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The Forum > Article Comments > Do we want 'truth' or 'truthiness'? > Comments

Do we want 'truth' or 'truthiness'? : Comments

By Don Aitkin, published 6/2/2015

Truthiness is 'What I say is right, and [nothing] anyone else says could possibly be true.'

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I respect Don. (As a nerdy teenager, reading the old National Times, I wrote to him out of the blue as I was interested in political culture. He wrote back a very generous letter. I went on to study mathematics and law, but as a law prof I find myself specialising in the law of politics as so much of the rest of law is tinder dry).

But this article had me scratching my head. By all means, in all disciplines, we must have a skeptical mindset (yet allow for human passion). But Don is not an epistemologist: he's a political scientist. The question is how to act when the risk is great even if there is can be no certainty. It is not about having your own facts VERSUS endlessly debating them.

AGW is established at a level of theoretical, empirical and statistical certainty beyond that we expect for any other public, health or environmental risk. Heck, even the law & economics folk worked this out a century ago. Look at Learned Hand's formula for judging when inaction is negligent.

Perhaps that's another way to state the precautionary principle; doubly so when we act, whether we like it or not, on behalf of future generations (with even more interest in this than today's generations); and triply so when we have to move beyond fossil fuels because of their finiteness.
Posted by Graeme O, Tuesday, 17 February 2015 1:23:38 PM
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