5 ms·

Why we're Post-Fact

76 points by ACow_Adonis 10y ago

StanislavPetrov 10y ago
>Not merely a world where politicians and media lie – they have always lied – but one where they don’t care whether they tell the truth or not. >How did we get here? This whole article is based on the false assumption that we ever lived in a fact-based world. Before recently people never had accurate and cheap means of data recording and information sharing that let them look behind the curtain and realize that they have been lied to all along. From the Lusitania to the Gulf of Tonkin to the USS Liberty to WMD in Iraq, history is built on lies and distortions. The internet allows people to get occasional glimpses behind the curtain, which is one of the reasons restricting the internet and stifling free speech is the dream of dictators from Beijing to Moscow to Washington DC.
- DrScump 10y ago
  <The internet allows people to get occasional glimpses behind the curtain, which is one of the reasons restricting the internet and stifling free speech is the dream of dictators...> The freedom of, and instant access to, objective sources via the Internet inspired great hope in me that media-driven fake news narratives could be overcome once and for all. For example, once access to Federal U.S. legislation online was created after the 1995 turnover of Congress, people were able to actually see what legislators were doing rather than media narratives creating or inhibiting advocacy. Alas, all that even otherwise-literate people seem to care about now is forwarding (often utterly false) memes to one another. It's easier than ever to get at original sources, yet few bother.
  - tedunangst 10y ago
    But original sources don't tell me what to think...
  - StanislavPetrov 10y ago
    The internet certainly hasn't been a panacea for the spread of information or the dissemination of "truth", but it is nonetheless a valuable communication tool that didn't exist before. As an older person, I can't stress how difficult it was to get timely news and information a few decades ago that didn't come from NBC, CBS, or ABC. Many of us knew that pundits and politicians were telling just as many lies back then as they were today, but there were no avenues to distribute proof of these lies in a timely manner. Their disdain for facts was just as great, but their lies were harder to expose.
- Dr_tldr 10y ago
  Chomsky can be a bit tiresome, but when talking about domestic US politics and media his descriptions fit the undisputed-but-largely-unknown record better than anyone else's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessary_Illusions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessary_Illusions
- mortenjorck 10y ago
  Indeed, this is the question I must always ask whenever the meme of the post-fact era comes up: When was this supposed era of empirical facts in politics? There may well be a greater brazenness in the cynical manipulation of voters this election cycle, but it is historically naive to call it an unprecedented development.
- Analemma_ 10y ago
  You are really missing the point, to such an extent that your entire comment looks like a non sequitur that has nothing to do with what the article was talking about. It's not saying anything about whether lying by the elites has become more or less common, or whether people have more or less ability to expose the lies than they used to. The point is that people no longer care about exposing the lies; facts have become irrelevant compared to cheering for your team, right or wrong. That is the recent development, and a very worrying one despite what the usual lofty detachment of the HN comments here thus far seems to think. You can't have democracy if people don't care about the difference between true and false (well, you can, but it will be unable to accomplish anything; it will just stagger along dysfunctionally until it is replaced by an autarch when the people get sufficiently sick at the lack of results from the government)
  - StanislavPetrov 10y ago
    >You are really missing the point, to the point where your entire comment looks like a non sequitur that has nothing to do Perhaps you should read the article again or work on your reading comprehension. >The point is that people no longer care about exposing the lies; facts have become irrelevant compared to cheering for your team, right or wrong. That is the recent development, and a very worrying one despite what the usual lofty detachment of the HN comments here thus far seems to think. Facts have always been irrelevant compared to cheering for your team. Facts have never mattered when it comes to partisanship or tribalism. The point is that recent technological developments and the mass communication of information have allowed this dichotomy to come to light, so that our disdain for facts is just more apparent, not a new phenomenon.
    - Analemma_ 10y ago
      > our disdain for facts is just more apparent, not a new phenomenon. If the disdain for facts is having macroscopic effects on society now, and was not before, this is a distinction without a difference. Simply redefine "post-fact era" in your own view to, "now it can have a much greater impact than it could before" and the article's analysis remains mostly intact. > Facts have always been irrelevant compared to cheering for your team. Facts have never mattered when it comes to partisanship or tribalism. This is the crux of our disagreement, I think. I believe you are mistaken, or at least that the degree to which "facts are irrelevant" to people has undergone such a large increase that it is having many more visible and serious effects on society. Consider something like Watergate, which caused the President's party to demand his resignation. Would that happen today if the exact same events transpired? It absolutely would not. People in the same tribe as the sitting President, whichever that is, would just brush off the whole thing as lies and spin created by the media. The "post-fact era" is what changed between then and now.
- x0x0 10y ago
  And here's the biggest lie of them all -- both sides do it. Not merely a world where politicians and media lie – they have always lied – but one where they don’t care whether they tell the truth or not. It's not politicians. It's Republicans and the pro-Brexit camp. I'm not saying every Democratic politician is perfect, but there simply are no widespread beliefs in the Democratic party or base equivalent to * 43% of republicans believe Obama was born abroad [1] * the usual lies about anthropogenic global warming * Iraq had WMDs * Sarah Palin or Donald Trump are fit for office * crime is up (it's down; American hasn't been this safe in ~50 years) * racism doesn't exist, or anti-white racism exists [1] http://www.salon.com/2015/09/14/a_staggering_number_of_republicans_believe_president_obama_is_a_muslim/ http://www.salon.com/2015/09/14/a_staggering_number_of_repub...
