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#alternativefacts

John Jones said:
Oh stop it!

Hyperbole is one thing, but this is asinine extrapolation crimethink. I can't stand the SOB either, but this is not Ingsoc or 1984. At least not yet.
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The White House telling the press what the real facts are is what actually happened this weekend. It is not hyperbole.
 
JoeBentley said:
*Laughs* Obviously.

No but seriously warts and all honest this whole freak out over the "Alternative Facts" things is sorta annoying me for just that reason.

People didn't freak out when reality denial was the course of the day in science but now that it's in politics oh let's all panic?

Do you realize this is how the world has always looked to me? People just straight up denying reality isn't new to me.
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When denying issues like climate change, some weak arguments were put forth. Conway seems to be saying that there is a new sheriff in town, and the arguing is over.
 
I was asked to calculate prismatic diopters in class.

Before I answered I told the professor I have a Trump Card.*

The answer was 1.0^P BO
I answered 2.0^P BO

I then told my professor my answer was an #alternatefact

She said I was still wrong.

I am confused.

*see what I did there?
 
thaiboxerken said:
The White House telling the press what the real facts are is what actually happened this weekend. It is not hyperbole.
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Sorta. I think there is some grey area in a weird kind of way in, but it all amounts to the same thing on a practical level.

No one outside of idiots and philosophizers (but I repeat myself) don't believe in object reality.

What the Trump administrators is trying to do is not argue that the number of people at the various events is some sort of "Perceived Reality" but that all sources from which the average person could get the objective fact can't be trusted.

Basically this whole "Alternative Facts" is obviously the code word for another version of the "Evil liberal biased media" chestnut that's been played in various forms for decades.
 
JoeBentley said:
What the Trump administrators is trying to do is not argue that the number of people at the various events is some sort of "Perceived Reality" but that all sources from which the average person could get the objective fact can't be trusted.

Basically this whole "Alternative Facts" is obviously the code word for another version of the "Evil liberal biased media" chestnut that's been played in various forms for decades.
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No, I think they're just taking advantage of the fact that the American media has been spineless as hell.

When Trump says something like that, the headlines typically read something like Trump: "Bigly Huge, Great Success" with any indication that that was complete BS buried somewhere in the text, because god forbid they actually do any real journalism and say something confrontational. Sure, any person with two brain cells to bang together can read between the lines, but unfortunately people just aren't that skeptical when it comes to their news. The first thing they hear is assumed to be true, so as long as people lead with alt-facts horse crap, by default the message is conveyed.

Thankfully this is finally turning around and people are starting to catch on. I just checked CNN, and two of the running headlines are "With no evidence, Trump says 3-5M illegal ballots cost him popular vote" and "Spicer: We can disagree with the facts." So we'll see where we go from there.
 
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Beelzebuddy said:
No, I think they're just taking advantage of the fact that the American media has been spineless as hell.

When Trump says something like that, the headlines typically read something like Trump: "Bigly Huge, Great Success" with any indication that that was complete BS buried somewhere in the text, because god forbid they actually do any real journalism and say something confrontational. Sure, any person with two brain cells to bang together can read between the lines, but unfortunately people just aren't that skeptical when it comes to their news. The first thing they hear is assumed to be true, so as long as people lead with alt-facts horse crap, by default the message is conveyed.

Thankfully this is finally turning around and people are starting to catch on. I just checked CNN, and two of the running headlines are "With no evidence, Trump says 3-5M illegal ballots cost him popular vote" and "Spicer: We can disagree with the facts." So we'll see where we go from there.
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Too bad they didn't grow a spine sooner, before so many fell down the conspiracy theory rabbit-hole. Now otherwise sensible folks like my 82 year old mom see headlines like this as just more "evidence" of the plot to discredit our Dunning-Kruger poster boy.


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Beelzebuddy said:
No, I think they're just taking advantage of the fact that the American media has been spineless as hell.

When Trump says something like that, the headlines typically read something like Trump: "Bigly Huge, Great Success" with any indication that that was complete BS buried somewhere in the text, because god forbid they actually do any real journalism and say something confrontational. Sure, any person with two brain cells to bang together can read between the lines, but unfortunately people just aren't that skeptical when it comes to their news. The first thing they hear is assumed to be true, so as long as people lead with alt-facts horse crap, by default the message is conveyed.

