Let me begin by thanking commenter Edward for tracking down the source of the Maher quote, which at the time I posted I could not track, and my source, Elon Musk, didn’t help any by not bothering to include it in his post. It is the Ted Talk above, made when Maher was CEO at Wikipedia.
Not to leave you in any unnecessary suspense, I hate her talk with the fury of a thousand typhoons. Any time I hear the “you have your truth and I have mine” New Age blather, I tune out, spit three times, and have a stiff drink. It is a cornerstone of woke ideology and subjective ethics, and I say to hell with it.
Nonetheless, Extradimensional Cephalopod does his usual meticulously fair and open-minded response, this time to my question of whether the statement, “I think our reverence for the truth might have become a bit of a distraction that is preventing us from finding consensus and getting important things done,” could be justified. He does as good a job as I can imagine anyone doing, but I’m not buying. Before realizing I should post this as a COTD, I replied to EC’s post on the original essay’s thread; I’ll re-post it following his (its?) Comment of the Day on the post, “Wait, WHAT??? Unethical Quote of the Month: NPR CEO Katherine Maher”…
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“…what possible context could justify it?”
I can’t guarantee that Maher meant what she said in a benign sense, but such a sense does indeed exist.
Allow me to rephrase the statement in question:
Before: “I think our reverence for the truth might have become a bit of a distraction that is preventing us from finding consensus and getting important things done.”
After: “I think our obsession with forcing everyone to agree with our interpretations of the available evidence interfered with us finding enough relevant points of agreement that we could establish mutually acceptable approaches on important issues.”
The confusion lies in the conflation of “truth” to mean three different things:
- Objective reality, about which we make inferences about through our limited and indirect observations.
- The inferences and predictions that we make about objective reality, which many people foolishly assume are objective reality.
- Honesty, the practice of accurately representing our thoughts and conclusions to others insofar as we believe they would consider them relevant to their interests.
I looked up the context, and USA Today appears to provide more details on Maher’s message: https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2024/05/08/npr-ceo-katherine-maher-congress-media-bias-uri-berliner/73597888007/. (After reading the article, I realized it was written by one of the major figures in Braver Angels. I’ve listened to him speak at many events and I trust his assessment of the situation.)
I think that Maher has good intentions, and while I can’t recommend that she do research in the academic field of epistemology, as it is full of pretentious nonsense, I would recommend that she put a bit more thought into the words that she uses to functionally define and talk about people’s beliefs before she goes out and talks about “facts” and “truths”. (For example, I don’t use the word “truth”, although I do use the word “true”.) The rationalist community has some good sequences of articles on epistemology.
This may be a sign that humans are ready to learn from my practical epistemology skills. Remember, you heard it here first: Facts are predictions; predictions are risks.
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I’m back. Here, lightly edited, was my response to ECs comment:
I’m sorry, EC, but I have to rate your friend’s defense of Maher’s statement pure spin and sophistry. That is particularly true (TRUTH) in light of her dishonest defense against Berliner’s complaints. ‘She warned, “For our most tricky disagreements, seeking the truth, and seeking to convince others of the truth, might not be the right place to start.” Swell, but in the statement at issue, she wasn’t talking about arguing about what is true. She literally said that “reverence for the truth might have become a bit of a distraction.” That means a high regard for the truth is a distraction. That means, in turn, that sometimes it’ss necessary to ignore or distort the truth for the greater good. Which is a rationalization for unethical journalism. That was Dan Rather’s excuse for fabricating evidence to show George Bush had strings pulled to get him out of the military. Only #1 in your list is what truth means. For a journalist (or a Wikipedia exec!) not to use the word correctly is horrifying.