  - aaron-lebo 10y ago
    I really really don't want to get in an argument about politics, but if you really believe what you are saying you need to look yourself in the mirror. > anti-white racism exists Yeah, so Dallas didn't happen. Go read some extreme BLM propaganda. Some (a lot) of it is blatantly racist. And if we're talking about lies, one only needs to look at Clinton's political career. Excuse me, you only need to look at the last month. That's the whole point of this article. Don't delude yourself. Both parties are controlled by a bunch of liars.
    - sinxoveretothex 10y ago
      I can't talk about "extreme BLM propaganda" (although there are issues with some people directly affiliated with BLM), but there definitely are black race-extremists out there: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/black-separatist https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideo...
    - logandavis 10y ago
      I should make a bot that trawls HN for the phrases "anti-white racism" and "reverse racism" and replies with the following: "When people say that reverse racism (AKA anti-white racism) does not exist, they are using the word 'racism' to mean 'a socioeconomic power structure that systematically disadvantages people of a particular race'. By this definition of racism, they are absolutely correct. There is no systematic oppression or disenfranchisement of white people in America. However, many people (especially those less familiar with modern feminist discourse) understand the word 'racism' to mean 'an instance of a person or group treating another person or group poorly because of their race'. By this definition, anti-white racism does exist. White people are certainly sometimes treated poorly because of their whiteness. Arguments over the existence of 'reverse racism' almost always occur between people who do not agree on the definition of the word 'racism'. Before you respond to this post about reverse racism, please consider the possibility that the person to whom you are responding is neither crazy nor stupid. Instead, they may simply be using a different definition of 'racism' than the one to which you subscribe. If you interpret their post with a different definition of 'racism' than your own, do you suddenly find it to be much more reasonable? If so, you may have been missing the point. It is always best to agree upon shared terminology before engaging in debate."
- MichaelGG 10y ago
  Another "unbelievable" one is the Lavon Affair. A major US ally actually planned terrorist actions to blame an enemy and gain support. They denied it for half a century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavon_Affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavon_Affair
- nl 10y ago
  This whole article is based on the false assumption that we ever lived in a fact-based world No it's not, and it is important. It explicitly calls out this argument in the last paragraph. Talking about the period leading up to the second Gulf war: But for all their cynicism, the spin doctors and political technologists were, at this point, still trying to pull off an illusion of the truth.... Now, ~10 years later though: one reaction has been to double down, to deny that facts matter at all..... Putin doesn’t need to have a more convincing story, he just has to make it clear that everybody lies, undermine the moral superiority of his enemies and convince his people there is no alternative to him. ‘When Putin lies brazenly he wants the West to point out that he lies’ says the Bulgarian political scientist Ivan Krastev, ‘so he can point back and say, “but you lie too”’. And if everyone is lying then anything goes, whether it’s in your personal life or in invading foreign countries.
dimino 10y ago
One question this article doesn't attempt to answer is why doesn't this "everybody lies" narrative work in an infinite loop? Putin makes a lie, his opponents call out the lie, Putin says "but everybody lies"... why don't his opponents point that back at him, saying, "You, being everyone, are lying now!" Is there a drop off of interest? Can people not follow beyond the first circle of blame? Or do people follow as far as they need to for the blame to land where they already want it to land? Was it always like this? I hear a great deal about how things are getting "worse", but throughout human history, hasn't it almost always been the case that the people in charge defined truth? From Hammurabi, the Pharaohs, the Athenians (with a brief stop in democracy), the Romans, the Holy Roman Empire, the Ottoman-Turks, and now the Americans, hasn't power always lied? Why do people expect this not to be the case? For us to be living in a post-fact world, don't we have to have lived at one point, in a fact world? I'm not sure we did...
Animats 10y ago
Roger Ailes did it. He made Fox News what it is today. (Yes, he just got fired by Fox. He's now advising the Trump campaign.) The classic remark on this is, of course: "All this was inspired by the principle — which is quite true within itself — that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying." Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf. This wasn't original with Hitler. What was new was the ability to use radio to promote a big lie. Radio allowed scaling the big lie technique. Goebbels put that into practice effectively. His version: "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it." Now, too many people have enough bandwidth to do that, and we're buried under a mass of bogus info.
- marcoperaza 10y ago
  Fox News is just the people doing it on the right. The rest of the media has been run by truth-twisters on the other side for a very long time. It's the long march through the institutions, and the left has been quite successful at it.
  - madgar 10y ago
    This false equivalency is a huge part of the problem.
    - marcoperaza 10y ago
guard-of-terra 10y ago
I would say that we saw the facts and were so seared by them that we now shun them. For example, how do I live with my country doing what will be "sometimes eating roasted children" if it was a person? And that I know for fact. I choose to "worry" which will probably give me cancer, but simpler people choose to ignore facts for good and live peacefully.
mtimjones 10y ago
Sort of like how Hillary Clinton should be in prison today because of her email scandal, but no democrat cares?
rayiner 10y ago
