13 ms·

Telling the whole truth in a post-truth environment

77 points by zhengiszen 10y ago

coldtea 10y ago
When did OECD ever told the truth?
programminggeek 10y ago
It's ironic that in a world that teaches and believes in relativism and no objective knowledge, truth, and morality people are all of a sudden worried about objective truth.
- gedy 10y ago
  That's only believed so far as to water-down and weaken traditional belief and moral systems. Same as 'freedom of speech'
- enraged_camel 10y ago
  You are confusing morality, which is indeed be subjective and relative in many cases, to objective truths, which are by definition objective.
- KirinDave 10y ago
  I'm not entirely sure what you're referring to, but it is not inconsistent to suggest that previously held "objective" truths being revealed as social constructs is not a de-objectivication (forgive me for that) of these concepts but an acceptance of their reality. In general, this helps people who want to argue on ideological grounds rather than hurting them. It's bad for people who want to treat somewhat arbitrary concepts as objective to stifle debate. A good example: gender roles vary so much culturally and possess so many outliers in the data that attempting to argue for an objective ground truth almost invariably ignores or dismisses numerous counter examples.
  - Shubley 10y ago
    The thing is, in a lot of ways those gender roles actually are universal. Not among individuals, of course, but among societies, there are no exceptions to these: "M&F seen as having different natures" "F->M direct child care" "M->F more competitive" "M->F greater spatial range" etc Steven Pinker talks about this (and much else) in this speech. Skip to 26:56 for this particular point. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n691pLhQBkw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n691pLhQBkw An objective truth doesn't have to apply to every individual without exception, to be an objective truth. It just has to be a consistent trend. So M/F differences like the above really are objective truths, the same as "men are taller than women" or "cougars are more dangerous than goats". (edit: this is not to say anything prescriptive about what ought to be done; it's simply a descriptive statement. Of course Pinker covers all this ground; I recommend the whole talk)
    - KirinDave 10y ago
      > An objective truth doesn't have to apply to every individual without exception, to be an objective truth. I agree with this. We can objectively say, for example, that in the US many women end up as primary care providers for children. We can even note that because of breastfeeding & postnatal recovery we expect to see women become primary care providers. But what I'm hinting at is that a lot of people are using "objective facts" as a code for extremely prescriptive speech right now on the grounds that the observation of majority means that that majority is correct, hence my mention of gender roles. A lot of criticism of the notion of "post-modern" thought is that it questions norms previously thought to be purely objective. The degree to which one does this is of course an individual thing and we need to constantly affirm the boundary beyond which it no longer makes sense to erode the pretense of objective truth (e.g., the Sokal paper).
    - adrienne 10y ago
      Pinker isn't an anthropologist, and his statements about "universal" gender roles across every fucking society in history are false. Common, sure. Universal, nope.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  Relativism is an excuse for doing whatever the fuck you want. A lot of things are more objective than people want to accept.
  - UnoriginalGuy 10y ago
    Relativism is about thinking not doing. And while objective truth does exist, I think the moral panic recently about being "post truth" is a little hyperbolic. Tabloid-style media has been a major issue in politics since the printing press was invented. And while people might complain about the "other side" being in an echo chamber, I'd suggest that in the internet age people are less isolated now than they have been at any point in human history. It is exactly BECAUSE of the lack of isolation that people are butting heads so often right now. In previous years different local communities would receive radically different media that only re-enforces their previously held beliefs. I guess my point is that while objective truth is in fact real, both sides also have truths that they claim are objective while in reality they're relativistic. Just the issue of coal alone brings that to light with both the left and right having their objective truths, neither of which encompass the entire picture.
    - TeMPOraL 10y ago
      > Just the issue of coal alone brings that to light with both the left and right having their objective truths, neither of which encompass the entire picture. Here is where I don't get people: my default intuition when facing people with firm beliefs that conflict with mine is to broaden my picture and see what happens when I include other side's arguments in it. But it seems that this line of thinking is for some reason hard for many people. I'm not sure why.
- guscost 10y ago
