I’ve seen billboards with messages that say shit like “FACT: Human life begins at conception” or “It is a fact that evolution is false and God is real”. Obviously, these aren’t actually facts, just unbacked statements, but what exactly do you think a Conservative means when they use that word? Do they use it to describes their perspective of reality or do they think it means whatever their church tells them is true?
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I’ve seen billboards with messages that say shit like “FACT: Human life begins at conception” or “It is a fact that evolution is false and God is real”. Obviously, these aren’t actually facts, just unbacked statements, but what exactly do you think a Conservative means when they use that word? Do they use it to describes their perspective of reality or do they think it means whatever their church tells them is true?
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Have you asked this on r/askconservatives?
Is it your belief that every “fact” any liberal person labels as such is indeed a fact?
I don’t think, I know it just means “Anything that confirms my world view as true”.
Many of us here can confirm that ourselves, since many of us used to be firmly on the right on basically every issue imaginable.
They’re the ones who kept screeching “FaCtS dOnT cArE aBoUt YoUr FeElInGs!!!!” while actively rejecting every fact that blatantly disproved their claims. It’s never about what’s fact and what’s fiction, it’s purely about only accepting words that assert your views as the only correct one to have.
It’s whatever they want to believe.
Naw it’s just a marketing tactic, kind of like a car ad. They are not meant to convince new people of thier point just reassure thier loyal customers they are making the right choice. It’s not really a fact, and most would see that it isnt(some people are dumb on both sides) but it’s not meant to be, its meant to support your view point with positive affirmations.
The word fact is mainly a conservative thing, but there are a bunch of these buzz words in all types of advertising that resonate with the people they are marketing towards. We all have some buzzwords that work on us too, its a unique unconscious bias we develope through our life experiances.
>what exactly do you think a Conservative means when they use that word?
“Thing that would be good for me if it were true”.
Just find and replace:
“THING THAT WOULD BE GOOD FOR ME IF IT WERE TRUE: Human life begins at conception”
“It is a thing that would be good for me if it were true that evolution is false and God is real”
It will depend based on the individual, but, in general, conservatism has a worldview that believes there are universal truths. If you have a conservative individual who is calling an assertion a fact, they are most likely referring to one of their own universal truths that they believe is axiomatic.
“Feelings”
They mean stuff all their social circle agrees about. (or at least agrees out loud)
Opinions that they happen to agree with.
Potholer 54 explains it here, along with why the difference between fact and opinion actually matters (which seems to have been forgotten these days): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBNtSUBYsqo
The cognitive and psychological studies are just stopping short of calling republican voters impaired and arrested in emotional development, respectively
Things that they wish were true mostly. Occasionally those things happen to be true, but often that’s more just dumb luck than anything else.
I am going to go out on a limb, and say they, in fact, believe these statements to be facts. Just like you could imagine a billboard that said fact: climate change is real.
Clearly they are posting it on a billboard because they know it’s not a universal held belief. You would not expect to see the billboard Fact: the modal number of human toes is 10.
Also, importantly, there is a whole subtext of implied moral, policy, .. etc consequences. The “fact” the life begins at conception, is followed by the assumption that you are anti-abortion, etc.
Now I don’t generally ascribe to the beliefs underlying these signs, but I am also a little skeptical that there is a super strong epistemological argument about the distinction. Saying life begins at conception is fundamentally an issue of taxonomy. I am not sure I have a hugely better taxonomical structure for when I would define “begin”. Fundamentally any belief systems makes assumptions, and pretty typically ascribes to the most basic formulations as facts –