> When the Brexit campaign announces ‘Let’s give our NHS the £350 million the EU takes every week’ and, on winning the referendum, the claim is shrugged off as a ‘mistake’ by one Brexit leader while another explains it as ‘an aspiration’, then it’s clear we are living in a ‘post-fact’ or ‘post-truth’ world. How does not living up to a statement of future intent have anything to do with living in a "post-fact" world?
- ZeroGravitas 10y ago
  Well, the 350 million per week, which isn't a future intent, didn't exist, so no matter what they do in the future, they're already post-fact. This was pointed out repeatedly, by various official statistical agencies etc. but they just refused to back down from the lie. They had some stock lines about "gross vs net" (also a lie), about how the figure wasn't 350 but could be increased without UK consent (also a lie), or they just switched to quoting the accurate figure in yearly terms and hoped that no-one in their voting demographic could divide by 52. Also, roughly half the actual figure is spent on UK farmers, deprived regions and so on, and they'd also promised to maintain those payments. So, lies upon lies basically.
- gakada 10y ago
  The other one was Turkey joining the EU. They claimed that Turkey was imminently going to join and the only way to prevent Turks coming to Britain was to vote to leave. In fact, UK has a veto, and Turkey won't be able to join until it gives back half of Cyprus (which is never).
avivo 10y ago
A society becomes post-fact when information spreads irrespective of how factual it is. This can happen for a number of reasons, but the current primary reason is that social media is biased against facts. Content that is controversial, emotional, and timely spreads faster. Factualness in that environment is just irrelevant and expensive. It boils down to distribution and incentives. If the incentives don't change, things will only get worse. And as lies are repeated and internalized they will be used to inform policy. This has catastrophic consequences — if you are driving a car, and ignore the "facts" out the window, you crash.
- avivo 10y ago
  Some citations for if you're interested, skeptical, or want to doing something about this. Concrete evidence that facts & social media don't currently mix: https://firstdraftnews.com/recent-research-reveals-false-rumours-really-do-travel-faster-and-further-than-the-truth/ https://firstdraftnews.com/recent-research-reveals-false-rum... A chilling overview full of citations about how this affects dangerous conspiracy theories (written by a bay area founder & VC who also helped win a legislative battle against anti-vaxxers) http://www.fastcoexist.com/3059742/social-network-algorithms-are-distorting-reality-by-boosting-conspiracy-theories http://www.fastcoexist.com/3059742/social-network-algorithms... Another overview by the Editor in Chief of the Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jul/12/how-technology-disrupted-the-truth https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jul/12/how-technology... Feel free to contact me (email on my profile page) if you want to learn more about bias mitigation strategies (something I'm actively exploring).
- outlace 10y ago
  This is it. People don't stop to analyze the veracity of some internet meme before sharing, they will immediately share if it evokes some positive emotional state, or if it supports their pre-existing beliefs (confirmation bias). Thus much bullshit is spread and accepted at face value.
- vorotato 10y ago
  You're wrong and this reply is why.
rahkiin 10y ago
I think this is a very troublesome development. I was angry about the lies during the Brexit compaign and I am no UK citizen. I am still angry about all lies from Trump and Clinton and I am no US citizen. I wonder, how can we revert this? How can we go back? The horrific thing is: if I ask someone if the leave campaign will be charged for fraud, they think I am nuts. As if lying politicians are above the law.
- Kenji 10y ago
  Let's be fair here: The stay campain was lying just as much, if not more, as the leave one. Don't let your political opinion seep into your judgement of who lied and who didn't, or you too are post-fact.
  - ZeroGravitas 10y ago
    No. Don't be ridiculous. The leave campaign regularly told lies about even unimportant things. Simple fact-checkable assertions, which they made were simply not true. Not debatable, or open to interpretation. This is from Boris announcing his candidacy: "Sometimes these EU rules sound simply ludicrous, like the rule that you can’t recycle a teabag, or that children under eight cannot blow up balloons, or the limits on the power of vacuum cleaners. Sometimes they can be truly infuriating – like the time I discovered, in 2013, that there was nothing we could do to bring in better-designed cab windows for trucks, to stop cyclists being crushed. It had to be done at a European level, and the French were opposed." The bike one is particularly infurating, as while the French wanted to delay the introduction of the rule, the UK actually opposed it. Which he knows, because he protested this at the time: "London Mayor protests UK block on EU ‘safe lorries’ law" https://www.euractiv.com/section/transport/news/london-mayor-protests-uk-block-on-eu-safe-lorries-law/ https://www.euractiv.com/section/transport/news/london-mayor...
- coldtea 10y ago
  >The horrific thing is: if I ask someone if the leave campaign will be charged for fraud, they think I am nuts. As if lying politicians are above the law. Rather, democracy is above the law. Because demo-cracy (literally: "people in control" in ancient Greek) is that which makes the laws. Besides, what "fraud" would the leave campaign be charged with? They didn't do any or at any level, any more fraud than the stay campaign.
carsongross 10y ago
We were never fact-based. We just have the internet now to, occasionally, figure out just how duped we've always been.
- sjwright 10y ago
  That is true, however the parallel truth is that politicians now have better access to these sources of information as well. Greater availability of correct information has shifted the default assumed motive, however slightly, away from sincere ignorance and towards willful, means-justify-the-ends deception.
  - carsongross 10y ago
    shifted the default assumed motive For me, not even a little bit.
ZeroGravitas 10y ago
There's some research that suggests conservative people have a preference for simple answers. I think I see elements of that in Brexit and Trump. Trump for example, rails against NAFTA. And let's just set aside the fact that he blames Clinton for it, when it was written and signed and voted in by Republicans. Even if it was a Clinton or Democrat thimg, whether it is good or not is complex, I'd want an expert to explain it to me. That leaves an opening for people like Trump.
- sinxoveretothex 10y ago
