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It's been really interesting to me to see how the concept that lying in support of your preferred narrative is the correct way to engage publicly with a problem

It's been really interesting to me to see how the concept that lying in support of your preferred narrative is the correct way to engage publicly with a problem has evolved over the last few years. It seems like only a few years ago that people who admitted to this strategy were roundly condemned. Now, it's a completely normal view to go out of your way to openly endorse lying about eg science as a moral course of action (this is far from the first time I've seen this expressed, and it extends to journalists and other figures with reputations to think about). I wonder if in a few years, we'll have tipped fully over to condemning those who publish or report science that doesn't fit a preferred narrative (though this already happens to some degree, as with Case and Deaton's study on white working class mortality). It's of a piece with the general decline in liberalism of the last 10 years (as another example, take the reputation of free speech as a concept), but I guess what I'm describing is how grotesquely fascinating it is to see a society and its institutions so rapidly lose their connection to basic decency and honesty. I'm not naive enough to think this was some hyperstable equilibrium, but it's fascinating to see how rapidly it happens.

obelos 7y ago
“Put simply, our first suggestion is _don’t expect to counter the firehose of falsehood with the squirt gun of truth_.”[1] Climate denialism is the proverbial firehose of lies. Finely parsing words to maintain some Panglossian notion of a market dominated by rational choice of information-rich actors is not going to turn us away from disaster. [1] https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/perspectives/PE100/PE198/RAND_PE198.pdf https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/perspectives/PE10...
- wutbrodo 7y ago
  Thank you, this is a thoughtful response. That being said, the argument you're linking to, while quite sound, doesn't disagree with me. It's saying that, when rebutting concerted propaganda, simply making the truth available in an undirected manner and hoping people will find it isn't enough: you have to make an effort to get it to the right places at the right time. There's no endorsement therein of suppressing or falsifying facts. Slavish dedication to narrative over truth is putting the cart before the horse: any number of movements that we now remember as grotesque, "alternative facts"-driven impediments to society's progress started out on relatively sound epistemic footing and failed to adapt. The beauty of the scientific method (and the scientific establishment, when it's functioning well) is that it allows us to gracefully transition away from narratives that are increasingly anachronistic or incompatible with our observations. To go back to your link, consider what defines "propaganda": is it disliking conclusions, or is it indifference towards truth? I'd argue that your link defines it as the latter. For many of us, the conflict isn't between the good set of lies and the bad set of lies, it's between those who intentionally embrace and propagate lies and those who strive for an accurate model of the world. Anyone who's skimmed a history book can tell you that the "good" and "bad" labels don't tend to be very persistent... (the 20th century and it's hundred million dead of utopianism is rich with examples of this).
  - obelos 7y ago
    I don't disagree with this, and I'm not advocating for creating or perpetuating “noble lies.” But look at the framing of the OP article. It is the perfect example of the squirt gun of truth. The headline refutes a metaphorical statement, not a factual claim. There are ways one could counter particulars or improve the quality of the metaphor without altogether tossing it in the bin. Saying the Amazon rain forest is the Earth's lungs has lots of metaphorical applicability. It speaks to people's intuition about how forests cycle water around the planet as a quasi-respiration organs, very much like gas- and water-exchanging lungs. And with similar importance to the “organism” of Earth's biosphere. The author could have focused on expounding the ways in which the metaphor holds to underlying scientifically-verifiable truth, taking asides here and there to correct misinformation. As it's framed, and as the headline emphasizes, that approach is ignored in favor of the “gotcha!” truth-telling that, despite its couple of meager attempts to point out how critical the Amazon is to life on Earth, allows the reader to walk away with the impression that things really aren't as bad as they previously thought, and so maybe they can just ignore the issue or deprioritize it a little but longer. And the skimmer looks at just the headline and is justified in their status quo understanding that there is a climate “debate” with two sides that really should be considered by someone, somewhere.