  I've been going on about this and annoying my friends recently. The biggest loser in this election hasn't actually been the media or the Democrats, it's postmodernism. I'm not sure what comes next, or whether the academics will swing back towards absolutism or not. But if postmodernism was still kicking last year, it is definitely dead and buried by now.
omegaworks 10y ago
Happy to see this sentiment echoed in places with influence. Nancy Pelosi gave a surprisingly similar answer (quoting the same Adam Smith reference material!) in her town hall.[0] The gap between rich and poor is widening massively, the middle is dissolving and they're (finally) acknowledging that such a process inevitably leads to the destabilization of the entire system. Whether it's too little, too late remains to be seen. 0. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MR65ZhO6LGA&ebc=ANyPxKoh0L2swqxM8qc5wNhhZqiMY3GbhM2-FKfYNS5uyABHlm7qFTE6agt7Q4Vuun_7led7KBKsym9Zl6Tgt-uCm2CPmoGSew https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MR65ZhO6LGA&ebc=ANyPxKoh0L2swq...
- marknutter 10y ago
  Wouldn't globalism be the main cause of the middle class dissolving?
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    Depends on whether you think policy could be effective in preventing other countries from developing and offering cheap exports. International trade also has a big competitor in mechanization and automation. For example, big machinery ate up small farms and mining jobs.
  - omegaworks 10y ago
    That's a really good question. I think the truth is nuanced here. Globalization and free trade increased the total wealth of the world, but that wealth was not distributed in a way that minimized the impact on labor and middle class stability.
enraged_camel 10y ago
Over the past few decades, we have seen the slogan "a rising tide lifts all boats" thoroughly debunked. Indeed, it is possible for macroeconomic measurements to improve without large segments of the population seeing the fruits of those improvements. That's why it's incredibly important for political leaders to connect with people from all walks of life. Bill Clinton understood this very well. Hillary, unfortunately, did not. She was content with relying on polls and numbers, which of course could not capture many truths that, by their nature, cannot be quantified.
- facepalm 10y ago
  Not even sure if that is true, as most measurements seem to be relative, like "x% are poorer than y%". Even if income has stagnated, it seems possible that buying power has increased. I guess many measures try to correct for that, but maybe it is not enough. I was impressed when I visited a medieval castle, where the luxuries of the lord included an automatically served table (that is, it would be manually lifted up from the kitchen). That required a whole castle with who knows how many employees. These days, everybody can just Microwave their food, for a few bucks. Even though (almost) everybody is poorer than the medieval landlord in relative terms, in absolute terms everybody is richer.
kome 10y ago
oh, OECD, tu quoque! After having been the lapdog to some economicist / reductionist vision of the world and having contributed to serious damage - are you waking up? It's too late. And you are still part of the problem, not of the solutions.
alphonsegaston 10y ago
I think the ultimate success of the reaction to Trump is dependent on the Left positing a new, viable economic alternative. Neoliberal Capitalism has failed to create the circumstances necessary for large swathes of the population to survive, and any attempt to return to it is just going to create the same crisis of democratic institutions we have now. Marginally cheaper consumer goods, easy access to opiates, and temp work as an app-directed member of a servant class can't replace being able to afford a place to live, healthcare, or to take care of your children. Right now, I don't see anything like a new vision of the future coming out of the Left, just (in my view)a justified horror at the direction the country is heading. I've been trying to think about what something better might look like, and I hope people more versed in these subjects than I are doing so as well.
- euyyn 10y ago
  I think that the plenty of industry jobs in developing and manufacturing renewable energy systems that Clinton proposed is a pretty nice vision. Blue collar jobs where the coal industry was gone, pushing America to be the world leader in these technologies which are arguably the future.
- qnix 10y ago
  If you go look, you will have a hard time picking a 50 year period in history, where everything was going well, a nice clean "vision" was neatly laid out and everyone got on board and did their bit. Just ask your parents and grandparents. It never happened. And they didn't have to deal with zillion different over-optimized, hyper efficient propaganda machines pumping fear into the ether 24*7, and they will still tell you times were chaotic. But they survived and things got better.
  - refurb 10y ago
    This is a great point. It seems like human nature to look back with rose colored glasses. I hear people say how great the US was 20 or 40 years ago. Do a search for news back then and you'll see the same doomsday news article and constant fretting for the future of the country. It was so bad you'd think the world was falling apart. I always liked this view: "The world is falling apart!" "When was the last time it wasn't?"
mercurialshark 10y ago
