[quote=svelte][quote=scaredyclassic]Um. Facts?
Just cause someone answers a question a certain way don’t make it a fact.

In fact I would say it is a fact that women say they want things other than what they claim or even think they want.

Hypothetically $ not important in my fantasy cosmopolitan questionnaire.

But what is reality on the ground?

Special snowflake white women seem less forthcoming than black respondents.[/quote]

Fact: something that truly exists or happens : something that has actual existence

Opinion: a belief, judgment, or way of thinking about something : what someone things about a particular thing

It is a *fact* that women answered the survey the way they did.

It is your *opinion* that they are lying.

Not hard to understand.[/quote]

i think i get it. if something for instance were illegal or seen as immoral, and doctors were required to report it, and patients were asked if they did that, there would be a lot of answers to questions given. but not a lot of facts about reality. say for instance a doctor were required to report to the police anyone who was using narcotics and would be incarcerated. No one would ever tell their doctor they used drugs in response to that question. Under your scenario, that would be a “fact”, since they answered the question that way.

but that’s insane.

it’s not a fact.

it’s a data point of how people want to be eprceived in answering a question.

so if you ask people what sort of person they think they are, or what sort of values they think they hold or might aspire to hold, and the question is phrased such that answering it a certain way makes them feel that they are showing their worst selves, you may find that you do not gather a lot of truth, although you may gather a lot of “data” or “facts”, as you call “data”.

when I say fact, in connection to some psychological reality, i mean something connected to some sort of truth. not just its purported existence by people’s general claims of what they might want to say.