And I can’t believe you actually used the “good intentions” rationalization. Getting into epistemology just gets us further and further away from the issue at at hand. I could, if I chose to, defend the false stories JD Vance and Trump spread about Haitian immigrants eating cats with this same logic: yes, the story was false, but it was a good way to raise the problem of large numbers of immigrants from other cultures moving into towns and cities that can’t assimilate them….and it did. To which I say, so what? It was a lie, false, a rumor and NOT TRUE. Find another way to point out a phenomenon without lying. The climate change propaganda is completely in thrall with Mayer’s mindset. Well, yes, we can’t really prove what’s going to happen, but insisting on that gets in the way of the virtuous policy we need. Trump uses his version of “truth” exactly this way, and Mayer and her allies/fellow travelers attack him, then rationalize their own distortions.
You know, at some point we have to say: NO, this person is untrustworthy, has flawed values, and has no business in a business requiring trust like journalism.
Ethics Alarms 
Should you add another clip to your collection? I suggest the ghost of Ben Kenobi telling Luke Skywalker, “Luke, you’re going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view” after Luke confronts him for flat-out lying to him about his dad.
I think EC’s explanation does more to show his/her command of language and ability to tease out nuance than actually providing alternate context for Ms. Maher’s statement. That’s not meant as a knock on EC – in fact it’s a compliment – but I think Maher’s words can be taken at face value. Had she meant something else she would have said something different.
Just my thoughts.
I can fix that.
Yeah, I doubt I’ll ever compose a comment worthy of COTD. Although I did relatively well in my liberal arts subjects in college, reading comprehension and writing were always my weakest areas. I’m a retired engineer with a dual masters in electrical engineering and computer science. For example, I studied 8 to 10 hours for a final exam in Literature and about 20 minutes for a final exam in differential equations.
Even though the video was cited in the USA Today article that EC posted in the COTD, it was pleasing for me just to get a mention for locating the TED talk video.
“Had she meant something else she would have said something different.”
I would like to think that as well, but even when referring to a journalist I find that a naïve statement. Humans don’t usually learn how to talk clearly about ideas and ideological differences. Most of you sound like Donald Trump to me. You seem to have no problem acknowledging that his words are blurry.
But it’s a TED TALK! It’s going to be put on video and archived forever! It’s a prestigious forum one uses as a credential. That someone would choose their words carelessly for a TED Talk is as unethical as meaning what she said (which I am certain she did.)
What a CREEPY, CREEPY chick. She’s advocating for truth by consensus. That’s moronic and scary as hell. Truth becomes whatever the people in charge think it is. Does she even hear what she’s saying? It’s lefty dogma: the smart people should be running things without interference by the dumb people. And, the smart people get to decide who’s smart and who’s dumb. Again, that woman is terrifying.
OB wrote, “Truth becomes whatever the people in charge think it is.”
Isn’t that the crux of modern leftist cant? If there is no objective truth, and all truth is subjective, then doesn’t it follow that there are objective, individual rights? The rights of freedom of thought, expression, speech, and the press would, then, depend on the prevailing truth, i.e., that rights are not unalienable but are granted by government fiat. They can be taken away with the stroke of executive privilege. Isn’t that what underlies hate speech and speech codes on college campuses? Same with DEI initiatives, ¿no?
Maher, I suspect, knows this and believes it or is too cynical to challenge it.
jvb
You know, John, I first heard the notion of “reality by consensus” from a college classmate who went to architecture school and worked in a drafting room in a firm in Boston. While they were working on their assigned drawings, the draftsmen and junior architects would gab. They’d speculate about various things, bat around theories and then at some point, they’d come to a consensus as to what the truth of the matter in question was. And then continue drawing until the next topic came up for discussion. Pretty anodyne compared to what this monster is proposing.
By contrast, Mrs. OB used to have to load programs in the middle of the night when she was a programmer. They’d have spells where they’d have nothing to do while they waited for the main frames to churn away and they’d speculate about things. But since this was decades before the internet, they’d phone the reference desk at the New York Public Library, which was open 24/7 and get an actually factual answer from the librarians there.
This woman is advocating for the way inept societies like The Netherlands [don’t] work. They make no decisions without first obtaining a consensus from every employee, regardless of their position in the company. Disastrous.
