Wednesday, April 25, 2018

Fake But Accurate, Redux

Wasn't it Dan Rather who popularized the phrase "fake but accurate", when caught telling a BS story about President Bush's air national guard service?  Well, here it is again:
The mask slips yet again. When challenged to defend flyers posted around an Oregon campus that warn of a widespread sexual assault problem, a college official said the following: "Believing survivors means let's sit down and understand each other's experience. Let's believe what that person said, he or she has experienced, that we have experienced. It may not be the truth, as has been determined, but it is that person's truth and what they were going through."
You can think whatever you want, but in most places in life there's objective truth.  One person shouldn't be penalized just because someone else is cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs and chooses to believe (or merely state) something objectively false.

2 comments:

  1. But if the person's truth is the WRONG truth, then they will discount it, of course. So these officials are talking out of both sides of their mouths.

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  2. Anna A4:08 AM

    For an interesting look at being wrong, may I recommend the book "Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of error" by Kathryn Schulz.

    This book looks at our responses to being wrong or thinking that someone else is wrong.

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