Sadly "post-truth" rhetoric misses the point entirely and manages to endorse ignorance of reality. When was society ever persuaded by "facts" alone? It's more than intellectual cowardice and naivety - it's lazy thinking. You still need to convince people that certain facts presented are of such significance as to supersede preconceived notions, prejudices or personal opinions. Throwing a temper-tantrum and feigning shock when people don't agree with you is like speaking louder at someone who doesn't speak your language. Try instead to learn how to communicate effectively and persuasively.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- neptr 10y ago
  I don't think the term post truth refers to frustration that society is not persuaded by your version of truth. I think its refers to the fact that individuals can intentionally make untrue statements and that these mistruths catch on and spread. The fact that untrue statements spread through communities regardless of the ease of refuting them, that easily confirmed refutations are often disregarded if they come from out groups, and that there seems to be little to no consequence to spreading mistruths all seem to me to be factors interesting enough at least for a term to be coined for them.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
refurb 10y ago
When did adding "post-" in front of different nouns become a thing? "Post-money", "Post-rational", "Post-liberty". It never ends. It just comes across as an attempt at sounding clever by claiming the world has changed and you're the only one that's realized it.
- codehusker 10y ago
  We currently live in the post-post, of course.
- guessbest 10y ago
  It is a very Post-Modern nomenclature to what are essentially Current Trends.
zeteo 10y ago
> we have been happy to rely on economic models that work with comfortingly quantitative facts on GDP, income per capita [...] If we go beyond averages and GDP per capita and look at the distributional impact of our economic decisions for instance, the picture is devastating. Up to 40 percent of people [...] have not seen their situation improve in the last decades [...] lower income groups accumulate disadvantages > The NAEC agenda is ambitious, calling for a new growth narrative that recognises the complexity of human behaviour and institutions, and calls on sociology, psychology, biology, history, and other disciplines to [...] build better models to inform economic decisions So the issue is growing inequality, and the solution is to muddy the waters with unproven models (potentially mixing dozens of disciplines)? The OECD collected data on growing inequality all along [1], but apparently they chose to recommend policies based on GDP averages instead. There's nothing "post-truth" and "emotional, not rational" about people who "have not seen their situation improve in the last decades" and "accumulate disadvantages". What's disconcerting is throwing out the whole concept of rationality instead of admitting they should have recommended policies based on different data (which they had). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient#Gini_coefficients_of_income_distributions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient#Gini_coeffici...
- ethbro 10y ago
  > Our “truths” did not capture very relevant dimensions that inform people’s decisions (including recent political decisions), and particularly those that are intangible or non- measurable concepts. This is why such important issues as justice, trust or social cohesion were just ignored in the models. Indeed, neoliberal economics taught us that people are rational, and that they will always take the best decisions according to the information they have to maximize utility. "Particularly those that are intangible or non- measurable concepts" doesn't sound like a retreat from rationality to me. It sounds like a belated acceptance (or more likely, an internal power shift in a debate that's been going on a while) that their rational models had substantial blind spots.
Neputys 10y ago
Sorry, but using such terms as "Populism, the backlash against globalization" is exactly what I call "deliberate misrepresentation of the facts and realities".
didibus 10y ago
The real issue is that no one actually cares about others. We're all pretending like we're trying to find the best system to give everyone equal opportunity and a better quality of life, but in practice this is not happening. Government serves itself, and voters serves themselves. This is true of Trump and it would have been true of Hilary. There, I just laid down the whole truth, now what? Can we really escape our human condition?
- zeroer 10y ago
  Yes. You can die.
  - didibus 10y ago
    I'm not really seeing a rebuttal. Are you disagreeing with my axiom that we are all inherently self-centred and selfish? If not, I'm actually asking for suggestions as to what societal model could account for it, and still succeed at providing equal opportunity and enhanced quality of life for all. I guess I'm open to anything except the "Savior/Champion will rise" type of models.
    - zeroer 10y ago
      I'm not rebutting anything. I mostly agree with you that we have inherent tendencies to be self-centered and selfish. I was just giving you the straightforward answer to your question. You asked if we can escape the human condition. I think it's pretty easy and we'll all accomplish it; we'll die. That's the escape.

