The Fact Fuzzy Scale

 

What temperature means something is hot?

I think we can’t reach unadulterated fact because as you drill down, there’s neuances. Maybe fact isn’t right or wrong? But it has a scale where we can all agree on some things.

What temperature number is hot?

The sun is hot. It may not be hot during winter at the end of the day.

So the rules of engagement matter, the angle you’re coming from, so if you don’t agree or establish the parameters then that’s right, it can never be a fact in an agreed upon sense. People change the parameters to make their fictions fact or change the points of an argument to fit their agenda “people provide facts to justify their feelings”.

So what is hot? It should be straight forward if we agree on the parameters. In this case

Hot… when is food hot and when is it not?

This is that fact scale I’m talking about. Freezing point is not hot, that’s a fact and we all agree. Boiling point? That’s hot and that’s a fact, we can all agree. What about 20 degrees? Probably not, most people call that warm. What about body temp? What about 45 degrees? See here is where it gets fuzzy, the fact fuzzy zone because little things skew the results. If I’ve had something cold, body temp (About 37 degrees) seems hot. After having tea or coffee, 45 seems just warm. So we can all agree above 70 degrees is hot and below body temperature is not.

But hang on, isn’t the problem the word? What is hot? There’s no agreed number, it’s a feeling to describe a reality. We don’t seem to have fights about if it’s hot or not so it serves it’s “word purpose”. If there is a number scientist’s agreed is the starting point of hot we the public don’t know, heck we may not even know the temperature of things by number, why would you? So it’s not deliberate ignorance you’ve just never needed to know that you’re hot water system is somewhere between 55 and 70 and I’m taking Celsius, which you also might not know.

Fact is hard. 

The sky is blue. Fact

Except when it’s not, what about night? Cloudy day? Dawn dusk?

Ok it’s naturally blue somewhere? Blue isn’t blue in other languages, Russians split their blues into separate colours like we would for red and green, very different.

Maybe the problem is language itself and our ability to take when we mean from inside our head and put it out there.

Because we’re human and we’re all different, we see and feel the world differently and that shifts with the anchors before that movement and after that moment.

And most people are just people, they’re not going to “get educated” and “do your own research” and “if you weren’t so closed minded, you would see the truth”.

Don’t let Fact be the new religion. “But fact is fact” is it?