> it's just as important that we start with a foundation of agreed upon facts. In other words, reality isn't a point of view.

I don't think these two things are as strongly related as you suggest. Two reasonable people can look at the same problem with the same facts, make reasonable guesses on what the best course is, and yet reach two completely different, reasonable approaches to the problem. Otherwise, we would have already decided which programming language is the best one.

Some situations are more clear cut than others, and I agree that we need to separate facts from opinion better. But for situations as complex as the present and future of a country there might very well not be a "right" way.

"Reality" is not a point of view, but we only experience it through the lens of our personal experiences. No one experiences "true" reality.

Apologies in advance if this sounds snappy, this hits an issue I feel strongly about.

My local supermarket has precisely no empathy for me and the only thing I expect to agree on with the local store manager is price. Yet it is by far the most effective conduit for getting me cheap food. Effective systems simply are not very good at empathy and agreement on non-core issues is unimportant. Empathy in particular recommended at a personal level but not especially useful in politics. The critical tool is the ability to comprehend, negotiate, compromise and articulate why things are necessary.

Having "empathy" for "the left"/"the right" isn't possible. The groups are too large and diverse. Ditto for major components of the left or right like "the black vote", "the evangelicals", "people in cities", "people from Detroit", "the wealthy", etc, etc. Entities that you can have empathy for or agree on facts with are too small to be politically important like individuals or families. Politics is done by large groups who's beliefs are too nebulous to align.

Have you ever dug into Bayesian reasoning? See E.T. Jayne's probability theory chapter 5 for an explanation on this.

The more facts we get, the more likely our views diverge and become more strongly held.

Yeah, I don't disagree. The more facts we have to choose from, the more susceptible to bias, because we will have a wider variety to cherry-pick from.

But for those who are genuinely interested in the truth and vigorously fighting biases, more facts can only help construct a "more complete" truth.

An ironic stance, given that it is the left in the US that are pushing ideas like Critical Theory, which is based on post-modernism, which in turn maintains that reality ("knowledge claims") is effectively a point of view ("socially conditioned").

Various factions within the US left have been trying to convince everyone for decades that subjective truth is more important than objective facts; that "lived experience" is what really matters.

Then those same people pull a surprised Pikachu face when Orange Man comes swinging out of right field with the same argument, just in the opposite direction with "fake news" etc.

I completely disagree. I think reality IS a point of view. You are suggesting that there is only one way to think about reality. And that is complete lunacy.

Is a fetus considered a human baby? This is one of those 2 sided debates that regularly occurs and the problem is that no amount of science will be able to give a definitive answer. It's a personal worldview and both sides have valid arguments.

"Alternative facts" are not facts, they are lies people tell themselves to justify a point of view. It's not truth, it's not sanity. Someone can't just substitute a lie for the truth because it feels better. I mean, they can, but they aren't living in reality - and that's actually complete lunacy.

Are you a glass half empty or a glass half full kind of person?

So, it's quite possible to have 2 truths - factually accurate - arise from the same physical reality because the observers are different.

It's also possible that people substitute falsities in exchange for truth based on bad intent or erroneous reasoning (and maybe there are other reasons but these would seem to be the most prevalent of the bad sort).

Since all these are possibilities, would you agree that it's best to apply some charity[1] to those you disagree with before deciding that they are not only wrong, but malign and should be tarred as lunatic?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

There’s being charitable and then there’s ignoring flat out disinformation.

Let’s not forget that the phrase “Alternative facts” was coined on day 3 of the Trump presidency to defend the lie that he had the biggest inauguration crowd ever.

This wasn’t a glass half full situation, this was someone saying it’s up to the brim when it’s under a half. That in itself to me reflects bad intent: lying from the seat of government about something so easily disproved at the start of your presidency, then spending days trying to back it up, is pure gaslighting.

The Trump administration deserves most of the blame here, but it’s very hard to treat with charity the subset of his supporters who repeat blatant lies like the above, because they are being willfully ignorant at best and acting in bad faith otherwise.

Among the long list of important things to worry about in politics, the number of people at Trump's inauguration isn't one of them, and I wonder what number of his own supporters even care. It must be vanishingly small.

The response to "there can be more than one view of reality that is valid and true" isn't to respond with "lies are lies and using lies in place of truth is lunacy", (to paraphrase the parent comments, perhaps more fairly than the latter deserves) so to remain focused on "Alternative facts" is to be led astray by what amounts to a straw man. That whole debacle was a petty response by a narcissist to a petty narrative line by a media that isn't focused on what matters anyway and anyone repeating the White House line was more than likely acting tribally - as was anyone criticising the numbers. The proverbial storm in a teacup.

Regardless, who is arguing for "Alternative facts" here?

Nobody is arguing for them here. I was saying that the people pushing them should not be given any charity, as they have proved themselves to be acting in bad faith time and time again.

There is a clear line of behavior that began with lying about crowd size and extended throughout the presidency, and yes a lot of it is driven by narcissism. It’s mostly not harmless though. A recent deadly example is how Trump supporters (speaking generally again) act concerning COVID. The president and his cohorts said “masks don’t matter, it’ll disappear soon anyway” for months and months, and his supporters believed it despite factual evidence, which has worsened the pandemic.

Tribalism is the word I was seeking, thank you.

Reading the thread again, I think you may be putting more weight on the use of “complete lunacy” than the poster intended. That was a reference to its parent post, which used the same words while taking “reality isn’t a point of view” out of context to mean “there is only one way to think about reality.” If there’s a straw man here, it’s all the way up there.

Whether the glass is half full or half empty is not a fact, it's an opinion. The glass being, say, 45.67% from full capacity is a fact. The glass being emptied right now at 55 millilitres per second or being filled at 45 millilitres per second is a fact.

It might be a fact that two people can have greatly different kinds of opinions from the same facts, but they both still deserve to know the facts.

Whether you consider the glass to be half full or half empty is not a fact. It's an opinion.

> The glass being, say, 45.67% from full capacity is a fact.

The glass is at 50% capacity. Was it more convenient for you to change the fact of the statement?

You’ve simply substituted one kind of measure for another without providing a distinction between them.

The key point is that a fact has a different effect on different observers that can be discerned from the way the express it. The state of affairs being described is not a belief or an opinion or will magically find less millimetres (as in your comment) by being stated differently.

When the glass is at 50% capacity, one is making an observation of the state of affairs.

When one says that it is "half full" or "half empty" one is already making it into a statement of belief or opinion that reflects one's inner workings and beliefs.

> making it into a statement of belief

I want to get this straight. You’re saying that a glass that exists hypothetically, posited by the speaker, may only be known to be half full as a belief by that very speaker?

> or opinion

Or that it’s their opinion that it’s half full? Even if it wasn’t hypothetical, would you find it at 50% capacity or not?

> that reflects one’s inner workings and beliefs

I can’t tell if that means you read what I wrote or if you didn’t. Regardless, using a relative measure does not turn a factual statement into a belief or an opinion of the explicitly stated fact. That which may be inferred from the way of stating a fact may well be beliefs and opinions but that does not change the fact any more than it would by being stated in English rather than in French. Relative measures are no less factual - or valid, sound, precise or accurate - than absolute measures. Just try restating using absolute measures of pints and millilitres and tell me that makes the statements less factual or that beliefs and opinions cannot also be inferred from them.

"The world is flat" was "settled science" for 100000 years.

Actually no. That was Christianity who tried for a short time. It was not true and it didn't catch on, except for the urban legend itself.

Wasn't that OP's key point? Vast majority (if not all) political messages are both true and false, depending on context and personal bias.