FACTS

IdleRich

IdleRich
I did start reading it I think but I lost it. Never made the connection before but just seeing that quote in isolation it leapt out at me.
 

luka

Well-known member
I'm sure corpse is right and that this is predominantly a question of instinctual native orientation before it is any kind of moral question or whatever. You are talking about (at least) 2 different species.
 

luka

Well-known member
The kind of maths say that idlerich can do, I won't say easily, but is capable of at the peak of his powers will always be beyond me and even beyond'half breeds' like vimothy.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I think facts are empirical and can (in principle) be overturned by new evidence, and it's possible to imagine a self-consistent universe in which they were never true, whereas truths are eternal and can be proven rather than just observed. Something like that? So logic and mathematics are the domain of truths.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I'm also terrible at geography.

I don't really know where anywhere is in the UK, even - let alone anywhere else.

Who here knows where everywhere is?

Like if you asked me to point out Norwich or Derby or even Birmingham on a map - I'd know roughly where they were but only very vaguely.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I'm fairly sure Birmingham exists because I've been there but I think those other two places are made up.
 

vimothy

yurp
But there is some sort of relationship... hard to pin down though?

distinction often made is that propositions can be true or false, but facts cannot (a fact cannot be false so it doesnt make sense to talk about its truth value). a proposition can be about facts, ofc
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Yeah but I'm talking about something more abstract I think. I thought you were too. When you say a fact can't be untrue that may be technically correct but you rephrase the question "Is this fact true?" as "Is this a fact?" so I don't think that tells you anything new.
I want to say that Truth is a bigger idea. It probably contains (or is made up of?) lots of facts and presumably they are real facts... except maybe they're not. Sometimes the bigger truth can contain untruths (or non-facts I suppose) I think. Though that sounds counter-intuitive.
 

version

Well-known member
But this thread recalled to me an article in the gruniad about the difference between what people think is true vs what is true, and the damage that can be doing. For example, the percentage of the UK that is immigrant is wildly overestimated by general opinion.

"Years ago, before I became an MP, I was knocking on doors in Chesterfield, Derbyshire – this was at the height of the controversy about asylum seekers being dispersed around the country when Tony Blair was in power. The tabloid newspapers were going nuts about it every day. I remember speaking to a guy leaning on the fence outside his house and saying: “Any chance you’ll vote for the Liberal Democrats?” And he said: “No way.” And I said: “Why not?” And he said: “Because of all these asylum seekers.” And I knew for a fact that not a single asylum seeker had been dispersed to Chesterfield. So I said to him: “Oh, have you seen these asylum seekers in the supermarket or the GP’s surgery?” And he said something to me that has remained with me ever since. He said: “No, I haven’t seen any of them, but I know they’re everywhere.” You can’t dismiss the fear, but how on earth are you supposed to respond to that?"
 

version

Well-known member
That quote from before that was "obviously" Pynchon - I would have guessed Fielding or Thackeray or someone, seems exactly the kind of musings they riff on in their novels. Was Pynchon consciously aping their style?

I dunno either of them, but the entire thing is written in this stylized 18th century dialect.

“Who claims Truth, Truth abandons. History is hir'd, or coerc'd, only in Interests that must ever prove base. She is too innocent, to be left within the reach of anyone in Power,- who need but touch her, and all her Credit is in the instant vanish'd, as if it had never been. She needs rather to be tended lovingly and honorably by fabulists and counterfeiters, Ballad-Mongers and Cranks of ev'ry Radius, Masters of Disguise to provide her the Costume, Toilette, and Bearing, and Speech nimble enough to keep her beyond the Desires, or even the Curiosity, of Government.”
 

version

Well-known member
I think he eases up on it as the novel progresses, but that might just be a case of becoming accustomed to it over time. He first mentioned writing it in like '75 and it was published in '97 so perhaps he couldn't sustain it across the couple of decades it took to write it.
 
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