what you have touched on is really fascinating. In order to fill human needs or percieved human needs people will create their own version of truth often ignoring facts. I say this not as any expert, just observing people around me. My minor league observations seem to be saying that people are antagonistic toward observed and verifiable facts in order to maintain comfort. This may be obvious but explains alot in politics, especially concerning partisans of whatever side.

The problem I've found, especially with the advent of the internet, is not that people ignore facts but that there are *too many* facts that can be interpreted differently; thus one can construct an argument for whatever one likes, with facts to back up the argument, and yet be completely wrong (in terms of predictive power, or what I would call "absolute truth" (but maybe I'm old-fashioned too)).

An example that drove me nuts a couple of months ago was this whole draft scare. You could certainly find facts (e.g., recruiting for draft boards; bonuses for new recruits have risen) that seem to support this (hey, bonuses must be rising because they can't find anyone). Interpreted a different way the same facts might not support the hypothesis as well (maybe now that they've raised the bonuses they're getting more people). Then there are other facts that tend to negate the hypothesis (the draft boards have been recruiting since 1999; a bill for a draft was defeated 402-2).

But anyway, as a scientist I believe in truth. At least one quality of truth is that it has predictive power. If I can use quantum mechanics to predict the counter-intuitive Bell's inequality, and experiment proves me right, that goes a long way towards validating quantum mechanics (or whatever variant eventually replaces it) as "truth." The application to the draft is left as an exercise for the reader. The application to Arafat... uh... well, I'm not allowed to comment on biochemistry, knowing nothing of it, but presumably there are liver differences between alcohol poisoning and nefarious-Israel-chemical poisoning. But I guess they can't just hand Arafat's liver to any blogger who wants to see! *disgusting mental pic of a bloated diseased liver being handed across the world*

You point out "the canard that there is in fact no such thing as the truth." I suspect you did not intend to posit that no truth may be found in facts, but it does raise the distinction between facts and truth, interpretation, wherein lives much of human thought including politics.

Your discussion is one I had with myself a long time ago and it is the reason I decided to pursue empirical science. Because you can't take it away from me. Because that's how rockets are made that can escape the pull of gravity and that's how monoclonal antibodies can be fashioned to obliterate subsectors of the inflammatory cascade and CURE rheumatoid arthitis...I'd rather pursue truths that can be tested and then used with confidence...and predictability.

But in the same fashion, I really, really believe that empirical truths exist in social sciences and in philosophy, except the proofs can always be disputed, and even when there are definable results they can be undermined by rhetoric (curse the Sophists who started it all); especially intellectually venal rhetoric that puposely (and deviously) appeals to common misunderstandings or lesser human ideals (such as greed).

The blogosphere holds out the first chance I've seen -- by its inborn evolutionary information processing -- to head off the massive antimatter-like deconstruction of everything once considered right that has been ongoing for 30 years -- the evil spawn of effete French philosophers.

If effective, and recognized, and adopted, the products of the "natural selection" of ideas from the blogosphere may produce the equivalent of empirical results so powerful and so indisputable as to create new ideals from which mankind can once again draw relevance and authority -- and that's why I've joined it.

To be cross-posted at http://codeblueblog.blogs.com/codeblueblog/

Tom Boyle
CodeBlueBlogMD

*For the sake of this discussion, I'll define as truth as the facts.*

You made that statement, it seems to me, without the slightest intent to come across ironic or satirical.

You left no indication whatsover whether you chose the words *I'll define as truth, as the facts* specifically to make a very nuanced point that in our world, the real world, the Truth (capital T) is based on facsts, but in Arafat's world what poses as the truth, *their truth*, is based on a wholly different set of conditions. I thought it was very cleverly stated.

I can very easily imagine a better world without truth, facts, reality staring me in the face wherever I look. I can very easily imagine a world in which the World Trade Center still stands, in which homosexual marriages are recognized everywhere, in which the West and the Near East are still dominated by polytheistic religions, etc.. Fantasy is _much_ better than reality.