Thank you for Occam's Razor. Almost no one uses it, and fewer still read it closely enough to see that it is a tiebreaker, one that only works when nobody is arranging the evidence.
The Razor, misused, becomes what Timothy Snyder calls the politics of inevitability. Nothing needs examining, the obvious answer is the safe one, and the room relaxes. Your closing postscript names the cost: nobody gets in trouble for blaming the dog.
The cases in your file show the alternative. Media, Pennsylvania. Peter Buxtun. Merrell Williams. A misfiled box. Each began with one person who would not stop asking, and the institutions followed. Facts do not gather themselves.
Katyn belongs in your file. In 1940, Soviet police shot some twenty thousand Polish officers and officials. Moscow blamed the Germans, and for nearly fifty years the simple story held. The Soviet government acknowledged the truth in 1990.
Here is how to tell a valid suspicion from a conspiracy theory. A valid claim names the evidence that would prove it wrong. A conspiracy theory absorbs every contradiction as further proof. Your final Q&A answer, the one about what would change your mind, applies this test to your own claim.
Snyder also describes implausible deniability: a denial so thin that it is meant to be seen through. The point is to show that the truth no longer binds the powerful. Hold your readers to the question you ask in the piece, what would the evidence look like if it were true, and has anyone checked? That question is the remedy.
Snyder writes that post-truth is pre-fascism. Once we stop asking what is true, someone else decides for us. You are doing what a citizen does, which is to ask the question and then go and check.
Katyn is going in the file; fifty years of the simple story holding...is PRECISELY the point, and that story belongs every bit as much as the others.
I ALSO love what you said about the falsifiability test being a real dividing line: a claim that names what would prove it WRONG...is a question...and...one that CAN'T be wrong... is a RELIGION.
Excellent piece, Jack. Guessing a lot of work went into this. My mind will do that work more justice if I read it again when my eyes don’t feel like a sandbox. I’ll do just that.
Jack,
Thank you for Occam's Razor. Almost no one uses it, and fewer still read it closely enough to see that it is a tiebreaker, one that only works when nobody is arranging the evidence.
The Razor, misused, becomes what Timothy Snyder calls the politics of inevitability. Nothing needs examining, the obvious answer is the safe one, and the room relaxes. Your closing postscript names the cost: nobody gets in trouble for blaming the dog.
The cases in your file show the alternative. Media, Pennsylvania. Peter Buxtun. Merrell Williams. A misfiled box. Each began with one person who would not stop asking, and the institutions followed. Facts do not gather themselves.
Katyn belongs in your file. In 1940, Soviet police shot some twenty thousand Polish officers and officials. Moscow blamed the Germans, and for nearly fifty years the simple story held. The Soviet government acknowledged the truth in 1990.
Here is how to tell a valid suspicion from a conspiracy theory. A valid claim names the evidence that would prove it wrong. A conspiracy theory absorbs every contradiction as further proof. Your final Q&A answer, the one about what would change your mind, applies this test to your own claim.
Snyder also describes implausible deniability: a denial so thin that it is meant to be seen through. The point is to show that the truth no longer binds the powerful. Hold your readers to the question you ask in the piece, what would the evidence look like if it were true, and has anyone checked? That question is the remedy.
Snyder writes that post-truth is pre-fascism. Once we stop asking what is true, someone else decides for us. You are doing what a citizen does, which is to ask the question and then go and check.
#HOLDFAST
Jane...as always, thank you for this.
Katyn is going in the file; fifty years of the simple story holding...is PRECISELY the point, and that story belongs every bit as much as the others.
I ALSO love what you said about the falsifiability test being a real dividing line: a claim that names what would prove it WRONG...is a question...and...one that CAN'T be wrong... is a RELIGION.
Grateful to have you here, Jane...always!
#HOLDFAST
-Jack
Excellent piece, Jack. Guessing a lot of work went into this. My mind will do that work more justice if I read it again when my eyes don’t feel like a sandbox. I’ll do just that.
Thank you!
#Holdfast
~Susan
Well done