    - wutbrodo 7y ago
      > Saying the Amazon rain forest is the Earth's lungs has lots of metaphorical applicability. It speaks to people's intuition about how forests cycle water around the planet as a quasi-respiration organs, very much like gas- and water-exchanging lungs. And with similar importance to the “organism” of Earth's biosphere. I've always heard the metaphor accompanied tightly by the claim that it's a significant fraction of the Earth's oxygen production, and denying the metaphor seemed to me to imply nothing further than the refutation of this fact, particularly in light of the first paragraph's strong claims that avoiding deforestation is important. I just don't see why it's critical that he emphasize that point in the firm of holding up the existing metaphor. I read the article (and I think the author intended it) as a pretty classic popular-science case of "here's a common misconception", and as shallow as that may be, it has value. At any rate, it ounds like we're on roughly the same page overall, and our remaining differences are starting to inch towards pedantry. Thanks for the conversation!
mistermann 7y ago
> It's been really interesting to me to see how the concept that lying in support of your preferred narrative is the correct way to engage publicly with a problem has evolved over the last few years. It seems like only a few years ago that people who admitted to this strategy were roundly condemned. I often think of the election of Donald Trump in this sense...in a way, he is showing us crystal clear how our political dialogue, if not our entire perception of reality, is illusory. Who would have thought that someone could run for president largely on a platform of obvious lies and one-dimensional platitudes? Well, now we know. And rather than the left being shocked into a higher state of consciousness and considering they may need to rethink their overall political strategy, instead it seems they've essentially decided to double down with more of the same theater. I hoped there would have at least been some serious consideration of a strategy consisting of campaigning on the actual truth (to the best of their ability), rather than just "more true". So many people, particularly those on the left I would say (the right tends to be in their own little world), think politics is based on a battle of facts, when really it is a battle of memes. It doesn't have to be, but someone righteous has to be allowed to make it through the Democratic primaries if we hope to ever move forward in this respect.
- wutbrodo 7y ago
  > And rather than the left being shocked into a higher state of consciousness and considering they may need to rethink their overall political strategy, instead it seems they've essentially decided to double down with more of the same theater. Every time I think I've found the first mover, there's a justification that goes further back. I'm a solid left-liberal, represented most closely by Obama, who discovered through the left's increasing embrace of dishonesty/bigotry/other dirty tactics that his liberal identity was more important than his leftist one. This was years and years before Trump ever entered the scene, and I know people on the right who consider Trump almost as much of a monster as I do, but also consider him to be a necessary fight-fire-with-fire evil against the left's dirty tricks. And of course, many leftists who embraced illiberalism in that period can reasonably point to something that GWB did as their justification for further weakening norms. And so on and so on ad infinitum. Anybody with a brain and a history book understands that that's a positive feedback loop that's caused untold amounts of suffering over the course of history, and the social technologies we call liberalism smooth out the tendencies of this cycle to escalate and sublimate the "kill everyone you disagree with" impulses of most of history into progressively gentler forms of resolving conflicting ideas of how the world should be, while still allowing for progress. That isn't to say that norms and institutions are always sacrosanct and that sharp breaks are never a good idea, but thinking that this started with Trump betrays a misunderstanding of the way these things work and why liberalism exists in the first place.
kian 7y ago
I wonder to what degree weaponized propaganda is aimed at liberalism and its component beliefs directly. Perhaps this could explain to some extent the speed of dissolution? Or has it always been this way?

obelos 7y ago

“Put simply, our first suggestion is _don’t expect to counter the firehose of falsehood with the squirt gun of truth_.”[1] Climate denialism is the proverbial firehose of lies. Finely parsing words to maintain some Panglossian notion of a market dominated by rational choice of information-rich actors is not going to turn us away from disaster. [1] https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/perspectives/PE100/PE198/RAND_PE198.pdf https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/perspectives/PE10...

