The iron curtain of facts and figures
I was reading the comments in a Hacker News post Over 36,500 killed in Iran's deadliest massacre, documents reveal (yeah, bad habit, trying to quit1) and one triggered that neuron that has to say something, so here we are.
Numbers or death
Most online conversations these days seem to quickly converge to a decision node
Can you back your statement with data?
Can you tell me who else is thinking this?
Can you show me if this is officially recognised as a fact by a large faceless organisation?
Or, to spin the meme "do you have a a license for those thoughts, mate?"
Why is that?
Yes yes, disinformation, fake news, the russians, everyone is out there to get you to play their tune, I know that too, but really, this is just one person giving his opinion on the subject, why not engage on the concept expressed (self-selection in Iranian diaspora) rather than ask for backing from the highest authorities?2
Discourse is broken because you refuse to engage in it
The fact-check angel is probably (benefit of the doubt) coming from a good place with his query, making sure we are pointing his and ours eyes toward the light, but in doing so he has relinquished any agency to contend with the statement, calling the referee for a fight that has not started, stopping the music before the first waltz has been performed.
The iron curtain is back
We have re-erected the iron curtain, this time it surrounds our minds and thoughts and it has brought us to complete and total isolation (online and I fear offline too).
We no longer engage in debate with an open heart and mind, but have become little accountants grasping for our little abacus, adding and removing scores, stats, percentages, ever keeping the tally of the quantifiable and verified® knowledge, sure in the dogma that the numbers don't lie ™ , sure that we are on the right side of history because the power that be told us.
It doesn't matter if the numbers change and say the opposite next week, we will have update our operating system to the latest version already, loaded the new instructions, and gleefully argue the counter of what we said the week before.
Actually, as Winston well knew, it was only four years since Oceania had been at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia. But that was merely a piece of furtive knowledge which he happened to possess because his memory was not satisfactorily under control.
Officially the change of partners had never happened. Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia. The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible.