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The solution was already known decades ago. Rene Magritte illustrated it well with his painting 'The Treachery of Images.' You've probably seen it. It's the

The solution was already known decades ago. Rene Magritte illustrated it well with his painting 'The Treachery of Images.' You've probably seen it. It's the one with the image of a pipe with the phrase, in French, below it saying "This is not a pipe." Images are not reality, and society has yet to grasp that distinction despite the pervasiveness of images and how long they've been around. No amount of effort will ever make images into reality, nor reality as harmless as images. People do wish for, and maybe not unreasonably so, the ability to trust their eyes and initial perceptions. They want the picture they see on a screen and perform significant acts of interpretation upon to reach some belief that it represents something that happened in reality to be proven correct. But it almost never is. The difficulty of communicating with images is just as large as communication with language, it's just not acknowledged when images are involved.

SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
That's not a solution though. That's something that would work if it could be used, but it won't, like saying the solution to having a cough being "well, just stop breathing". That's not how people are. Fake photos have been around since the Cottingley Fairies and we haven't adjusted at all, I don't think society will.
- otakucode 7y ago
  I'm not sure what you are referring to when you say "That's not a solution." I didn't really propose a solution, except perhaps implying that people generally accepting that they can't trust images without hesitation would improve things. I mentioned that communication via images is as difficult as communication via language, and we will always have to deal with the problem that sometimes the attempted communication is deceptive. The Magritte painting that I refer to isn't photorealistic, so what he was getting at wasn't really a prompt to doubt the reality of images, but a maybe subtler point that images and reality, even undoctored photographs or videos of reality, are fundamentally and profoundly different things. The 'treachery' of images is that our intuition tells us the exact opposite. We have a long history of putting our intuition to the side when it's really necessary, so I do think there's a possibility that people could come to see images and reality as more distinct than they currently do. I didn't mean to suggest that we should totally dismiss every image, that really wouldn't be any kind of solution, but simply change how much inherent weight we believe they carry. The language people use when they talk about imagery, constantly conflating images with the things they represent, tricks an awful lot of people in an awful lot of circumstances.
  - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
    > I'm not sure what you are referring to when you say "That's not a solution." I didn't really propose a solution > The solution was already known decades ago. I understand what you're saying, I just don't think that that'll change - our brain wires itself to think in shorthand as much as possible, images are part of that shorthand for reality.

SketchySeaBeast 7y ago

That's not a solution though. That's something that would work if it could be used, but it won't, like saying the solution to having a cough being "well, just stop breathing". That's not how people are. Fake photos have been around since the Cottingley Fairies and we haven't adjusted at all, I don't think society will.

otakucode 7y ago
I'm not sure what you are referring to when you say "That's not a solution." I didn't really propose a solution, except perhaps implying that people generally accepting that they can't trust images without hesitation would improve things. I mentioned that communication via images is as difficult as communication via language, and we will always have to deal with the problem that sometimes the attempted communication is deceptive. The Magritte painting that I refer to isn't photorealistic, so what he was getting at wasn't really a prompt to doubt the reality of images, but a maybe subtler point that images and reality, even undoctored photographs or videos of reality, are fundamentally and profoundly different things. The 'treachery' of images is that our intuition tells us the exact opposite. We have a long history of putting our intuition to the side when it's really necessary, so I do think there's a possibility that people could come to see images and reality as more distinct than they currently do. I didn't mean to suggest that we should totally dismiss every image, that really wouldn't be any kind of solution, but simply change how much inherent weight we believe they carry. The language people use when they talk about imagery, constantly conflating images with the things they represent, tricks an awful lot of people in an awful lot of circumstances.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
  > I'm not sure what you are referring to when you say "That's not a solution." I didn't really propose a solution > The solution was already known decades ago. I understand what you're saying, I just don't think that that'll change - our brain wires itself to think in shorthand as much as possible, images are part of that shorthand for reality.