I disagree; repeatable observations and independently confirmable facts in and of themselves resist being taken out of context -- I would say they are context. If someone goes too far and makes an unsupported assertion, that error can be identified by appealing to what is actually known and observed. There's never anything wrong with asking "How does (conclusion A) follow from (observation A)?" If the asserter can make a reasonable logical chain between them, there's at least a reason to give it consideration.Cunt wrote: ↑Wed Jan 30, 2019 12:23 amYeah, when we (including me) strawman, as we tend to do, we should immediately make a sincere attempt at 'steelmanning'.
Trouble is, I don't think anyone can, where there is such a rabid effort to take things out of context.
I think with the advent of video 'deep fakes', we will finally fully distrust media, and get back to good old fashioned methods.
I try, not always with success but I do try, to find a non-partisan/non-biased source for my assertions. Wikipedia is good, not in and of itself, but because it contains links to the source material.
Granted, there might always be different interpretations of the facts... but the facts are what is actually observed, without regard to what one wants the observation to be. When all else fails, report the observations, explain one's interpretation of them (which is dependent upon but independent of the observations), and see if that stands up to hostile analysis. This applies equally well to media sources as it does anything else; if a source has a reputation for staying within the observed facts and identifying speculation as speculation, that's a reason to consider trusting that source.