77 points by zhengiszen 10y ago

When did OECD ever told the truth?

It's ironic that in a world that teaches and believes in relativism and no objective knowledge, truth, and morality people are all of a sudden worried about objective truth.

gedy 10y ago
That's only believed so far as to water-down and weaken traditional belief and moral systems. Same as 'freedom of speech'
enraged_camel 10y ago
You are confusing morality, which is indeed be subjective and relative in many cases, to objective truths, which are by definition objective.
KirinDave 10y ago
I'm not entirely sure what you're referring to, but it is not inconsistent to suggest that previously held "objective" truths being revealed as social constructs is not a de-objectivication (forgive me for that) of these concepts but an acceptance of their reality. In general, this helps people who want to argue on ideological grounds rather than hurting them. It's bad for people who want to treat somewhat arbitrary concepts as objective to stifle debate. A good example: gender roles vary so much culturally and possess so many outliers in the data that attempting to argue for an objective ground truth almost invariably ignores or dismisses numerous counter examples.
- Shubley 10y ago
  The thing is, in a lot of ways those gender roles actually are universal. Not among individuals, of course, but among societies, there are no exceptions to these: "M&F seen as having different natures" "F->M direct child care" "M->F more competitive" "M->F greater spatial range" etc Steven Pinker talks about this (and much else) in this speech. Skip to 26:56 for this particular point. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n691pLhQBkw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n691pLhQBkw An objective truth doesn't have to apply to every individual without exception, to be an objective truth. It just has to be a consistent trend. So M/F differences like the above really are objective truths, the same as "men are taller than women" or "cougars are more dangerous than goats". (edit: this is not to say anything prescriptive about what ought to be done; it's simply a descriptive statement. Of course Pinker covers all this ground; I recommend the whole talk)
  - KirinDave 10y ago
    > An objective truth doesn't have to apply to every individual without exception, to be an objective truth. I agree with this. We can objectively say, for example, that in the US many women end up as primary care providers for children. We can even note that because of breastfeeding & postnatal recovery we expect to see women become primary care providers. But what I'm hinting at is that a lot of people are using "objective facts" as a code for extremely prescriptive speech right now on the grounds that the observation of majority means that that majority is correct, hence my mention of gender roles. A lot of criticism of the notion of "post-modern" thought is that it questions norms previously thought to be purely objective. The degree to which one does this is of course an individual thing and we need to constantly affirm the boundary beyond which it no longer makes sense to erode the pretense of objective truth (e.g., the Sokal paper).
  - adrienne 10y ago
    Pinker isn't an anthropologist, and his statements about "universal" gender roles across every fucking society in history are false. Common, sure. Universal, nope.
TeMPOraL 10y ago
Relativism is an excuse for doing whatever the fuck you want. A lot of things are more objective than people want to accept.
- UnoriginalGuy 10y ago
  Relativism is about thinking not doing. And while objective truth does exist, I think the moral panic recently about being "post truth" is a little hyperbolic. Tabloid-style media has been a major issue in politics since the printing press was invented. And while people might complain about the "other side" being in an echo chamber, I'd suggest that in the internet age people are less isolated now than they have been at any point in human history. It is exactly BECAUSE of the lack of isolation that people are butting heads so often right now. In previous years different local communities would receive radically different media that only re-enforces their previously held beliefs. I guess my point is that while objective truth is in fact real, both sides also have truths that they claim are objective while in reality they're relativistic. Just the issue of coal alone brings that to light with both the left and right having their objective truths, neither of which encompass the entire picture.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    > Just the issue of coal alone brings that to light with both the left and right having their objective truths, neither of which encompass the entire picture. Here is where I don't get people: my default intuition when facing people with firm beliefs that conflict with mine is to broaden my picture and see what happens when I include other side's arguments in it. But it seems that this line of thinking is for some reason hard for many people. I'm not sure why.
guscost 10y ago
I've been going on about this and annoying my friends recently. The biggest loser in this election hasn't actually been the media or the Democrats, it's postmodernism. I'm not sure what comes next, or whether the academics will swing back towards absolutism or not. But if postmodernism was still kicking last year, it is definitely dead and buried by now.

