Facts

Facts are soft things.

There have been studies done on the reliability of witnesses as well as the propensity for the brain to ignore facts that don't fit its view of the world.

My very first memory was of waking up in an oxygen tent in an unfamiliar room. My father was there, telling me that he had to leave but would be back soon. Terrified at being abandoned, I clearly remembered plotting to pounce on his arm and not let go. To immediately feign sleep. I awoke the next morning still clutching his arm.

Almost 25 years later, my mother corrected me, clarifying that it was definitely her, not my father whom I had clung so desperately to that night.

I hear close friends tell tales, stories I myself have repeated, defining stories of my life, but their versions differ, just enough. Sometimes they tell me stories of me, that I have no recollection of. It isn't that I doubt their memory or veracity, quite the latter, I often trust theirs more faithfully than my own, which then makes me doubt myself, my every memory.

Doing so makes my gut accelerate downward, a falling creeping sensation that if facts and stories and memories are so mercurial, what am I?

I think this is why mystery crime shows have remained popular for much of modern times. The idea that all events and deeds can be definitively reverse engineered from our disturbances of the world seems a comforting tale, even if it often is introduced by the discovery of a dead hooker.

I often find myself lying profusely when dealing with strangers. I don't see it as an act of malicious deceit. I see it as a complex white lie. A mechanism of politeness, wherein I fold up the intricate facts of a matter down into an unobtrusive, unsurprising package, that they can respond to in the same manner as the full truth of the matter. My goal isn't to change the result of their behavior, but to streamline the interaction. Afterall, if all the facts are known only to me, and their usefulness will expire after our transaction, it seems rude to me for me to demand that a stranger accept the more inconvenient truth than an agreed upon simulacrum.

Imagine the world before the scientific method. Where both the velocity required to split a log with an axe and your personal beliefs in how the universe is created and run were on equal footing. Every log and each man is different, intricate knots of both muscle and wood creating a unique outcome, whereas every man's faith and association to God was considered uniform and understood.

Science turned that on its head. Masticating the physical interaction with its jaws full of equations, and spitting out a uniform and knowable process, while at the same time casting a shroud over any fact that existed only in someone's head.

For a bit, there were two tiers of facts, those blessed by the scientific method, and those that weren't, and to be honest, things worked out pretty good. Because of science, I can now microwave frozen pizzas.

But compare that to the things we disagree with today.

Who made a building collapse, where the president was born, whether large scale changes in atmospheric chemicals results in altered climates, the efficacy of a government trying to provide healthcare, the best way to fix our educational system, at what stage a fetus has the same rights as us, how complex life forms came to be, whether to adhere to the letter or spirit of a great document, whether homosexuality is an identity or a fetish, the efficiency of unregulated markets versus attempts to curb ethical violations via regulation, etc...

It really seems like some of those belong in the realm of science. Things we really should be able to put our heads together on, stare at them, and agree upon some truths.

The fact that hasn't happened, and the fact that some established scientific truths have now started unraveling I think hints at a new movement. A counter to the 200 year reign of the Enlightenment's greatest invention.

People have learned that if they simply question any facts in enough numbers, if they refuse to accept the results of the scientific method that they can, essentially "defact" something in a way completely outside the standard method of "suggesting an alternate hypothesis that better fits the data".

Simply by forming a consensus against the consensus, they can erode the truth away. Softening the soil until it can no longer hold the trees rooted in it.

I personally don't like what that movement is doing, I find a certain humility in the scientific method's assumption that even the current hypothesis is around long enough for a better one to arrive. That this new movement is essentially the exact opposite of that irks me greatly. That a fact is a fact when shouted and repeated often enough is as appealing to me as coffee made with ash.

On the other hand, I sometimes thing maybe the last 200 years have just been an aberration, that the rapid advancements of science left us shell-shocked, and unwilling to question the uncomfortable idea of everyone agreeing on something.

What if higher Definition TVs and slightly faster laptops simply lack the necessary awe to fuel a continuation of the scientific consensual truth we have grown so used to. What if the best path to uniting us all was to build a flying mecha that shoots lasers?