Comment on When somebody tells you something, sometimes it's something they personally experienced and sometimes it's something they heard from somebody else. How do you tell the difference?

palebluethought@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• Dr_Satan@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Asking that makes the conversation awkward. So that isn’t gonna fly. And it’s basically beside the point anyway. What we really care about is what the person said.

  And people say stuff all the time on Lemmy (reddit, twitter etc). It’s an endless river of the stuff.

  And it matters because that’s 2 completely different levels of truth.

  “I TASTED AN ORANGE AND IT’S SOUR” vs “I READ ABOUT THIS GUY WHO TASTED AN ORANGE AND HE SAYS IT’S SOUR”

  If we’re talking about what somebody said about what somebody said about what somebody said. And we have no way of knowing whether we’re talking to the first guy in the chain or the last…

  Then the conversation you’re having might be way more insane than you think.

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  • Lmaydev@programming.dev ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Unless they write it clearly like your examples there’s no way to know without asking.

    Even if they did it personally that’s still selection bias and doesn’t necessarily change how valid their statement is.

    source