hard facts

Reliable, verifiable information

There is currently no way of obtaining hard facts about what he did and did not do.

by The Return of Light Joker November 21, 2011

cold hard facts

Facts without anything added to make them more pleasant or interesting.

Facts that are devoid of any emotions, the blatant irreversible truth.

Nobody asked you to spit cold hard facts in this chat. Calm down.

by Atlanta Footwear April 24, 2021

bucking the hard facts

A saying coined by Paul G. Hewitt, author of Conceptual Physics, which describes the disregard of an established law or fact.

"Meteorologists try their best, but they are bucking the hard facts of chaos in nature."

by RMKU November 21, 2013

Hard Problem of Fact

The dilemma that facts are not raw, uninterpreted bits of the world, but are always "theory-laden." What counts as a fact depends on the conceptual framework you're using. A fact is a statement about the world that we agree is incontrovertible within a given paradigm. The hard problem is that when paradigms shift (e.g., from Newtonian to Einsteinian physics), old facts can become false or meaningless. This means facts are not eternal building blocks of knowledge, but temporary settlements in an ongoing negotiation between observation and interpretation.

Example: For centuries, "The Sun revolves around the Earth" was a brute fact, confirmed by daily observation. The shift to heliocentrism didn't change the raw data (the sun's motion in the sky), it changed the interpretive framework. The "fact" became "The Earth rotates, creating the illusion of solar motion." The hard problem: There is no neutral observation language. What you call a fact reveals your theoretical commitments. A fact is like a piece in a puzzle—it only has a definite shape and place relative to the picture you're trying to build. Hard Problem of Fact.

by Enkigal January 24, 2026