  > There's some research that suggests conservative people have a preference for simple answers That's quite the study you have there… Also, how simple is the statement "conservatives are the ones looking for simple answers"? It's also puzzling that you would liken Trump to "conservatives", when it seems like there's quite a few definitely conservative people out there who flat out refused to endorse him (all three Bush for example, Ted Cruz, John Kasich among others). http://time.com/4372882/john-kasich-donald-trump-republicans-election/ http://time.com/4372882/john-kasich-donald-trump-republicans...
  - ZeroGravitas 10y ago
    Here's an article arguing against my claim: http://heterodoxacademy.org/2016/01/07/are-conservatives-really-simple-minded/ http://heterodoxacademy.org/2016/01/07/are-conservatives-rea... But note they begin by stating that it is widely regarded as true, by people with various different backgrounds and specialist knowledge, and they're not really that confident in their rebuttal even though they've presented a paper that undermines the evidence of that theory in one particular narrow area. "The current consensus in psychology is that political conservatives are uniquely simple-minded. Indeed, even the famous critic of political bias and Heterodox contributor Jonathan Haidt (and colleagues) suggested that there is a “consistent difference between liberals and conservatives” on several measurements related to cognitive complexity"
MichaelGG 10y ago
Does Trump flat-out lie? On the times I've examined what he's said, it seems he's rather careful to leave himself an out. I.e. he might be "technically" correct. Looking over Politifact on him, for instance, shows many cases where he'll make a claim on XYZ that's actually sourced, but it's on the high-end of their range, or from a source that's not very good. Or it's things that can't be backed up, like his personal eyewitness accounts.
- nl 10y ago
  Does Trump flat-out lie? Yes. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/07/01/donald-trump-has-been-wrong-way-more-often-than-all-the-other-2016-candidates-combined/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/07/01/do...
- daveguy 10y ago
  > Does Trump flat-out lie? And yes. You did say you saw this, right? After seeing this I'm not sure what is in question. http://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/ http://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/ You can go to the "people" menu and compare it with other people. Yes. He flat-out lies. More than most politicians.
doctorstupid 10y ago
When you feel powerless the truth seems irrelevant.
mnemonicsloth 10y ago
This article spends a lot of time on Donald Trump, The author doesn't understand his supporters or why they tolerate his truthlessness. They do it for a reason. I know this because of an article I read today, a dialogue between a journalist and a Yale law grad who's written a book on the white working class he grew up in. Here's the article. It's better than this one. http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/trump-us-politics-poor-whites/ http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/trump-us-polit...
- Mithaldu 10y ago
  If you're american and don't believe you guys, as a country, love shitposting in every form, then you are honestly badly out of touch. I spent the weekend talking to a lot of americans about the events in munich, and a big majority of them was happy to quite simply shitpost about it en masse even if every evidence that came out contradicted them. CNN didn't help either.
  - mnemonicsloth 10y ago
    I am out of touch. I still think the word 'shitposting' makes you sound like a loudmouth with a poor grasp of English. And I think you've replied to the wrong post. I haven't said a word about what Americans like or don't like. So maybe you're a little out of touch too.
    - Mithaldu 10y ago
      > I still think the word 'shitposting' makes you sound like a loudmouth with a poor grasp of English. Not my creation, welcome to the youth of the usa (30 and below). Try googling it. As to "wrong post", i could swear your post originally called the author of the article out of touch. Either i am misremembering or you edited it. (And i just checked, HN does not mark edited posts.) Further, the author does spend a lot of time on trump, but this part condenses to "americans like shitposting and trump exploits that": > This is a (dark) joy. All the madness you feel, you can now let it out and it’s okay. The very point of Trump is to validate the pleasure of spouting shit, the joy of pure emotion, often anger, without any sense.
force_reboot 10y ago
I can't excuse the right for being post-fact, but the left who control much of the media and work environment hardly set a good example themselves. Here are some facts that will help you lose your job in the post-fact workplace: - Black Americans commit crimes at around 5x the rates of White Americans. - Most mainstream scholarship does not explain this by, for example, Black Americans actually committing murder, for example, at the same rate as Whites, but getting arrested, charged and convicted at 5x the rate. - Most mainstream scholarship (presumably not done by neo-nazis, but in fact by liberals) attributes this differences in part to cultural differences, and not only to objective conditions such as poverty and education. Put another way, it's not possible to construct a regression equation where you put variables like parental education, income etc. on the right hand side, along with race, and the coefficient on race comes out as zero or insignificant. And people have certainly tried. Note that you have to get past 3 separate layers of non-facts before you get to where most of mainstream scholarship is. And that's not because mainstream academics are to the right of journalists, it's because they don't believe that it's beneficial for ordinary people to know these things because they might interpret these facts differently. - For heterosexual Whites, the risk of HIV infection extremely low, and HIV infection is inherently more easily spread by anal intercourse (not that other diseases aren't a good reason to use protection).
- madgar 10y ago
  > For heterosexual Whites, the risk of HIV infection extremely low, and HIV infection is inherently more easily spread by anal intercourse (not that other diseases aren't a good reason to use protection). Remind me again why this is a matter of public policy. Are you going to propose a program to help people in need, like promoting condom use, like the left? Are you going to suggest unconstitutional sodomy laws, like the right? Pointing out this detail - and putting the focus on it without even suggesting a solution - makes it sound like you think gay people themselves are themselves a problem that need solving.

