
Ask HN: Is Everything Subjective? - 37
Is everything subjective?
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lcrc123
I would say yes. Everything is not black and white and many things can be
interpreted differently. That being said, I'm sure there are some arguments
that could be made against this claim that not everything is subjective just
to play devils advocate.

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37
For example, what about the statement "2+2=4" or "Humans require oxygen to
breathe"? To me, these seem inherently objective...

~~~
jolmg
> "2+2=4"
    
    
      $ ruby -e 'puts(ARGV.first + ARGV.last)' 2 2
      22
    

Also, if we're using base-3 numbers, it's actually 2+2=11. If we use base-4
numbers, it'd be 2+2=10.

There's also the cases explained here:

[http://virgil.azwestern.edu/~dag/lol/TwoPlusTwo.html](http://virgil.azwestern.edu/~dag/lol/TwoPlusTwo.html)

> "Humans require oxygen to breathe"

"breathe" is defined as:

> To inhale and exhale air using the lungs.

You can do that without oxygen. You might not live very long, but you can
breathe.

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meiraleal
no, everything is objective, perception is subjective.

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37
This actually makes the most sense to me.

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PaulHoule
Practically yes.

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37
In that case, is it true to say there are no objective statements?

~~~
PaulHoule
No.

Statements about mathematics can be objectively true.

I would point to this book as an illustration of the limits of statements
about human reality:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Armies_of_the_Night](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Armies_of_the_Night)

Mailer describes what he observed when he participated in anti-war march. In
some sense this is completely subjective, but it is more accurate in that he
is describing what he experienced first hand as opposed to surmising things
based on what other people said.

In the second half of the book he writes the kind of story which you would see
in the newspaper which fits the standard of "objective journalism" but because
he is reading what people wrote about what other people said, he is having to
make many inferences, some of which would be necessarily wrong.

When somebody says there is an objective way to view a social situation they
are trying to gaslight you.

For instance, Ayn Rand subjectively experienced great pain when the Bolsheviks
killed her family and took their stuff; she named the philosophy based on that
experience "objectivism" to negate the voices of people who disagree with her.

"Strict constructionists" often oppose themselves to "postmodernism" but their
postmodernism is one of the most toxic around. You just can't say "the
founding fathers" meant exactly one thing when they wrote the constitution
because it wasn't "the founding father" but rather a compromise between
different people who meant different things.

Generally the word "real" is a bad smell, because it is often used to reify
something which is fake. See the concept of "hyperreal".

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howard941
Depends on your perspective

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37
How so?

