Comment on So...how the fuck do I trust *anything*?
morphballganon@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
You’re touching on the idea of a “truth baseline” as I call it. How do you know what’s real vs bullshit?
My truth baseline is that maintaining the habitability of Earth is good. From that, I can deduce the following:
- excessive carbon dioxide in atmosphere is bad
- reliance on fossil fuels is bad
- clean renewable energy is good
- people who rail against renewables are bad
- political part(ies) that do the same are bad
- news figures that normalize that are bad
Etc. See where this is headed?
The ambiguity of whether someone is good or not is due to goodness being a subjective quality. There is no such thing as objective good. The closest thing to objective good we can attain is sustainability.
The same can be said about truth. If you want something objective, that’s called fact. Truth is a subjective perception of facts. Thus… there is no one correct truth. Just an openness to adjust to new information while dismissing those who are opposed to your truth baseline.
Akrenion@slrpnk.net 4 weeks ago
You seem to have an inherent trust in scientific consensus. Some actors are also trying to weaken this and misinformation is rampant. Some figures seem to support far right ideas until they get put into perspective by people who are well informed on issues. These people rarely get enough funding, attention or time.
I think one of the most important ideas is to spend your attention on things that you can influence for the better. That often means struggling to accept that our impact is limited but worthwhile.
morphballganon@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
You don’t need to trust consensus to observe global average temperatures and infer that we’re in uncharted territory in regard to the climate.