76 points by ACow_Adonis 10y ago

>Not merely a world where politicians and media lie – they have always lied – but one where they don’t care whether they tell the truth or not. >How did we get here? This whole article is based on the false assumption that we ever lived in a fact-based world. Before recently people never had accurate and cheap means of data recording and information sharing that let them look behind the curtain and realize that they have been lied to all along. From the Lusitania to the Gulf of Tonkin to the USS Liberty to WMD in Iraq, history is built on lies and distortions. The internet allows people to get occasional glimpses behind the curtain, which is one of the reasons restricting the internet and stifling free speech is the dream of dictators from Beijing to Moscow to Washington DC.

DrScump 10y ago
<The internet allows people to get occasional glimpses behind the curtain, which is one of the reasons restricting the internet and stifling free speech is the dream of dictators...> The freedom of, and instant access to, objective sources via the Internet inspired great hope in me that media-driven fake news narratives could be overcome once and for all. For example, once access to Federal U.S. legislation online was created after the 1995 turnover of Congress, people were able to actually see what legislators were doing rather than media narratives creating or inhibiting advocacy. Alas, all that even otherwise-literate people seem to care about now is forwarding (often utterly false) memes to one another. It's easier than ever to get at original sources, yet few bother.
- tedunangst 10y ago
  But original sources don't tell me what to think...
- StanislavPetrov 10y ago
  The internet certainly hasn't been a panacea for the spread of information or the dissemination of "truth", but it is nonetheless a valuable communication tool that didn't exist before. As an older person, I can't stress how difficult it was to get timely news and information a few decades ago that didn't come from NBC, CBS, or ABC. Many of us knew that pundits and politicians were telling just as many lies back then as they were today, but there were no avenues to distribute proof of these lies in a timely manner. Their disdain for facts was just as great, but their lies were harder to expose.
Dr_tldr 10y ago
Chomsky can be a bit tiresome, but when talking about domestic US politics and media his descriptions fit the undisputed-but-largely-unknown record better than anyone else's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessary_Illusions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessary_Illusions
mortenjorck 10y ago
Indeed, this is the question I must always ask whenever the meme of the post-fact era comes up: When was this supposed era of empirical facts in politics? There may well be a greater brazenness in the cynical manipulation of voters this election cycle, but it is historically naive to call it an unprecedented development.
Analemma_ 10y ago
You are really missing the point, to such an extent that your entire comment looks like a non sequitur that has nothing to do with what the article was talking about. It's not saying anything about whether lying by the elites has become more or less common, or whether people have more or less ability to expose the lies than they used to. The point is that people no longer care about exposing the lies; facts have become irrelevant compared to cheering for your team, right or wrong. That is the recent development, and a very worrying one despite what the usual lofty detachment of the HN comments here thus far seems to think. You can't have democracy if people don't care about the difference between true and false (well, you can, but it will be unable to accomplish anything; it will just stagger along dysfunctionally until it is replaced by an autarch when the people get sufficiently sick at the lack of results from the government)
- StanislavPetrov 10y ago
  >You are really missing the point, to the point where your entire comment looks like a non sequitur that has nothing to do Perhaps you should read the article again or work on your reading comprehension. >The point is that people no longer care about exposing the lies; facts have become irrelevant compared to cheering for your team, right or wrong. That is the recent development, and a very worrying one despite what the usual lofty detachment of the HN comments here thus far seems to think. Facts have always been irrelevant compared to cheering for your team. Facts have never mattered when it comes to partisanship or tribalism. The point is that recent technological developments and the mass communication of information have allowed this dichotomy to come to light, so that our disdain for facts is just more apparent, not a new phenomenon.
  - Analemma_ 10y ago
    > our disdain for facts is just more apparent, not a new phenomenon. If the disdain for facts is having macroscopic effects on society now, and was not before, this is a distinction without a difference. Simply redefine "post-fact era" in your own view to, "now it can have a much greater impact than it could before" and the article's analysis remains mostly intact. > Facts have always been irrelevant compared to cheering for your team. Facts have never mattered when it comes to partisanship or tribalism. This is the crux of our disagreement, I think. I believe you are mistaken, or at least that the degree to which "facts are irrelevant" to people has undergone such a large increase that it is having many more visible and serious effects on society. Consider something like Watergate, which caused the President's party to demand his resignation. Would that happen today if the exact same events transpired? It absolutely would not. People in the same tribe as the sitting President, whichever that is, would just brush off the whole thing as lies and spin created by the media. The "post-fact era" is what changed between then and now.
x0x0 10y ago
And here's the biggest lie of them all -- both sides do it. Not merely a world where politicians and media lie – they have always lied – but one where they don’t care whether they tell the truth or not. It's not politicians. It's Republicans and the pro-Brexit camp. I'm not saying every Democratic politician is perfect, but there simply are no widespread beliefs in the Democratic party or base equivalent to * 43% of republicans believe Obama was born abroad [1] * the usual lies about anthropogenic global warming * Iraq had WMDs * Sarah Palin or Donald Trump are fit for office * crime is up (it's down; American hasn't been this safe in ~50 years) * racism doesn't exist, or anti-white racism exists [1] http://www.salon.com/2015/09/14/a_staggering_number_of_republicans_believe_president_obama_is_a_muslim/ http://www.salon.com/2015/09/14/a_staggering_number_of_repub...
- aaron-lebo 10y ago
  I really really don't want to get in an argument about politics, but if you really believe what you are saying you need to look yourself in the mirror. > anti-white racism exists Yeah, so Dallas didn't happen. Go read some extreme BLM propaganda. Some (a lot) of it is blatantly racist. And if we're talking about lies, one only needs to look at Clinton's political career. Excuse me, you only need to look at the last month. That's the whole point of this article. Don't delude yourself. Both parties are controlled by a bunch of liars.
  - sinxoveretothex 10y ago
    I can't talk about "extreme BLM propaganda" (although there are issues with some people directly affiliated with BLM), but there definitely are black race-extremists out there: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/black-separatist https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideo...
  - logandavis 10y ago
    I should make a bot that trawls HN for the phrases "anti-white racism" and "reverse racism" and replies with the following: "When people say that reverse racism (AKA anti-white racism) does not exist, they are using the word 'racism' to mean 'a socioeconomic power structure that systematically disadvantages people of a particular race'. By this definition of racism, they are absolutely correct. There is no systematic oppression or disenfranchisement of white people in America. However, many people (especially those less familiar with modern feminist discourse) understand the word 'racism' to mean 'an instance of a person or group treating another person or group poorly because of their race'. By this definition, anti-white racism does exist. White people are certainly sometimes treated poorly because of their whiteness. Arguments over the existence of 'reverse racism' almost always occur between people who do not agree on the definition of the word 'racism'. Before you respond to this post about reverse racism, please consider the possibility that the person to whom you are responding is neither crazy nor stupid. Instead, they may simply be using a different definition of 'racism' than the one to which you subscribe. If you interpret their post with a different definition of 'racism' than your own, do you suddenly find it to be much more reasonable? If so, you may have been missing the point. It is always best to agree upon shared terminology before engaging in debate."
MichaelGG 10y ago
Another "unbelievable" one is the Lavon Affair. A major US ally actually planned terrorist actions to blame an enemy and gain support. They denied it for half a century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavon_Affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavon_Affair
nl 10y ago
This whole article is based on the false assumption that we ever lived in a fact-based world No it's not, and it is important. It explicitly calls out this argument in the last paragraph. Talking about the period leading up to the second Gulf war: But for all their cynicism, the spin doctors and political technologists were, at this point, still trying to pull off an illusion of the truth.... Now, ~10 years later though: one reaction has been to double down, to deny that facts matter at all..... Putin doesn’t need to have a more convincing story, he just has to make it clear that everybody lies, undermine the moral superiority of his enemies and convince his people there is no alternative to him. ‘When Putin lies brazenly he wants the West to point out that he lies’ says the Bulgarian political scientist Ivan Krastev, ‘so he can point back and say, “but you lie too”’. And if everyone is lying then anything goes, whether it’s in your personal life or in invading foreign countries.

