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I think it's important to note that the truth has never been widely available, to the point where it might be useless to think of truth as being a real concept

I think it's important to note that the truth has never been widely available, to the point where it might be useless to think of truth as being a real concept to begin with. One could say that for a blip of time, we lived in a world where a large percentage of human were pushed largely accurate (if incomplete) information by mass media, allowing for something resembling consensual reality and informed democracy. We have always had to delegate verification of information to third-parties, whether those be text books, media organizations, or government officials. I don't think we should be overly sentimental about the passing of this "golden age". We have never been a society ruled by facts and logic and we have been regularly misinformed all along. The difference now is perhaps a decentralization of who is controlling this misinformation and the realization by elite institutions that they now have to contend with their loss of monopoly, either by combatting perceived and real falsehood or coopting it. It is admittedly deeply unsettling, but only to what was probably a false sense of security. Maybe instead of fretting about how to obtain more truthiness in the face of these new dynamics, the more fundamental question remains how can we achieve human welfare in a world where informed democracy is an illusion?

CM30 9y ago
Similarly, it's also worth noting that the means of verifying a story or claim weren't widely available for a long time either. Seriously, go back to before photographs became a thing in 1839 or so. How did you verify any claims at all? You usually just took people's word for it, or assumed their writings/paintings/memories were accurate. Unless you had the means to actively verify a claim yourself and the claim was about something you still could verify (aka the people involved weren't dead and the organisations and places there still existed), you never really could be sure. And the same sort of setup goes for other forms of evidence too. Audio evidence, video evidence, even things vital to crime solving now like fingerprinting and DNA testing are all new in the greater scheme of things. For most of human civilisation, being at least somewhat unsure of what's true and what isn't has been the norm, and the time periods where forms of evidence were easy to obtain and hard to fake few and far between. So yeah, it's definitely like a reset back to the olden days, and the challenges are certainly more about how to deal with informed democracy becoming an illusion again.
- Bartweiss 9y ago
  > go back to before photographs became a thing in 1839 or so My favorite taste of this is the Blackadder episode Money. Blackadder ends up blackmailing a bishop with a portrait of the man in a compromising position, and everyone simply assumes that if there's a portrait of an event, it must be real. It's a great bit of comedy just by pushing a plausible event into the past, and it looks like we're headed to that same scenario in the future. The loss of faith in photographs isn't going to be some unprecedented collapse of truth, it's going to be a return to the default position of politics and society after a mere century of novelty.
- testname123 9y ago
  While not applicable for all claims, some can be verified by consistency. For example, claims a and b cannot both be true if a is inconsistent with b, and this hold regardless of who claims a or b.
mleonhard 9y ago
> the more fundamental question remains how can we achieve human welfare in a world where informed democracy is an illusion? I think the way is to change the incentives. People in our society have various skills and abilities. Some of them are highly skilled at accumulating influence. They use that influence to get wealth. Then they leverage the wealth for more influence. Our society is structured to move those people into positions of greater and greater influence and wealth. And those without such skills are marginalized and suffer. I think a democratic society with pure socialism would not suffer from this problem. It would contain people who are good at accumulating influence, but they could not use that influence to gain more money (to leverage for more influence). Without the power-multiplying effects of wealth accumulation, influencers would be limited in their reach. That society would be less likely to develop an upper class with disproportionate power, nor marginalized middle and lower classes.
- acjohnson55 9y ago
  I feel pretty similarly. I recommend this book so much that I feel like a shill, but if you haven't read Twilight of the Elites, you'd probably like it even more than I did :) One point it makes that resonates strongly with me is that our society is structured to heap extra resources on those who already have in abundance and neglect those with unrealized potential. To say nothing of those who we think lack potential in the first place, we we often treat as subhuman. When it comes to democracy, I actually don't think a paramount principle. I think human rights, accountability, some form of consent, and private enterprise are critical, but these don't strictly imply literal democracy.

CM30 9y ago

Similarly, it's also worth noting that the means of verifying a story or claim weren't widely available for a long time either. Seriously, go back to before photographs became a thing in 1839 or so. How did you verify any claims at all? You usually just took people's word for it, or assumed their writings/paintings/memories were accurate. Unless you had the means to actively verify a claim yourself and the claim was about something you still could verify (aka the people involved weren't dead and the organisations and places there still existed), you never really could be sure. And the same sort of setup goes for other forms of evidence too. Audio evidence, video evidence, even things vital to crime solving now like fingerprinting and DNA testing are all new in the greater scheme of things. For most of human civilisation, being at least somewhat unsure of what's true and what isn't has been the norm, and the time periods where forms of evidence were easy to obtain and hard to fake few and far between. So yeah, it's definitely like a reset back to the olden days, and the challenges are certainly more about how to deal with informed democracy becoming an illusion again.

Bartweiss 9y ago
> go back to before photographs became a thing in 1839 or so My favorite taste of this is the Blackadder episode Money. Blackadder ends up blackmailing a bishop with a portrait of the man in a compromising position, and everyone simply assumes that if there's a portrait of an event, it must be real. It's a great bit of comedy just by pushing a plausible event into the past, and it looks like we're headed to that same scenario in the future. The loss of faith in photographs isn't going to be some unprecedented collapse of truth, it's going to be a return to the default position of politics and society after a mere century of novelty.
testname123 9y ago
While not applicable for all claims, some can be verified by consistency. For example, claims a and b cannot both be true if a is inconsistent with b, and this hold regardless of who claims a or b.

mleonhard 9y ago

> the more fundamental question remains how can we achieve human welfare in a world where informed democracy is an illusion? I think the way is to change the incentives. People in our society have various skills and abilities. Some of them are highly skilled at accumulating influence. They use that influence to get wealth. Then they leverage the wealth for more influence. Our society is structured to move those people into positions of greater and greater influence and wealth. And those without such skills are marginalized and suffer. I think a democratic society with pure socialism would not suffer from this problem. It would contain people who are good at accumulating influence, but they could not use that influence to gain more money (to leverage for more influence). Without the power-multiplying effects of wealth accumulation, influencers would be limited in their reach. That society would be less likely to develop an upper class with disproportionate power, nor marginalized middle and lower classes.

acjohnson55 9y ago
I feel pretty similarly. I recommend this book so much that I feel like a shill, but if you haven't read Twilight of the Elites, you'd probably like it even more than I did :) One point it makes that resonates strongly with me is that our society is structured to heap extra resources on those who already have in abundance and neglect those with unrealized potential. To say nothing of those who we think lack potential in the first place, we we often treat as subhuman. When it comes to democracy, I actually don't think a paramount principle. I think human rights, accountability, some form of consent, and private enterprise are critical, but these don't strictly imply literal democracy.