Objectivity Hunter

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Is there a thing called "objective news"? It seems that it's fair to say that this is something we all long for, yet we somehow know that it doesn't really exist. This hunt for "fair and balanced" news, and the failure thereof, has come floating to the surface during the 2020 election cycle, and is exemplified by the reporting on the Hunter Biden scandal.


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source: YouTube

Reporting on the information found on a laptop that contains many personal and incriminating e-mails by Joe Biden's son, shows us just how biased the mainstream media is; Fox News goes all out on making accusations in the hopes that it will increase Trump's chances, while the "liberal media" refuses to report on it for fear it will hurt the chances for their preferred candidate, sleepy Joe Biden. You can watch the first linked video to see just how pathetic the reasons are, given by the liberal media for not reporting the corruption-related facts. Mind you, I'm not making a judgement on the veracity of any of this, I'm just illustrating how the media deals with their inherent biases And in this case both sides, Fox and the rest, could have just reported on the e-mails while also reporting on the corruption and nepotism that's apparent in the Trump family; highlight both sides for a "fair and balanced" end result...

But even highlighting both sides would keep open the opportunity to maintain a clear bias, for example by framing reporting or questions in a way that favors the preferred side. This method also has the danger to legitimize pure nonsense; this happens for example when media invite pro and con guests on a subject that's already been settled by science. When you invite one guest who believes the earth is flat, and one guest who believes the earth is a sphere, you give equal credence to both sides, when one side is clearly representative of pure nonsense. Same goes for climate change deniers versus climate alarmists. The host could correct this somewhat by attacking the nonsensical side with more critical questions, give them more push-back, but the mere fact that the nonsense-peddler is invited has already done most of the damage.


Media Refuses To Report Hunter Biden Story For Dumbest Reason Ever

Objectivity in news is something we've hunted after through the ages; in the early days "the news" was simply that what the King wanted his people to read and hear, never critical of his own position of course. This has never changed; today "the news", no matter on what side of the political spectrum their bias resides, serves the interests of the corporations that own the news. That bias is always there. This is why I have great difficulty when Americans equate the "liberal media" with "leftist media"; there is no such thing as leftist media in America and many other countries; all media has a right leaning bias, the question is only how far right. Sure there'll be some politically correct pandering to subjects of identity politics, but even that is done only to the extent that big businesses pander to their targeted markets and demographics, and of course when it's necessary to keep up the appearance that the Democratic party actually DOES something for those demographics, which isn't true of course.

Objective and unbiased news is something we've never had and will never have, unless we want to count AI services that do nothing but report facts; as soon as there's any kind of human filter between those facts and the recipients of the news regarding those facts, that news is inherently biased. And a legitimate question is: do we even really want objective news? The below linked video delves into the question if we even want objective media, and it arrives at some surprising conclusions. I'll leave it to you, dear reader to come to your own conclusions, so please enjoy watching it!


The Truth About Unbiased News – Wisecrack Edition


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SCIENCE IS NOT OBJECTIVE

(2) Proposed definition: "science"

(s.1) "Science is systematic knowledge acquired by the application of logic to observation."[2]

Please let me know if you provisionally agree to allow common google.com definitions of words contained within these definitions.[2]

(3) Proposed definition: "objective"

Objective: (o.1) (of a person or their judgment) not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts. (AND/OR) not dependent on the mind for existence; actual.[3]

(o.1a) antonyms: biased, partial, prejudiced[3]
(o.1b) antonyms: subjective[3]

For contrast, I would like to present a common definition of "subjective":

(IFF) (sj.1) Subjective: based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions. (AND/OR) dependent on the mind or on an individual's perception for its existence.[8]

(sj.1a) antonyms: objective[8]

And (IFF) "subjective" is an antonym of "objective" (THEN) "objective" can not be "based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions. (AND/OR) dependent on the mind or on an individual's perception for its existence."[8]

(4) Key support for resolution
Let's analyze the resolution "Science is not objective."

(k.1) Science as defined in (s.1) implies that "science" is the "knowledge" (data) acquired by "observation" (ostensibly by a human or possibly by more than one human).