dimino 10y ago

One question this article doesn't attempt to answer is why doesn't this "everybody lies" narrative work in an infinite loop? Putin makes a lie, his opponents call out the lie, Putin says "but everybody lies"... why don't his opponents point that back at him, saying, "You, being everyone, are lying now!" Is there a drop off of interest? Can people not follow beyond the first circle of blame? Or do people follow as far as they need to for the blame to land where they already want it to land? Was it always like this? I hear a great deal about how things are getting "worse", but throughout human history, hasn't it almost always been the case that the people in charge defined truth? From Hammurabi, the Pharaohs, the Athenians (with a brief stop in democracy), the Romans, the Holy Roman Empire, the Ottoman-Turks, and now the Americans, hasn't power always lied? Why do people expect this not to be the case? For us to be living in a post-fact world, don't we have to have lived at one point, in a fact world? I'm not sure we did...

Animats 10y ago

Roger Ailes did it. He made Fox News what it is today. (Yes, he just got fired by Fox. He's now advising the Trump campaign.) The classic remark on this is, of course: "All this was inspired by the principle — which is quite true within itself — that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying." Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf. This wasn't original with Hitler. What was new was the ability to use radio to promote a big lie. Radio allowed scaling the big lie technique. Goebbels put that into practice effectively. His version: "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it." Now, too many people have enough bandwidth to do that, and we're buried under a mass of bogus info.

marcoperaza 10y ago
Fox News is just the people doing it on the right. The rest of the media has been run by truth-twisters on the other side for a very long time. It's the long march through the institutions, and the left has been quite successful at it.
- madgar 10y ago
  This false equivalency is a huge part of the problem.
  - marcoperaza 10y ago

guard-of-terra 10y ago

I would say that we saw the facts and were so seared by them that we now shun them. For example, how do I live with my country doing what will be "sometimes eating roasted children" if it was a person? And that I know for fact. I choose to "worry" which will probably give me cancer, but simpler people choose to ignore facts for good and live peacefully.

mtimjones 10y ago

Sort of like how Hillary Clinton should be in prison today because of her email scandal, but no democrat cares?

rayiner 10y ago

> When the Brexit campaign announces ‘Let’s give our NHS the £350 million the EU takes every week’ and, on winning the referendum, the claim is shrugged off as a ‘mistake’ by one Brexit leader while another explains it as ‘an aspiration’, then it’s clear we are living in a ‘post-fact’ or ‘post-truth’ world. How does not living up to a statement of future intent have anything to do with living in a "post-fact" world?

