Counterfactualism

About

Counterfactualism is the practice of attacking rational beliefs on nonrational grounds, or of simply making assertions which contradict consensus reality as if it did not exist, and of firmly supporting erroneous beliefs. It is a form of antiepistemics, and usually deliberate lying (the speaker is aware of firm disagreement but pretends there is none).

Motives

Counterfactualism is generally practiced for the following reasons:

• cliquian signalling
• propaganda

Inlinks

• A counterfactualist is a practitioner of counterfactualism.
• Counter-scientific theory: possibly this page should be merged
• Denialism is a specific type of counterfactualism.

Links

News

• 2025/01/28 03:47 UTC [L..T] [US:EO] Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness This order forces the military to observe birth-assigned gender and denies gender-affirming medical care of any kind, apparently on the theory that transgender soldiers are somehow less tough than cis soldiers. This will result in a large number of trans military personnel leaving the military, reducing readiness.
• 2025/01/21 01:51 UTC [L..T] [US:EO] DEFENDING WOMEN FROM GENDER IDEOLOGY EXTREMISM AND RESTORING BIOLOGICAL TRUTH TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT «This unhealthy road is paved by an ongoing and purposeful attack against the ordinary and longstanding use and understanding of biological and scientific terms, replacing the immutable biological reality of sex with an internal, fluid, and subjective sense of self unmoored from biological facts. Invalidating the true and biological category of “woman” improperly transforms laws and policies designed to protect sex-based opportunities into laws and policies that undermine them, replacing longstanding, cherished legal rights and values with an identity-based, inchoate social concept.» It's difficult to find any part of this that isn't a blatant lie.
• 2017/02/10 [L..T] The Madness of King Donald «But all the traditional political fibbers nonetheless paid some deference to the truth – even as they were dodging it. They acknowledged a shared reality and bowed to it. They acknowledged the need for a common set of facts in order for a liberal democracy to function at all. Trump's lies are different. They are direct refutations of reality – and their propagation and repetition is about enforcing his power rather than wriggling out of a political conundrum. They are attacks on the very possibility of a reasoned discourse, the kind of bald-faced lies that authoritarians issue as a way to test loyalty and force their subjects into submission.»
• 2016/12/12 14:01 UTC [L..T] Donald Trump's Science Fiction «President-elect Donald Trump has been twisting the facts in ways beyond what even George Orwell envisioned in his dystopian novel 1984. When PolitiFact, the Pulitzer Prize-winning truth squad sponsored by the Tampa Bay Times, analyzed more than 300 assertions by Trump since he announced his presidential bid, it found that roughly 70 percent were mostly or completely false while another 15 percent were half-truths. Only 15 percent of his comments were deemed mostly or completely true.» The article goes into depth on several of Trump's then-favorite claims.
• 0028/01/23 22:22 UTC [L..T] [US:EO] PROTECTING CHILDREN FROM CHEMICAL AND SURGICAL MUTILATION, Executive Orders issued by Donald Trump on Tuesday, January 28, 2025 «Across the country today, medical professionals are maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions. This dangerous trend will be a stain on our Nation’s history, and it must end.» Thus begins a series of horrendous lies and harmful orders.