'He has learned nothing,' Zuckerberg considers crowdsourcing news fact-checks for Facebook

Are you talking about the IB pedagogical framework? That’s the only TOK I’m familiar with.

I don’t think a unidirectional relationship between knowledge and facts is defensible.

“Legitimate” my maiden aunt Fanny. A determination of “legitimacy” by people who have ZERO training or experience is 100% absolutely worthless. No, grocers are NOT competent to determine the legitimacy of the work of people who have spent their lives in science.

I’m not arguing that the man on the street should be determining whether or not someone is an expert, but they are the only one who can decide whether they themselves trust that expert, or at least trust the meta-expert who certified them. I say legitimate because there have been actual large-scale breaches of trust by certified sources of “expert” information. I don’t doubt in the slightest the need for experts to handle specialized knowledge, but it is incumbent upon the experts themselves, or another accrediting body to continually build trust.

3 Likes

Exactly. “Crowdsourcing” for a large multi-national corporation? Fuck you, Zuck!

4 Likes

Breaches of trust? You mean news about companies losing personal data? That has absolutely nothing to do with vaccination, or global warming, or other things. And people should not distrust experts on matters like that because of nonrelated matters, but they do. That’s the problem - people conflating things that are not even in the same ballpark.

Of course nobody can make another person’s decision. But making decisions about a child’s health and other important matters because of general distrust over nonrelated matters is insane.

It’s part of IB, but it’s a widely available university subject.

What you seem to be hinting at is the correspondence theory of truth. The problem with that is that “facts” as we use them in political discussions don’t bear a one-to-one relationship to “facts” as a philosophical ideal. See also: The most pertinent objection to the Correspondence Theory of Truth. We do not have access to objective reality to check correspondence.

I would guess @HMSGoose is thinking more of things like:

Andrew Wakefield - Wikipedia

or

to name but two.

4 Likes

For sure those, but also the very topical Oxycontin scandal, the fat vs. sugar coverups, the 50s/60s denigration of breastmilk on behalf of the formula industry (which has led to an overcorrection in some quarters, and now formula feeding is being undeservedly maligned) the industry-funded denial of the dangers of lead. The abuse of electroshock therapy and lobotomies. The fucking Tuskeegee experiments! And those are the hard science/medical scandals. To me, Vietnam, the Iraq war, McCarthy hearings, general lacl of accountability for police mosconduct are all major breaches of trust in expert sources.

6 Likes

The not-as-borked moderation here in the BBS is why it’s my social media venue of choice. Facebook as been scaled back to lurking and seeing what my parents are up to.

3 Likes

The great thing about science evidence is that it can be tested.

If someone fakes up a study or conceals unfavourable results, this can’t stop other experimenters from analysing the data statistically and/or producing new data by repeating the experiment.

Thereby, the flaws can be revealed.

This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.