(k.2) I believe it is fair to say that human observation is impossible without a human mind and an individual's (definitively subjective) perception and this fact would logically place "objectivity" beyond the scope of the human mind and an individual's perception according to the definitions presented previously as (o.1) and (o.1b).

The resolution could be restated as (s.1) is not (o.1).

(k.3) Another way to say this would be perhaps, "knowledge acquired by (human) observation is not (and cannot be) independent of the human mind and/or beyond human perception".

(5) Reinforcements
As far as I can tell, Karl Popper's Philosophy of Science is generally considered authoritative. Please let me know if you dispute this and we can attempt another approach.

"According to Popper, basic statements are "statements asserting that an observable event is occurring in a certain individual region of space and time" (1959, p. 85). More specifically, basic statements must be both singular and existential (the formal requirement) and be testable by []intersubjective[] observation (the material requirement)."[5]

Therefore "science" is not "objective" and does not require "objectivity". This seems to be a common misconception about the fundamental nature of "science" and by extension, just about everything else, including "law" and "ethics", some people even think they have "objective opinions".

"Science" seems to function perfectly well under Popper's model. I am unable to detect any benefit to imagining that any particular thing has some sort of (detectable?) "objective" quality or existence.

In fact, Immanuel Kant points out pretty explicitly that "objective" noumenon is fundamentally undetectable and its "existence" cannot be inferred from observable phenomena.

"Even if noumenon are unknowable, they are still needed as a limiting concept, Kant tells us. Without them, there would be only phenomena, and since potentially we have complete knowledge of our phenomena, we would in a sense know everything. In his own words: "Further, the concept of a noumenon is necessary, to prevent sensible intuition from being extended to things in themselves, and thus to limit the objective validity of sensible knowledge."[6]

"...to prevent sensible intuition from being extended..."[6]

The quote makes it sound as if Kant is trying to "put a box around the concept of objectivity" in order to keep people from making the mistake of thinking they can know it, or in-fact even speculate about it intuitively.

(6) Common counter arguments
I would like to bring your attention to the following quotes,

"We have shown that it is hard to define scientific objectivity in terms of a view from nowhere and freedom from values and from personal bias. It is a lot harder to say anything positive about the matter."[7]

"For instance, our discussion of the value-free ideal (VFI) revealed that alternatives to the VFI are as least as problematic as the VFI itself, and that the VFI may, with all its inadequacies, still be a useful heuristic for fostering scientific integrity and objectivity. Similarly, although an "unbiased" science may be impossible, there are many mechanisms scientists can adopt for protecting their reasoning against undesirable forms of bias, e.g., choosing an appropriate method of statistical inference."[7]

The above quotes are from the conclusions (section 7) of an extremely well sourced page from the Stanford.edu website that purports to be a thorough analysis of the concept of scientific objectivity.

One key problem with this essay, is that it never clearly defines the critical terms (i.e. "science" and "objectivity"), but instead merely reports various (definitively subjective) opinions about what "science" and "objectivity" might mean and how they may or may not relate to one another.

But setting that aside, in their conclusions they admit that although they can make some tentative statements about what "scientific objectivity" is not, they are at a complete loss to say exactly what it is (with any positive assertions). This reminds me of the "god in the gaps"[9] argument and would seem to be an example of the "appeal to ignorance"[10] logical fallacy.

They go on to argue that even if "objectivity" is perhaps (probably) an unattainable goal, it is still better than the (presumably shocking or frightening, yet undefined) alternative (clearly an "affirming the consequent"[11] fallacy). I would imagine that scientists, of all categories of people in the world would understand the dangers of pursuing an amorphous concept that presumably lends unquestionable authority to their conclusions.

(7) Round 1 closing statement
Feel free to expand upon and/or challenge any of the arguments described above or add your own. I look forward to having a civil conversation regarding the topic at hand.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_science
[3] https://www.google.com/search?q=define+objective&spf=394&cad=h
[5] https://www.iep.utm.edu/pop-sci/
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noumenon
[7] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-objectivity/
[8] https://www.google.com/search?q=define+subjective&spf=399&cad=h
[9] https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps
[10] http://www.fallacyfiles.org/ignorant.html
[11] https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/14/

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