Facts and....
Opinions and facts
Policies are based on two basic elements; facts and intended results.
It couldn’t get simpler.
Unless, of course, you happened to live in the 21st Century.
Policies and laws of many countries are based on…. Actually that would be the basis of many studies of the 2020s – what exactly, or even approximately, were many policies of many nations based on?
Guesses? Conspiracy theories? Deliberate ignorance? Avoidance of facts? Nostalgia? Fear of the past? Glorification of the past? Fear of the future? Glorification of the future? Fear of authority? Glorification of authority?
Basic, though impossible to measure, elements of governance, from truth, integrity, decency, good will, and a sense of stewardship for future generations, seem to have gone from barely visible to entirely vaporized.
An informed politician who keeps the needs and desires of his/her constituents foremost in their decisions is as rare as the original unicorn, leprechaun, first edition, Gilgamesh manuscript.
From potholes to gas prices to geo-political trends and challenges to military budgets, facts matter.
When our policies are based on fears and fantasies, they will, like every policy and law, reflect our deepest – if highly exaggerated - beliefs and obsessions.
Recent policies, based largely on illusions, are about as effective as any set of policies could be – when built on a nonexistent foundation.
Besides policies, consider the monuments that societies and cultures leave behind. For better or worse, those monuments and tributes will stand (or not) as a statement in a shifting context.
Some will, as many have, stand as monuments to preposterous arrogance and foolishness.
This, presumably, was not their intent.
But in many cases it will be their lasting impact.
Facts are, as Henry Adams put it, stubborn things.
At a certain level, reality is non-negotiable. Fact don’t flex very much.
Facts are, of course, subject to interpretation.
But interpretation is always provisional. Our interpretation of almost anything is likely to be different a year from now, or a year – or more – ago.
Or consider a fact as basic as temperature.
At any given moment, is it cool, hot or cold? If we were out in it for ten minutes, it might be one thing, for two hours it might be something very different – even if the actual measurable temperature did not change.
Or consider an exercise I used in my classes. Is a book or a water bottle “heavy” or light?
A student might say it was light.
I ask them to hold it in their out stretched hand.
For a minute or so, it seems light. And then it “gets heavy”.
What changed? It wasn’t the book or water bottle.
But their experience of a light object, what they thought they knew, changed. Within minutes.
When we make laws or policies or any long-term decisions, they should be based on dynamics that don’t change within minutes. Or that take probable and likely changes into consideration.
Facts rarely change, but our perceptions of them do. Constantly.
In the latter half of the 2020s, in the USA in particular, we see all kind of policies, budget appropriations and cuts, and decisions made on the most vaporous of illusions – and presumably – intents.
As one of my more alarmist in-laws put it recently, US government policies, priorities and decisions only make sense if their pure intent is to “kill us all”.
Others have said that recent US government policies, priorities and decisions only make sense if their pure intent is to “bankrupt us all”.
To put it mildly, a vote of confidence in US policy, in almost any arena, is rare in the 2020s.
We may disagree on various policies and their impacts and applications, but what bothers me the most is not their deliberate or even accidental impacts, but their near complete disregard – or at least disinterest in actual, confirmable, measurable facts.
Facts are in reality, often “stubborn”, and sometimes non-negotiable – and occasionally catastrophic when ignored.
In the latter 2020s, many policies seem to be based on what were once called “alternative facts” – whatever that might be.
Up until this recent era, there were two categories; facts and opinions. Facts were stable, shared and reliable. Opinions were variable, subject to change and individual.
What “alternative facts” might have referred to will puzzle logicians for decades. Assuming the term is remembered at all. That is the key characteristic of opinions – and “alternative facts” – they are not stubborn. Or stable.
Opinions don’t have much of a shelf-life. It might be interesting to compare our opinions about anything, from shoes to music to food, a year or two ago, to our opinions now.
Opinions are perpetually floating. Facts don’t float.
“Alternative facts” could be defined as something like dislodged facts – or facts dissolving into opinions. Either way, “alternative facts” are not reliable, and won’t bear our weight if we lean on them.
Opinions are fun – and fleeting. Oddly enough, most wars, fights and divorces are about opinions – not facts.
Avoidance of facts can be costly- in every sense of the word; in time, energy, attention and of course, money.
When it comes to large-scale public policy, avoidance – or ignorance – of facts can cause debt, disaster and collapse.
In a world of “fake news”, constant blather and noise, and “rigged” polls and elections, truth and facts, that have stayed truth and facts, can be hard to find. And not always comfortable when we do find them.
Most of us don’t live and make decisions as if we have a clear distinction between facts and opinions, and in many cases, for most of us, it rarely matters.
But in public policy, it almost always matters. In a democracy, we elect people to represent our interests. We rarely want to hear their opinions. Their job is literally to analyze facts and represent us.
The closer they are to actual facts, the better. And the further they are from facts, the more destructive their decisions will be.
Consider any major issue, from war to immigration to crime and a hundred more, where do our leaders, where do any of us get our facts? Facts – NOT opinions.
How much do you really know about those subjects you have the strongest opinions about?
I challenge you to test your knowledge of current pressing issues here.
We will always have opinions, and the often brutally stubborn facts will outlive our opinions – and maybe even us.
Empires, ideologies and charismatic leaders come and go, but facts rarely budge.
The old saying is that the truth will set us free, and facts anchor us to reality in ways opinions never will.
When it comes to facts that move, like crime rates in a given neighborhood, it is crucial to have solid documentation not only on what has been true, and what is true, and where the numbers (as opposed to opinions) are trending.
Too many policy makers make decisions based on twenty- or thirty-year-old information – which often shows a trend contrary to what is measurable – or relevant - today.
Bad information leads to bad policies which lead to extremely bad results. Which, as even a cursory glance at history shows, lead to even worse results.
The truth will set us free. Maybe we should try it.