In my business (I.T.) we’d have a saying:
“One test is worth a thousand expert opinions.”
And indeed we would discuss and argue about what was the best way to solve a problem, but eventually it always came down to “Okay, let’s try it out.” In trying it out, we’d learn about incorrect assumptions we’d made and get MUCH closer to a final design.
–Dwayne
“Most of you sound like Donald Trump to me.”
Sorry, but how elitist can you get.
Your appeal to an authority caused me to evaluate the writings of your “Braver Angel” who writes for the USA Today paper. A paper, that if it leaned any farther left it would meet itself on the other side.
The apologist for Maher you referenced in the USA Today editorial claims to be a long term Republican. He spins her statements without any evidence. The piece basically says she did not say what she meant to say so here is what I want her to mean.
There is sufficient evidence in several of the editorials he contributed to show that he tries to come off as some type of deep thinker yet he carefully makes statement to avoid outright condemnation of the left. From the article referenced
“In that context, a clip from a recent TED Talk that Maher gave in which she claimed “our reverence for the truth might be a distraction that’s getting in the way of finding common ground and getting things done” has been portrayed by critics as a declaration that objective truth no longer matters at NPR.
This is an incorrect interpretation, although it’s also an understandable byproduct of the lack of trust in Maher and NPR.
Maher’s TED Talk was actually a thoughtful attempt to envision a path for empowering truth and restoring trust in American institutions.
Maher also made repeated references to many “different truths” in a way that slides neatly into the perception that progressives have a relativistic relationship with truth. That grates on the ears of those who champion empirical sensibilities,
Yet, even that language is defensible in context.
Maher explained that personal truth is “what happens when we merge facts about the world with our beliefs about the world. So we all have different truths.” These different beliefs emerge from “things like where we come from, how we were raised and how other people perceive us.”
He states that critics believe that objective truth no longer matters at NPR and then goes on to say their is only the perceptions of truth based on our own experiences. That is sophistry.
In another piece Opinion: I can’t vote for Harris or Trump. I’m supporting Cornel West
I am a longtime Republican (a former Republican nominee for Congress in fact) who feels disaffected from the mainstream Republican Party. Although I disagree with the ad hominem tactics and attitudes of groups like The Lincoln Project, I sympathize with the beleaguered never-Trump wing of the GOP, which feels that Donald Trump must be opposed within the party because of his character and divisiveness, and for the threat he poses to democracy. I cast my vote in the Republican primary for Mike Pence on this basis.
Yes I am sure this person is objective.
Vivek Ramaswamy must stop dodging questions about Trump and Jan. 6
Whereas Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama all delivered inaugural addresses that made clear reference to liberty, the Declaration of Independence and our founding values, Trump and Biden did not or scarcely did.
In setting the tone for his new administration, Trump made no reference to liberty and no reference to the philosophical heritage of the United States. Instead, he made clear his intention to root out the power of the Washington establishment he viewed as responsible for a decline in our nation’s power and prosperity, which he decried as “American carnage.”
It was a speech focused on defeating the enemies of the public, giving power to the people, but one that was utterly unconcerned with emphasizing the virtues and responsibilities that come with the project of self-government.
Biden, for his part, delivered an inaugural address focused, as Ramaswamy is focused, on achieving national unity. But in appealing to unity, Biden made but scant mention of liberty and no mention of the American founding.
He did, however, emphasize the need for racial justice, decrying white supremacy and the “sting of systemic racism” in a speech calibrated to rally the people against the racism and extremism of anti-democratic forces in America. In this context, “unity” was a battle cry.
You do realize that liberty is not a word that get talked about it is about an objective truth. You either have it or you don’t. I consider defeating the enemies of the public and giving power to the people is the strongest reference to liberty as one can get. To suggest that Biden called for unity and then demanding racial justice and decrying this elusive white supremacy movement in a speech calibrated to rally people against non-bipoc persons is hardly unifying.
Me thinks John Wood is a pseudo intellectual who is a mere grifter.