ZeroGravitas 10y ago
Well, the 350 million per week, which isn't a future intent, didn't exist, so no matter what they do in the future, they're already post-fact. This was pointed out repeatedly, by various official statistical agencies etc. but they just refused to back down from the lie. They had some stock lines about "gross vs net" (also a lie), about how the figure wasn't 350 but could be increased without UK consent (also a lie), or they just switched to quoting the accurate figure in yearly terms and hoped that no-one in their voting demographic could divide by 52. Also, roughly half the actual figure is spent on UK farmers, deprived regions and so on, and they'd also promised to maintain those payments. So, lies upon lies basically.
gakada 10y ago
The other one was Turkey joining the EU. They claimed that Turkey was imminently going to join and the only way to prevent Turks coming to Britain was to vote to leave. In fact, UK has a veto, and Turkey won't be able to join until it gives back half of Cyprus (which is never).

avivo 10y ago

A society becomes post-fact when information spreads irrespective of how factual it is. This can happen for a number of reasons, but the current primary reason is that social media is biased against facts. Content that is controversial, emotional, and timely spreads faster. Factualness in that environment is just irrelevant and expensive. It boils down to distribution and incentives. If the incentives don't change, things will only get worse. And as lies are repeated and internalized they will be used to inform policy. This has catastrophic consequences — if you are driving a car, and ignore the "facts" out the window, you crash.

avivo 10y ago
Some citations for if you're interested, skeptical, or want to doing something about this. Concrete evidence that facts & social media don't currently mix: https://firstdraftnews.com/recent-research-reveals-false-rumours-really-do-travel-faster-and-further-than-the-truth/ https://firstdraftnews.com/recent-research-reveals-false-rum... A chilling overview full of citations about how this affects dangerous conspiracy theories (written by a bay area founder & VC who also helped win a legislative battle against anti-vaxxers) http://www.fastcoexist.com/3059742/social-network-algorithms-are-distorting-reality-by-boosting-conspiracy-theories http://www.fastcoexist.com/3059742/social-network-algorithms... Another overview by the Editor in Chief of the Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jul/12/how-technology-disrupted-the-truth https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jul/12/how-technology... Feel free to contact me (email on my profile page) if you want to learn more about bias mitigation strategies (something I'm actively exploring).
outlace 10y ago
This is it. People don't stop to analyze the veracity of some internet meme before sharing, they will immediately share if it evokes some positive emotional state, or if it supports their pre-existing beliefs (confirmation bias). Thus much bullshit is spread and accepted at face value.
vorotato 10y ago
You're wrong and this reply is why.

rahkiin 10y ago

I think this is a very troublesome development. I was angry about the lies during the Brexit compaign and I am no UK citizen. I am still angry about all lies from Trump and Clinton and I am no US citizen. I wonder, how can we revert this? How can we go back? The horrific thing is: if I ask someone if the leave campaign will be charged for fraud, they think I am nuts. As if lying politicians are above the law.

Kenji 10y ago
Let's be fair here: The stay campain was lying just as much, if not more, as the leave one. Don't let your political opinion seep into your judgement of who lied and who didn't, or you too are post-fact.
- ZeroGravitas 10y ago
  No. Don't be ridiculous. The leave campaign regularly told lies about even unimportant things. Simple fact-checkable assertions, which they made were simply not true. Not debatable, or open to interpretation. This is from Boris announcing his candidacy: "Sometimes these EU rules sound simply ludicrous, like the rule that you can’t recycle a teabag, or that children under eight cannot blow up balloons, or the limits on the power of vacuum cleaners. Sometimes they can be truly infuriating – like the time I discovered, in 2013, that there was nothing we could do to bring in better-designed cab windows for trucks, to stop cyclists being crushed. It had to be done at a European level, and the French were opposed." The bike one is particularly infurating, as while the French wanted to delay the introduction of the rule, the UK actually opposed it. Which he knows, because he protested this at the time: "London Mayor protests UK block on EU ‘safe lorries’ law" https://www.euractiv.com/section/transport/news/london-mayor-protests-uk-block-on-eu-safe-lorries-law/ https://www.euractiv.com/section/transport/news/london-mayor...
coldtea 10y ago
>The horrific thing is: if I ask someone if the leave campaign will be charged for fraud, they think I am nuts. As if lying politicians are above the law. Rather, democracy is above the law. Because demo-cracy (literally: "people in control" in ancient Greek) is that which makes the laws. Besides, what "fraud" would the leave campaign be charged with? They didn't do any or at any level, any more fraud than the stay campaign.

carsongross 10y ago

We were never fact-based. We just have the internet now to, occasionally, figure out just how duped we've always been.

sjwright 10y ago
That is true, however the parallel truth is that politicians now have better access to these sources of information as well. Greater availability of correct information has shifted the default assumed motive, however slightly, away from sincere ignorance and towards willful, means-justify-the-ends deception.
- carsongross 10y ago
  shifted the default assumed motive For me, not even a little bit.

