A few years ago, well before Trump was a thing, a writer asked me what I feared about the future. After thinking about it for a few minutes, I answered 'the pos

A few years ago, well before Trump was a thing, a writer asked me what I feared about the future. After thinking about it for a few minutes, I answered 'the post-truth society'. Even without AI algos, we were already well on our way with 'traditional' evidence forging technology and public discourse manipulations, to cast reasonable suspicion on everything we see or hear. Simple AI accelerated and deskilled the former, and combined with ubiquitous social networks exponentially empowered the latter. The thing is: these truth undermining technologies need not be perfect to have the effect, just 'good enough' to cast significant doubt and allow near everyone to believe their own 'truths'. The result will be a highly dis-empathic society, where trust beyond the most closest 'clan' is close to nil and even then some. Confusion always empowered narcissist and sociopaths, the con-artists and the cultists. It isn't so hard to see anymore how old civilizations could devolve into the dark ages.