omegaworks 10y ago

Happy to see this sentiment echoed in places with influence. Nancy Pelosi gave a surprisingly similar answer (quoting the same Adam Smith reference material!) in her town hall.[0] The gap between rich and poor is widening massively, the middle is dissolving and they're (finally) acknowledging that such a process inevitably leads to the destabilization of the entire system. Whether it's too little, too late remains to be seen. 0. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MR65ZhO6LGA&ebc=ANyPxKoh0L2swqxM8qc5wNhhZqiMY3GbhM2-FKfYNS5uyABHlm7qFTE6agt7Q4Vuun_7led7KBKsym9Zl6Tgt-uCm2CPmoGSew https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MR65ZhO6LGA&ebc=ANyPxKoh0L2swq...

marknutter 10y ago
Wouldn't globalism be the main cause of the middle class dissolving?
- maxerickson 10y ago
  Depends on whether you think policy could be effective in preventing other countries from developing and offering cheap exports. International trade also has a big competitor in mechanization and automation. For example, big machinery ate up small farms and mining jobs.
- omegaworks 10y ago
  That's a really good question. I think the truth is nuanced here. Globalization and free trade increased the total wealth of the world, but that wealth was not distributed in a way that minimized the impact on labor and middle class stability.

enraged_camel 10y ago

Over the past few decades, we have seen the slogan "a rising tide lifts all boats" thoroughly debunked. Indeed, it is possible for macroeconomic measurements to improve without large segments of the population seeing the fruits of those improvements. That's why it's incredibly important for political leaders to connect with people from all walks of life. Bill Clinton understood this very well. Hillary, unfortunately, did not. She was content with relying on polls and numbers, which of course could not capture many truths that, by their nature, cannot be quantified.

facepalm 10y ago
Not even sure if that is true, as most measurements seem to be relative, like "x% are poorer than y%". Even if income has stagnated, it seems possible that buying power has increased. I guess many measures try to correct for that, but maybe it is not enough. I was impressed when I visited a medieval castle, where the luxuries of the lord included an automatically served table (that is, it would be manually lifted up from the kitchen). That required a whole castle with who knows how many employees. These days, everybody can just Microwave their food, for a few bucks. Even though (almost) everybody is poorer than the medieval landlord in relative terms, in absolute terms everybody is richer.

kome 10y ago

oh, OECD, tu quoque! After having been the lapdog to some economicist / reductionist vision of the world and having contributed to serious damage - are you waking up? It's too late. And you are still part of the problem, not of the solutions.

alphonsegaston 10y ago

I think the ultimate success of the reaction to Trump is dependent on the Left positing a new, viable economic alternative. Neoliberal Capitalism has failed to create the circumstances necessary for large swathes of the population to survive, and any attempt to return to it is just going to create the same crisis of democratic institutions we have now. Marginally cheaper consumer goods, easy access to opiates, and temp work as an app-directed member of a servant class can't replace being able to afford a place to live, healthcare, or to take care of your children. Right now, I don't see anything like a new vision of the future coming out of the Left, just (in my view)a justified horror at the direction the country is heading. I've been trying to think about what something better might look like, and I hope people more versed in these subjects than I are doing so as well.

euyyn 10y ago
I think that the plenty of industry jobs in developing and manufacturing renewable energy systems that Clinton proposed is a pretty nice vision. Blue collar jobs where the coal industry was gone, pushing America to be the world leader in these technologies which are arguably the future.
qnix 10y ago
If you go look, you will have a hard time picking a 50 year period in history, where everything was going well, a nice clean "vision" was neatly laid out and everyone got on board and did their bit. Just ask your parents and grandparents. It never happened. And they didn't have to deal with zillion different over-optimized, hyper efficient propaganda machines pumping fear into the ether 24*7, and they will still tell you times were chaotic. But they survived and things got better.
- refurb 10y ago
  This is a great point. It seems like human nature to look back with rose colored glasses. I hear people say how great the US was 20 or 40 years ago. Do a search for news back then and you'll see the same doomsday news article and constant fretting for the future of the country. It was so bad you'd think the world was falling apart. I always liked this view: "The world is falling apart!" "When was the last time it wasn't?"

