my handy-dandy dictionary says this about:
Epistemology: the theory of knowledge, especially with
regard to it methods, validity, and scope…Epistemology
is the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief
from opinion…
That we have opinions, oh my, we have opinions
up the butt around here… The ongoing Jewish conspiracy
theories, SF is a hellhole and/or California is a hellhole,
Portland has gone to shit, Liberals are nihilistic…
any number of post/threads are really nothing more
than opinions… but the question, at least for me anyway,
what facts or evidence do you have for your opinion?
this is the epistemological aspect of this question…
how do we know, what we know?
There is an interesting aspect to facts and evidence…
they usually require some further explanations…
for example, and this is a true fact, that the Earth is
93 million miles away from the Sun…but that fact,
requires some explanations or as I call them,
interpretations… the fact that the Sun is 93 million
miles from Earth means absolutely nothing unless it is
given context… that the 93 million miles means that the
Earth is within the so called ‘‘goldilocks’’ area…
Ok, that needs further explanation… given the size of the Sun,
the Earth fits in the zone where we can have Water and temperatures
that allow life to exists… but not in every case… for example, in
a solar system that is a small red dwarf star, the ‘‘Goldilocks’’
zone is much closer to the sun and in a large star, the ‘‘Goldilocks’’
zone is much further out, like where Jupiter is for us…
the idea that the facts, the Earth is 93 millions miles from the Sun,
requires a great deal of interpretation…
or one might say, that there are 20,000 homeless people
in SF… but once again, that maybe true, that may not be true,
and to describe SF as being a ‘‘Shithole’’ city will require quite
a bit more interpretation than is being offered here…
Ok, what is your interpretation of there being 20,000 homeless
people in SF? To begin with, is that number even accurate?
One might say, but Minneapolis has only 5,000 homeless people…
again, is this even true? But it also requires some acknowledgment
that in wintertime, one can freeze to death in Minneapolis whereas
it is less likely in SF… there has to be some interpretations to
make any such fact relevant or understandable…
and therein lies the problem with interpretations…
they are feed through the guideline of one’s already in place
prejudice and superstitions… the already in place indoctrinations
that we receive as children… if you accept the initial premises
of California is a ‘‘Shithole’’ then you are looking at conformation biases…
I see in a video, that there are homeless people in SF, and that
jives nicely with your already in place indoctrinations, and so that
becomes fact… SF is a ‘‘Shithole’’ because it has homeless people…
well, that makes every single city in America a ‘‘Shithole’’ because
every single city in America has homeless people… we cannot
simply accept opinions as facts.. we must ‘‘interpret’’
every single bit of knowledge we get… and that interpretation,
could be very wrong because it stems from our indoctrinations
and prior confirmation bias…
We cannot make a ‘‘correct’’ interpretation if we begin with
our biases and indoctrinations, as our base, where we begin…
SF is a hellhole… ok, and I see some video of homeless people
and thus, my initial bias, indoctrinations are confirmed…
and yet, almost a million people live in SF… with housing prices
being that an average home in SF is over a million dollars…
and rental property being over 4,000 dollars for a two bedroom
apt… let us look another city…Detroit… and we know it has
some serious issues, but there are few, if any houses for a million
and the average price for a home is 76,340… or a bathroom in SF…
the cheapest home sold in SF last year was 950,000 and it made
the news for being so cheap… and for rentals, the average
rent price for the entire state of MI is $1,560…and I am sure it
is less for the city of Detroit… there are facts that allow us
to make more sense of our numbers… how is SF more of a
‘‘HELLHOLE’’ then say, Detroit…
The reason is because the narrative of SF, better fits the
conservative narrative that ALL liberal cities must be
‘‘Hellholes’’.. it isn’t about facts or evidence at all, it about
fitting the conservative’s narrative…
so, epistemologically we have to have some sort of facts
or evidence to make sense of our information, but so much
of our facts and evidence require us to interpret it…
to make sense of any facts or evidence, we have to create
context of our facts and evidence…and that is what is lacking
in conservative opinions… they lack context… oh, look,
there is a homeless person in SF, that must mean it is a
‘‘Shithole’’ city… all facts and evidence requires us to
create context to make sense of those facts and evidence…
OK, say your opinion is that ‘‘Portland’’ is a hellhole…
what is your context to make sense of that statement?
How would one interpret that statement, “Portland
is a hellhole?”
so, how do we know, what we know, if all facts and
evidence must require interpretations?
Kropotkin