ZeroGravitas 10y ago

There's some research that suggests conservative people have a preference for simple answers. I think I see elements of that in Brexit and Trump. Trump for example, rails against NAFTA. And let's just set aside the fact that he blames Clinton for it, when it was written and signed and voted in by Republicans. Even if it was a Clinton or Democrat thimg, whether it is good or not is complex, I'd want an expert to explain it to me. That leaves an opening for people like Trump.

sinxoveretothex 10y ago
> There's some research that suggests conservative people have a preference for simple answers That's quite the study you have there… Also, how simple is the statement "conservatives are the ones looking for simple answers"? It's also puzzling that you would liken Trump to "conservatives", when it seems like there's quite a few definitely conservative people out there who flat out refused to endorse him (all three Bush for example, Ted Cruz, John Kasich among others). http://time.com/4372882/john-kasich-donald-trump-republicans-election/ http://time.com/4372882/john-kasich-donald-trump-republicans...
- ZeroGravitas 10y ago
  Here's an article arguing against my claim: http://heterodoxacademy.org/2016/01/07/are-conservatives-really-simple-minded/ http://heterodoxacademy.org/2016/01/07/are-conservatives-rea... But note they begin by stating that it is widely regarded as true, by people with various different backgrounds and specialist knowledge, and they're not really that confident in their rebuttal even though they've presented a paper that undermines the evidence of that theory in one particular narrow area. "The current consensus in psychology is that political conservatives are uniquely simple-minded. Indeed, even the famous critic of political bias and Heterodox contributor Jonathan Haidt (and colleagues) suggested that there is a “consistent difference between liberals and conservatives” on several measurements related to cognitive complexity"

MichaelGG 10y ago

Does Trump flat-out lie? On the times I've examined what he's said, it seems he's rather careful to leave himself an out. I.e. he might be "technically" correct. Looking over Politifact on him, for instance, shows many cases where he'll make a claim on XYZ that's actually sourced, but it's on the high-end of their range, or from a source that's not very good. Or it's things that can't be backed up, like his personal eyewitness accounts.

nl 10y ago
Does Trump flat-out lie? Yes. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/07/01/donald-trump-has-been-wrong-way-more-often-than-all-the-other-2016-candidates-combined/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/07/01/do...
daveguy 10y ago
> Does Trump flat-out lie? And yes. You did say you saw this, right? After seeing this I'm not sure what is in question. http://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/ http://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/ You can go to the "people" menu and compare it with other people. Yes. He flat-out lies. More than most politicians.

doctorstupid 10y ago

When you feel powerless the truth seems irrelevant.

mnemonicsloth 10y ago

This article spends a lot of time on Donald Trump, The author doesn't understand his supporters or why they tolerate his truthlessness. They do it for a reason. I know this because of an article I read today, a dialogue between a journalist and a Yale law grad who's written a book on the white working class he grew up in. Here's the article. It's better than this one. http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/trump-us-politics-poor-whites/ http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/trump-us-polit...

Mithaldu 10y ago
If you're american and don't believe you guys, as a country, love shitposting in every form, then you are honestly badly out of touch. I spent the weekend talking to a lot of americans about the events in munich, and a big majority of them was happy to quite simply shitpost about it en masse even if every evidence that came out contradicted them. CNN didn't help either.
- mnemonicsloth 10y ago
  I am out of touch. I still think the word 'shitposting' makes you sound like a loudmouth with a poor grasp of English. And I think you've replied to the wrong post. I haven't said a word about what Americans like or don't like. So maybe you're a little out of touch too.
  - Mithaldu 10y ago
    > I still think the word 'shitposting' makes you sound like a loudmouth with a poor grasp of English. Not my creation, welcome to the youth of the usa (30 and below). Try googling it. As to "wrong post", i could swear your post originally called the author of the article out of touch. Either i am misremembering or you edited it. (And i just checked, HN does not mark edited posts.) Further, the author does spend a lot of time on trump, but this part condenses to "americans like shitposting and trump exploits that": > This is a (dark) joy. All the madness you feel, you can now let it out and it’s okay. The very point of Trump is to validate the pleasure of spouting shit, the joy of pure emotion, often anger, without any sense.

force_reboot 10y ago

I can't excuse the right for being post-fact, but the left who control much of the media and work environment hardly set a good example themselves. Here are some facts that will help you lose your job in the post-fact workplace: - Black Americans commit crimes at around 5x the rates of White Americans. - Most mainstream scholarship does not explain this by, for example, Black Americans actually committing murder, for example, at the same rate as Whites, but getting arrested, charged and convicted at 5x the rate. - Most mainstream scholarship (presumably not done by neo-nazis, but in fact by liberals) attributes this differences in part to cultural differences, and not only to objective conditions such as poverty and education. Put another way, it's not possible to construct a regression equation where you put variables like parental education, income etc. on the right hand side, along with race, and the coefficient on race comes out as zero or insignificant. And people have certainly tried. Note that you have to get past 3 separate layers of non-facts before you get to where most of mainstream scholarship is. And that's not because mainstream academics are to the right of journalists, it's because they don't believe that it's beneficial for ordinary people to know these things because they might interpret these facts differently. - For heterosexual Whites, the risk of HIV infection extremely low, and HIV infection is inherently more easily spread by anal intercourse (not that other diseases aren't a good reason to use protection).

madgar 10y ago
> For heterosexual Whites, the risk of HIV infection extremely low, and HIV infection is inherently more easily spread by anal intercourse (not that other diseases aren't a good reason to use protection). Remind me again why this is a matter of public policy. Are you going to propose a program to help people in need, like promoting condom use, like the left? Are you going to suggest unconstitutional sodomy laws, like the right? Pointing out this detail - and putting the focus on it without even suggesting a solution - makes it sound like you think gay people themselves are themselves a problem that need solving.