mercurialshark 10y ago

Sadly "post-truth" rhetoric misses the point entirely and manages to endorse ignorance of reality. When was society ever persuaded by "facts" alone? It's more than intellectual cowardice and naivety - it's lazy thinking. You still need to convince people that certain facts presented are of such significance as to supersede preconceived notions, prejudices or personal opinions. Throwing a temper-tantrum and feigning shock when people don't agree with you is like speaking louder at someone who doesn't speak your language. Try instead to learn how to communicate effectively and persuasively.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
neptr 10y ago
I don't think the term post truth refers to frustration that society is not persuaded by your version of truth. I think its refers to the fact that individuals can intentionally make untrue statements and that these mistruths catch on and spread. The fact that untrue statements spread through communities regardless of the ease of refuting them, that easily confirmed refutations are often disregarded if they come from out groups, and that there seems to be little to no consequence to spreading mistruths all seem to me to be factors interesting enough at least for a term to be coined for them.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

refurb 10y ago

When did adding "post-" in front of different nouns become a thing? "Post-money", "Post-rational", "Post-liberty". It never ends. It just comes across as an attempt at sounding clever by claiming the world has changed and you're the only one that's realized it.

codehusker 10y ago
We currently live in the post-post, of course.
guessbest 10y ago
It is a very Post-Modern nomenclature to what are essentially Current Trends.

zeteo 10y ago

> we have been happy to rely on economic models that work with comfortingly quantitative facts on GDP, income per capita [...] If we go beyond averages and GDP per capita and look at the distributional impact of our economic decisions for instance, the picture is devastating. Up to 40 percent of people [...] have not seen their situation improve in the last decades [...] lower income groups accumulate disadvantages > The NAEC agenda is ambitious, calling for a new growth narrative that recognises the complexity of human behaviour and institutions, and calls on sociology, psychology, biology, history, and other disciplines to [...] build better models to inform economic decisions So the issue is growing inequality, and the solution is to muddy the waters with unproven models (potentially mixing dozens of disciplines)? The OECD collected data on growing inequality all along [1], but apparently they chose to recommend policies based on GDP averages instead. There's nothing "post-truth" and "emotional, not rational" about people who "have not seen their situation improve in the last decades" and "accumulate disadvantages". What's disconcerting is throwing out the whole concept of rationality instead of admitting they should have recommended policies based on different data (which they had). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient#Gini_coefficients_of_income_distributions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient#Gini_coeffici...

ethbro 10y ago
> Our “truths” did not capture very relevant dimensions that inform people’s decisions (including recent political decisions), and particularly those that are intangible or non- measurable concepts. This is why such important issues as justice, trust or social cohesion were just ignored in the models. Indeed, neoliberal economics taught us that people are rational, and that they will always take the best decisions according to the information they have to maximize utility. "Particularly those that are intangible or non- measurable concepts" doesn't sound like a retreat from rationality to me. It sounds like a belated acceptance (or more likely, an internal power shift in a debate that's been going on a while) that their rational models had substantial blind spots.

Neputys 10y ago

Sorry, but using such terms as "Populism, the backlash against globalization" is exactly what I call "deliberate misrepresentation of the facts and realities".

didibus 10y ago

The real issue is that no one actually cares about others. We're all pretending like we're trying to find the best system to give everyone equal opportunity and a better quality of life, but in practice this is not happening. Government serves itself, and voters serves themselves. This is true of Trump and it would have been true of Hilary. There, I just laid down the whole truth, now what? Can we really escape our human condition?

zeroer 10y ago
Yes. You can die.
- didibus 10y ago
  I'm not really seeing a rebuttal. Are you disagreeing with my axiom that we are all inherently self-centred and selfish? If not, I'm actually asking for suggestions as to what societal model could account for it, and still succeed at providing equal opportunity and enhanced quality of life for all. I guess I'm open to anything except the "Savior/Champion will rise" type of models.
  - zeroer 10y ago
    I'm not rebutting anything. I mostly agree with you that we have inherent tendencies to be self-centered and selfish. I was just giving you the straightforward answer to your question. You asked if we can escape the human condition. I think it's pretty easy and we'll all accomplish it; we'll die. That's the escape.