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bigstrat2003yesterday at 9:21 PM1 replyview on HN

I deliberately tried as hard as possible to phrase the things I said in such a way that either of the groups you proposed would find no objection to my saying those things were true. Perhaps I failed in some way, but I don't think I did. My point is that we can indeed agree upon some facts as to what happened, but that those are not what people argue over. They argue over an interpretation of the facts that tells some story about who is the "good guy" and the "bad guy", but not the facts themselves. And in my experience, that is generally the form of all disputes over "facts": they are very rarely actual disagreements on what events happened, but rather disagreements about why they happened or if it was acceptable for those things to happen.


Replies

9devyesterday at 9:56 PM

I see your point, but don’t think it is correct: Opposing groups will absolutely debate whether and which events happened, and will attest to a different timeline. Moreover, I don’t believe you can cleanly tell facts from interpretation. Sometimes there is just no way to know (or verify) what happened, and you have to deduce. This is invariably shaped by your personal lens of opinions, then.