Thankfully this is finally turning around and people are starting to catch on. I just checked CNN, and two of the running headlines are "With no evidence, Trump says 3-5M illegal ballots cost him popular vote" and "Spicer: We can disagree with the facts." So we'll see where we go from there.
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He's also playing up to those who exist in the GOP's echo chamber and couldn't bother to check on claims passed around in memes on Facebook.

(Like the Obama little red book on top of Bible is the Koran during inauguration.)
 
marplots said:
Except that too is a belief. And when the belief fails, we get Zimbabwe.
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You are mixing up three separate concepts.

$100 Zimbabwean Dollars will always be worth $100 Zimbabwean Dollars, as long as their Government guarantees that. This is a fact, not a belief.

You are confusing the Zimbabwean Dollars value vs the US Dollar and Inflation with this.

Neither of these is based on belief either, though of the three the valuation of a currency is probably the closest. Generally the valuation is done mathematically and based on risk and what people are willing to buy it at. When people pull out their investments due to higher risk, the valuations drop, when they buy because they believe it's a safer risk, then the value increases. The belief part is on the risk, not the actual value of one currency to the other, but if they believe it is a good investment or not.

Inflation is driven by the cost of the goods vs the value of the money required to purchase the goods. This isn't a belief issue.
 
PhantomWolf said:
You are mixing up three separate concepts.

$100 Zimbabwean Dollars will always be worth $100 Zimbabwean Dollars, as long as their Government guarantees that. This is a fact, not a belief.
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Nice tautology. A rock will always be worth exactly the value of a rock, whether or not anyone guarantees it.

You are confusing the Zimbabwean Dollars value vs the US Dollar and Inflation with this.
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Not at all. You can see this if we make some counterfeits. So long as our victims believe they are legit, they are legit and will serve as well as the real thing - even though they are not guaranteed by the Zimbabwean government. It's also true for many other things, like race, which does not have a clear and consistent basis in genetics.

Another common area for socially constructed facts (or, the alternate label: institutionally constructed facts) appear in the law. Definitions under law are constructed based on our agreements about justice. Murder in one jurisdiction may be manslaughter in another - and so on.

This is not to say that all facts are in this category. There are brute facts, unrelated to what our beliefs might be. Homicide is a brute fact - someone was killed. Murder is a socially constructed label. We can even use the phrase often posted here: [brute] facts are those which do not change based on whether humans believe them or not, whether there are even humans around or not. Under this distinction, our Zimbabwe currency has no value whatsoever without some human having an opinion/belief about it.
 
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This is a crack up: AltUSNatParkService
@AltNatParkSer
Official "resistance" account of the U.S. National Park Service. Protecting rugged scenery, fossil beds, 89 million acres of landscape
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Some of the Tweets:
And on the fourth day Trump got taken down by a couple of rogue national park rangers in a mountain cabin #resist @altnatparkser
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The thing the dystopian novels could never predict was the sudden rebellion of the national park social media managers
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You can take our official twitter, but you'll never take our free time!
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:dl:
 
More "alternative facts" being suppressed by the media:

“And yet the murder rate in our country is the highest it’s been in 47 years. I used to use that, I’d say that in a speech and everybody was surprised. Because the press [gestures to reporters] doesn’t tell it like it is. It wasn’t to their advantage to say that. But the murder rate is the highest it’s been in, I guess, 45 to 47 years.”
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https://reason.com/blog/2017/02/07/trump-says-crime-is-at-highest-level-in

"I’d say that in a speech and everybody was surprised." Gee, why would that be?
Like "The Bowling Green Massacre", why doesn't the press report these things that aren't true or never happened? :rolleyes:

I love how both Trump and Conway not only make these ridiculous claims, but then complain that the media doesn't cover them.
 
Puppycow said:
More "alternative facts" being suppressed by the media:



https://reason.com/blog/2017/02/07/trump-says-crime-is-at-highest-level-in

"I’d say that in a speech and everybody was surprised." Gee, why would that be?
Like "The Bowling Green Massacre", why doesn't the press report these things that aren't true or never happened? :rolleyes:

I love how both Trump and Conway not only make these ridiculous claims, but then complain that the media doesn't cover them.
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Not an alternative fact at all. Abortion is murder.
 
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