tripu @tripu@qoto.org

https://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/p0rmyb/ifallmendisappearedforaday_is_trending_on_twitter/h88rin8/

Mismatching epistemological hierarchies explain perhaps a quarter of #debates that end up unproductive or even bitter for me.

I wouldn’t dare define my Pyramid of Sources of #Truth without giving it some careful thought first, but… a first approximation:

💡 Quantitative data or stats that are either common knowledge or directly accessible to most people (eg, no. of seats in the Spanish Parliament, minimum height of all outside doors in Granada Cathedral).
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💡 Quantitative data or stats issued by sources commonly understood to be authoritative and unbiased (eg, average size of all dentist’s offices in Norway according to the Ministry of Health).
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💡 Old, peer-reviewed, published meta-analyses that are accessible (eg via #SciHub) to most people.
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💡 Old, peer-reviewed, published meta-analyses.
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💡 Old, peer-reviewed, published papers.
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💡 Peer-reviewed, published papers.
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💡 Peer-reviewed papers.
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💡 Reports, surveys, research, whitepapers, polls — with a wild degree of confidence, depending on the particulars (see parameters below).
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💡 Published books, theatrical documentaries.
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💡 Self-published books, self-produced documentaries.
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💡 Long blog posts with links to secondary sources.
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💡 Newspaper articles fall somewhere around here.
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💡 Blog posts.
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💡 Online videos, tweets, screenshots, photos, voice messages, viral clips, copied-and-pasted quotes, hearsay, anecdote, feeling, hunch, rumour, revelation.

In all cases, the bigger these parameters, the higher a particular #sourceOfTruth moves up my hierarchy:

🔺 Sample size.
🔺 No. ot times result has been reproduced.
🔺 Boringness of result (ie, how common-sensical and unsurprising it seems to the average person).
🔺 Parsimoniousness (ie, simplicity) of interpretations given for result.
🔺 Awkwardness of result for parties involved (ie, how inconvenient it is for the interests of authors themselves).

This move by #Apple

“is the endorsement by one of the largest industry players of the principle that ubiquitous #spyware on consumer computing devices is normal and acceptable in free societies. […] The core question is whether we wish to normalize the sale of personal computing devices that come preinstalled with spyware outside the control of the user and owner, however noble the purpose to which that spyware is initially put. The answer free societies have given to that question for the past five decades is the right one: No.”

https://www.cato.org/blog/apples-iphone-now-built-surveillance

“Think of #audiobooks as entertainment modes in themselves. […] It’s still possible to commune with a great soul in this way, but first and foremost, it’s with the soul of an actor—nothing wrong with that, but not necessarily what I’m looking for.”

“#Audiobooks aren’t like reading the #book. #Reading is a more intimate connection between one person and another. When one reads a book, one communes with the author. Sure, editors and publishers have some say in what goes into a book, but the roles of these people and entities are often transparent compared to the fundamental communication from writer to reader. In the audiobook form, there’s a soul obtrusively in between the writer and reader—the narrator—who takes over the role as central communicator. Even if the text is read word-for-word, the way the narrator’s voice sounds is too present and their inflections too dominant not to be the main influencer of the experience.”

“I vividly remember […] from my childhood in the […] ’80s […] that #reading was the best way to acquire knowledge, that it somehow trumped other ways of #learning. As a kid, […] I internalized a belief that reading was the more enriching experience because it was harder.”

“The consolation prize of so much #commuting meant I could [read and] listen to [#podcasts] as much as I wanted.”

“The one constant of my #reading life is that I always want to read more.”

“The painful truth of my #reading life is that I read slowly. It’s not uncommon for me to read only 10 or 20 pages per night. […] Over the course of a year, that comes to roughly [ten 370-page-long] books. This isn’t a horribly small number, but […] I have to be selective.”

“I’m a devoted reader. I want to be a dedicated audience to whatever #book I’m reading. […] I want to commune with a great mind, wordsmith, soul. For the right experience, I submit myself to it willingly.”

“I [have] the wide world of #books to explore. I [keep] filling the holes in my literary background with what I [see] as important books I [haven’t] yet read, and I religiously [tackle] [books] by the #writers [I’ve] been taught to believe [are] our literary flag bearers.”

A recent article on #Quillette on #TheGreatestBooks, #books, #literature (and #audiobooks):

https://quillette.com/2021/07/28/listening-to-literature-what-we-gain-and-lose-with-audiobooks/

I felt identified with so much, that here go eight direct #quotes that I make my own, where I made just a few edits (between square brackets):