Appeals to "reality" are logical fallacies; they are appeals to authority.

[RadiationTherapy]

Appealing to "reality" as an explanation or a reason or an excuse to act or not act in a particular way is a logical fallacy; it is an appeal to authority. One is essentially replacing "God" or some other supernatural deity with a personalized - and ironic - form of "Reality." It is nonsense. "Reality," in terms of human efforts like economies, societies, and relationships, may be a lot of things, but, to me, it cannot be objective and it cannot be fixed. So when I hear someone say "that is the reality" - aside from a few macro and quantum laws of physics and chemistry; aside from some components of mathematics and calculus - I essentially hear "that is my opinion."

Realities, when it comes to humanities like politics, are opinions. Everybody has - at the least - one.

"Reality as a singular noun has no meaning at all for me anymore." Robert Anton Wilson

Appeals to "reality" are a logical fallacy; they are appeals to authority.

[MyshkinCommaPrince]

1. I haven't, like, bamfed back to 1992, have I?

Because if I have, my hair should be thicker, my teeth should be better, and my back shouldn't ache in all those places.

This seems like part of some larger conversation that I'm missing. I suspect the rest of it isn't as interesting.

A Douglas Adams quote sprang to mind after reading your post. "Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.” Made me chuckle. Prob'ly adds nothing at all to any larger discussion of which this thread is a part.

[RadiationTherapy]

2. Hahaha. Great comment!

I am just referring to the very frequent use of "reality" as a reason for why a thing can or cannot be done.

[lagomorph777]

3. Resistance is futile! HRC is inevitable!

Well, sorry - HRC is beginning to look very evitable.

[RadiationTherapy]

4. I suppose one could say, "The powerful create (social) realities"

and I would have a lot more difficulty refuting that.

[pdsimdars]

5. You've lost it buddy,. Too much radiation?

Way too broad a brush, but I don't really want to get into some philosophical battle. But it is incorrect to say that there is no appealing to "reality" other than opinion. It is like saying you can only know for certain the things described by physics or chemistry. .
But if you look at this information . . .



It DOES tell you something, give you some information. Does it predict with 100% accuracy? I doubt it, but it DOES inform you.

.

[RadiationTherapy]

6. I made an exception for math.

Also, data are components of realities, but do not necessarily constitute realities.

[pdsimdars]

7. One of my degrees is in math.

Data INFORMS. You ignore it at your peril. Isn't that what the climate deniers are guilty of? Ignoring data.

[RadiationTherapy]

9. Yes. I agree data informs. As I mentioned, I think data is a constituent of constructed realities,

but are not themselves constitutive of a reality. Perhaps a better way to phrase it is that I imagine very few humans construct their subjective realities strictly from data sets and exclusive of emotion, prejudice, and sensory deceptions, etc.

In fact, one could argue that climate denial is an example of constructing very different realities from common sets of data.