As you may or may not have heard, the Oxford Dictionary's Word of the Year for 2016 is "post-truth".
[quote][url=https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/post-truth][b]post-truth[/b][/url]
Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief:[/quote]
As I would like to think most people would agree, typically, when someone posits an argument based on emotion, when there is relevant objective data available, the gold-standard of rebuttal is to make an argument based on what the data says.
However, in this post-truth world we live in now, where people are too easily swayed by what merely [i]sounds[/i] good, how best should we respond?
Do we stand our ground and continue to assert the facts?
Do we meet them on their level with similar material of what [i]sounds[/i] good?
Do we bend the truth, misrepresent the facts, and falsify information if it helps achieve our goals, even if those goals are noble causes; is the ends beginning to justify the means?
I'd be curious to hear about any other stories you have of post-truths and how, if you did, respond to them.
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Edited by Ogma: Destroyer of Worlds: 12/9/2016 9:17:42 PMOgma: Destroyer of Worlds
Pursue happiness with diligence. - old
People can subscribe to whatever nonsense they want to and believe it as hard as they possibly can to be true, but no amount of belief makes something a fact. If 6 billion people believe something to be true and only one person can repeatedly demonstrate and verify the opposite, 6 billion people are wrong. Most people are lying to themselves about many things anyway. Too many of us still let fear get the best of us.