Op: posts an unpopular opinion Unpopular opinion: down votes
this post was submitted on 24 Dec 2025
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Unpopular Opinion
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To be pendantic, science doesn't give anybody facts. It can help identify provable lies and identify the most-useful theories, but when done correctly it cares only a little more about "fact" as it does "truth".
Basic fundamental theorems like "reality is real" are pretty entwined in our language, though, so the distinction isn't always a useful one.
By way of rambling example : my phone tells me that it's 12:30 now and 26 degrees F outside. You in reading this only know as a fact that it's what the text says. You don't strictly know:
- That I actually wrote it
- That I actually looked at my phone
- That I faithfully reported it.
- That I believe it to true
- That the phone is an accurate report of the local weather station
- That the weather station was calibrated correctly
- What the expected variation between that station and my residence is.
For all practical purposes you can assume that they're all true and factual, though. But they're neither definitely true nor even scientifically useful facts.
I agree completely
The backstory is important though. I trust science because I understand and endorse its methods of determining truth.
That doesn't mean every scientific claim is true. But it does mean it's the best approximation of the truth that we as humans have come up with.
It's still good to be reasonably skeptical of scientific claims. But that skepticism needs to be approached with an open mind. Skepticism with a predetermined belief at its terminus is not true skepticism. It's just another form of blind faith.
Consider the vast gulf between science and scientific authoritarianism.
To call a system of rigourous and methodical data collection, analyzed with systematic criticism that incentivizes dissent just a "different backstory" is kinda out of touch.
Compare it to other systems of authority. Legal authority derives from state violence, religious authority derives from faith, political authority derives from charisma.
True but there is a lot of clickey shit and certainly paid interests in academia. But if you understand the background of the article/study and can read competently, you can sniff it out... the problem is that most people are specialists at best, not all-rounder erudites. Basically, still take things with a grain of salt, don't just put blind faith in the words of men (specially while claiming one is not!).
Out of touch? Oh no. And here I thought we merely disagreed or something.
Science progresses when it is challenged. If told to just trust the science I would be suspicious.
That's a rather idealized take
Challenging hypotheses is a cornerstone of doing science, so I think it's more than just an ideal, it's first principles. But fair enough!
Even an ideal scientific authority is a world apart from actual science. That's key.
Authority should be challenged, no matter its backstory.
"Vaccines cause autism!"
Not like that 😩
I mean, this is just factually wrong. Different types of authority are, very obviously, meaningfully different in more than just "backstory".
And that "meaningful difference" is conveyed and described in, yes, the backstory.
It's not a different "description", it's a fundamentally different set of rules governing how the facts are arrived at.
If you aren't doing the fact-getting youself then, from your perspective, it is just a description. A story.
No
Oh boldly said. Then tell me what else you have.
A functioning brain
While I think this is an unpopular opinion, I don't think it's entirely false.
The average person doesn't have the time or knowledge to fact check every new discovery that happens, so they place their trust in certain sources that they believe will summarize it accurately and factually. At some point in the chain, there will most often be an aspect of belief or taking it on trust rather than "I've ran this down to earth to definitively prove it to myself firsthand".
Like, I don't have the tools or skills to trace the electrical signals in my computer. It's possible to do so, but I haven't. I trust that it works how I understand it to work based off external information sources.
It's not blind belief or blind trust, but there is an element of belief and trust there.
Slightly controversial opinion regarding religion
This is why I've never been able to look down on those with religious belief simply due to them having religious belief. I'm Christian now, but wasn't one for a good long stretch of years.
In super short: In life, you have to accept that there are going to be large swathes of things that you don't know and can't confirm, but you have to rely on them working as you understand them to. That doesn't require a level of fully blind faith that religions often ask of there adherents, but it is a lot closer to it than I feel most people are comfortable admitting.
There is this river of sensations and there is also this body of knowledge. They are 2 different things.
There is this common desire to hold a body of knowledge that is without contradiction, with itself or any sensation. Airtight.
Such a body of knowledge is useful, efficient.
My scientific authority: whichever joe rogan guest tells me what I want to hear.