"We want diversity of opinion. We don't want diversity of facts. And how do we train and teach our kids to distinguish between those things?"

"That, I think, is one of the big tasks of social media. By the way, it will require some government, I believe, some government regulatory constraints around some of these business models in a way that's consistent with the First Amendment, but that also says, look, there is a difference between these platforms letting all voices be heard versus a business model that elevates the most hateful voices or the most polarizing voices or the most dangerous, in the sense of inciting violence...."

Said Barack Obama, in a conversation with a historian a few days ago. Video at the link.

So it seems he thinks it's "the big task of social media" to teach children to distinguish between fact and opinion. But what does it mean to say "We don't want diversity of facts"? Does it mean you don't want differences of opinion about what the facts are?

It must, because facts are facts. There is no diversity of facts. Whatever is true is true, even if not one human being knows the truth. The facts are out there, to be found, and you can think you've found the facts and be wrong. There's a sense in which to say "We don't want diversity of facts" is to say we want to be able to be able to cling to mistaken findings of fact and even to silence those who want to continue to search for the truth.

I'm irritated by how casually Obama dropped in "By the way, it will require some government." Perhaps he knew his audience at the event was eager to hear about a role for government. But he did not say that government should enforce an official version of the facts — e.g., the covid vaccine is safe and effective, the 2020 election was fair and square. Instead of content-based regulation of speech, he's talking about the manner of the speech. Is it "hateful," "polarizing," or "dangerous"? He adds the phrase "in the sense of inciting violence" to gesture at some concern for the First Amendment.

Obama's speech is incredibly convoluted and mushy. That sentence that begins "By the way" — what is he proposing? Government control of the social media algorithm to suppress the voices it deems polarizing? Yeah, I think we know what that means: Suppress my political opponents, like you did before Elon Musk bought Twitter. Can we agree about that fact or is that an opinion?

***

I'm giving this post my old "alternative facts" tag. Remember "alternative facts"?

A post on the passing of Ursula K. LeGuin.

There are 2 things about Ursula K. LeGuin that I want to pass along — otherwise I would not choose this obituary to blog about. I don't blog for every famous writer who dies, even when I've read that person's books, and I have read 2 Ursula K. LeGuin books. All I remember of those books is that I forced myself to read them and found them a pleasureless slog. Why did I force myself? I was reading a lot of writing on feminism, circa 1990, and the books of Ursula K. LeGuin seemed to belong to the literature I wanted to know.

So here are the 2 things. First, this:

RIP Ursula Le Guin.

Here she is in 1987, turning down an offer to blurb an all-male sci-fi anthology. https://t.co/rz6Q0jSwWT pic.twitter.com/n3wgHQgDgu

— Letters of Note (@LettersOfNote) January 23, 2018

And then this recent letter to the editor of The Oregonian:

A recent letter in The Oregonian compares a politician's claim to tell "alternative facts" to the inventions of science fiction. The comparison won't work. We fiction writers make up stuff. Some of it clearly impossible, some of it realistic, but none of it real - all invented, imagined -- and we call it fiction because it isn't fact. We may call some of it "alternative history" or "an alternate universe," but make absolutely no pretense that our fictions are "alternative facts."

Facts aren't all that easy to come by. Honest scientists and journalists, among others, spend a lot of time trying to make sure of them. The test of a fact is that it simply is so - it has no "alternative." The sun rises in the east. To pretend the sun can rise in the west is a fiction, to claim that it does so as fact (or "alternative fact") is a lie.

A lie is a non-fact deliberately told as fact. Lies are told in order to reassure oneself, or to fool, or scare, or manipulate others. Santa Claus is a fiction. He's harmless. Lies are seldom completely harmless, and often very dangerous. In most times, most places, by most people, liars are considered contemptible.

Ursula K. Le Guin, Northwest Portland

What incorrect belief did you carry around for the longest time and how did you find out you were wrong?

A question that occurred to me in this context.

I'm not looking for philosophical, religious, or political beliefs of the sort that people disagree about, where you shifted sides — such as realizing that God does/doesn't exist, that free markets are good/bad, or the world is real/unreal.

I'm looking for facts that turned out not to be facts, such as believing that Jacques Cousteau and Jean Cocteau were the same person.

"Largely Based on an Accumulation of Data..."

"... I Am Calling This a New Meme."

"The incoming administration dismissed CNN and BuzzFeed News’s report as 'fake news,' a term now used by partisans and cynics to discredit reporting they don’t like. We should have seen that coming."

"BuzzFeed News’s reporting helped popularize the term to describe a new breed of fraudsters. But the dossier is a real document that has been influencing senior officials, lawmakers, intelligence agencies and, potentially, the new commander in chief. Nobody should fall for this attempt to turn the press on itself by making a reasonable debate about transparency into a media civil war. News organizations should instead consider this reality: Our audience inhabits a complex, polluted information environment; our role is to help them navigate it — not to pretend it doesn’t exist. The need to show our work and earn trust has never been more important, since once reliable official sources are peddling 'alternative facts' — as the White House press secretary did Saturday."

Writes Ben Smith, editor in chief of BuzzFeed, in a NYT op-ed titled "Why BuzzFeed News Published the Dossier."

The term "alternative facts" came not from the press secretary, but from Kellyanne Conway, in a "Meet the Press" interview with Chuck Todd that I described as a 9-round fight, here. Chuck Todd kept asking Conway "why the president asked the White House press secretary to come out in front of the podium for the first time and utter a falsehood?"

And then we get the sound bite of the whole morning, as she attempts, at long last, to refute Todd's idea that it was a "provable falsehood":

What-- You're saying it's a falsehood. And they're giving Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that. But the point remains--

Todd sees the gem he has caused to come into existence and plucks it out to hold in his hand and admire:

Wait a minute-- Alternative facts?

Conway tries to plow on, but he repeats the Conway's terrible phrase:

Alternative facts?... Four of the five facts he uttered were just not true. Look, alternative facts are not facts. They're falsehoods.

I scored a big win for Todd in what was Round 3. But in the comments at my post, I got more deeply into the question of what "alternative facts" means:

In context and read sympathetically, "alternative facts" doesn't mean that there are competing versions of the truth and you can refer to all of them as "facts."

Actually, that wouldn't bother me that much, because it would mean that the word "facts" was being used to mean "assertions of fact." Chuck Todd used the word "litigating," and in litigation there are factual issues, and litigants try to get the "fact-finder" to accept their assertions of fact as the facts. If one litigant states a fact — X is true — the other litigant may say X is not true. It would be awkward but understandable to call X and not-X "alternative facts."

But what I think Conway meant was that there are many different factual issues, and some people choose to forefront one factual issue — such as the size of the crowd at the Inauguration — when there are many other factual issues that could have been selected as the main story. There are "alternatives" in that you don't have to make such a big deal out of that one thing, and you could emphasize something else. The "alternative facts" were all the other things that Trump did, good things, that would have put him in a good light, and the media is criticized for picking out the fact that diminished Trump.