feedback. If you read the first paragraph, you got the point.
Pithy assertions are often dismissed as "unsupported". So... what follows is some supporting rationale and perspective for anyone who may be interested. ...can't please everybody.
If the reader has an argument, that argument should already be addressed in the original post; that's the goal anyway. That can obviate the need for a bunch of inane "discussion", but it doesn't always fit on a bumper sticker.

@rway - I’m glad you put your main point in that first paragraph. However, I did scan thru and find more very interesting nuggets, but I certainly don’t read ANYTHING that long in social media - and I fear others may be the same. You sound right on target. I hope I see more of you on IDW.

@DomNodarelli I'm certain you're right. However, much superficial disagreement seems to be rooted in more fundamental ideas.
If you just offer your conclusion, most people who don't agree will still just simply disagree; because they're basing their conclusion on different underlying assumptions. Within that context, they're obviously right, and you're just ignorant.
You'll never get anywhere without exploring the underlying fallacies. It can take a while to get there rhetorically, but it's often just a waste of time otherwise.

Even if nobody reads it, it's still a useful exercise. Because, some of the underlying fallacies you reveal will likely be your own.

@rway - I respect your diligence!

@rway - I really get joy out of ignoring HighQ’s trollery. He is such a pest - like a flea in IDW’s soup. I guess we need these fleas to keep us from getting lazy intellectually...

@rway Jack Nicolson said it in a bumper sticker. "You can't handle the Truth!" I hope you get my meaning. Darkness is not the opposite of light it is the absence of light. Progressive socialism is not the opposite of libertarianism, it's the absence of liberty. When you take away everything that is Right, all you have is what is Left.

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