I'd be fine with this perspective if you didn't use the inability to know things in order to justify social policy for the expressed purpose of knowing a vision for a better society. I think most scientists acknowledge that we can't know to have proven anything with 100% certainty, instead we just disprove the null and gradually refine our theories with the knowledge we've accrued. That doesn't mean that we knowingly perform actions without attempting to know as much as we can about the potential consequences of said actions.
I hope that's not what I'm doing.
I haven't said that physical reality doesn't exist, but only that the values we attribute to physical reality have no metaphysical origin in the physical world. They're our interpretations of what happens around us. So when Dak and I disagree over what the primary reason behind, say, African American poverty and criminal behavior is, we're debating competing interpretations--not any provable reality. That crime and poverty are rampant in African American communities isn't debatable, but the reasons for this are both debatable and unprovable.
For the topic at hand, I'm saying that the value of free speech has no origin in the physical world, and so assuming that individual free speech is de facto better than regulated speech is the imposition of a value--not the discovery or promotion of an a priori truth. That there possibly exists no society in history that fell into decay due to excessive free speech is certainly evidence that free speech is good; but it's also evidence that speech has always been appropriately (socially) regulated. Alternatively, there have definitely been cases throughout history in which regulation had unwanted consequences; but it's also probably true that countless instances of social regulation are happening all the time and flying under the radar because they have no (or minimal) disruptive consequences.
As most social scientists will admit, the prospect of disproving complex social functions is more difficult than disproving phenomena in a controlled laboratory setting. Often, when complex social functions are working, we remain blind to how they're working, and how effectively they're working. Ascertaining their existence and functionality often requires some degree of speculation (although all the best scientists have ultimately resorted to speculation). This isn't to say we can't know anything, but only that the argument has to be about the interpretation of observations, not merely whether certain things have been observed.
Hannity is a joke, but he's no worse than Maddow et al, whose name is never uttered as contributing to the problem. Hannity is "virtually" calling for mass killings. No, he's not. He's just the less masculine Coulter or Maddow.
I'm going to go ahead and say that Hannity is worse than Maddow. You disagree then you disagree.
And somehow I outperform 90+ percent of students. I waited until my 20s to be physically active and I outperform 90% of adults in that way too (cardio-wise anyway). The Bismarckian system is completely outdated by more than 3 generations and yet we get hit with statements like "y u guys no like facts"? No, they aren't "absolute", but something you could learn is that absolutes aren't necessary for significant, persistent effects.
I love facts, but I don't think they're transparent. Let's debate about the facts. That's what's at issue here. As I said above, interpretations matter as much as the facts themselves. When people demand "proof," that means they want absolutes. They want facts whose persistence within reality is unchanging and has an unchanging meaning. That's what I have a problem with.
edit: Aeon just published a piece that's relevant to what I'm saying. And the Sherlock Holmes quote gets right to the heart of it: "There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact."
https://aeon.co/essays/are-humans-really-blind-to-the-gorilla-on-the-basketball-court