wutbrodo 7y ago
Thank you, this is a thoughtful response. That being said, the argument you're linking to, while quite sound, doesn't disagree with me. It's saying that, when rebutting concerted propaganda, simply making the truth available in an undirected manner and hoping people will find it isn't enough: you have to make an effort to get it to the right places at the right time. There's no endorsement therein of suppressing or falsifying facts. Slavish dedication to narrative over truth is putting the cart before the horse: any number of movements that we now remember as grotesque, "alternative facts"-driven impediments to society's progress started out on relatively sound epistemic footing and failed to adapt. The beauty of the scientific method (and the scientific establishment, when it's functioning well) is that it allows us to gracefully transition away from narratives that are increasingly anachronistic or incompatible with our observations. To go back to your link, consider what defines "propaganda": is it disliking conclusions, or is it indifference towards truth? I'd argue that your link defines it as the latter. For many of us, the conflict isn't between the good set of lies and the bad set of lies, it's between those who intentionally embrace and propagate lies and those who strive for an accurate model of the world. Anyone who's skimmed a history book can tell you that the "good" and "bad" labels don't tend to be very persistent... (the 20th century and it's hundred million dead of utopianism is rich with examples of this).
- obelos 7y ago
  I don't disagree with this, and I'm not advocating for creating or perpetuating “noble lies.” But look at the framing of the OP article. It is the perfect example of the squirt gun of truth. The headline refutes a metaphorical statement, not a factual claim. There are ways one could counter particulars or improve the quality of the metaphor without altogether tossing it in the bin. Saying the Amazon rain forest is the Earth's lungs has lots of metaphorical applicability. It speaks to people's intuition about how forests cycle water around the planet as a quasi-respiration organs, very much like gas- and water-exchanging lungs. And with similar importance to the “organism” of Earth's biosphere. The author could have focused on expounding the ways in which the metaphor holds to underlying scientifically-verifiable truth, taking asides here and there to correct misinformation. As it's framed, and as the headline emphasizes, that approach is ignored in favor of the “gotcha!” truth-telling that, despite its couple of meager attempts to point out how critical the Amazon is to life on Earth, allows the reader to walk away with the impression that things really aren't as bad as they previously thought, and so maybe they can just ignore the issue or deprioritize it a little but longer. And the skimmer looks at just the headline and is justified in their status quo understanding that there is a climate “debate” with two sides that really should be considered by someone, somewhere.
  - wutbrodo 7y ago
    > Saying the Amazon rain forest is the Earth's lungs has lots of metaphorical applicability. It speaks to people's intuition about how forests cycle water around the planet as a quasi-respiration organs, very much like gas- and water-exchanging lungs. And with similar importance to the “organism” of Earth's biosphere. I've always heard the metaphor accompanied tightly by the claim that it's a significant fraction of the Earth's oxygen production, and denying the metaphor seemed to me to imply nothing further than the refutation of this fact, particularly in light of the first paragraph's strong claims that avoiding deforestation is important. I just don't see why it's critical that he emphasize that point in the firm of holding up the existing metaphor. I read the article (and I think the author intended it) as a pretty classic popular-science case of "here's a common misconception", and as shallow as that may be, it has value. At any rate, it ounds like we're on roughly the same page overall, and our remaining differences are starting to inch towards pedantry. Thanks for the conversation!

mistermann 7y ago

> It's been really interesting to me to see how the concept that lying in support of your preferred narrative is the correct way to engage publicly with a problem has evolved over the last few years. It seems like only a few years ago that people who admitted to this strategy were roundly condemned. I often think of the election of Donald Trump in this sense...in a way, he is showing us crystal clear how our political dialogue, if not our entire perception of reality, is illusory. Who would have thought that someone could run for president largely on a platform of obvious lies and one-dimensional platitudes? Well, now we know. And rather than the left being shocked into a higher state of consciousness and considering they may need to rethink their overall political strategy, instead it seems they've essentially decided to double down with more of the same theater. I hoped there would have at least been some serious consideration of a strategy consisting of campaigning on the actual truth (to the best of their ability), rather than just "more true". So many people, particularly those on the left I would say (the right tends to be in their own little world), think politics is based on a battle of facts, when really it is a battle of memes. It doesn't have to be, but someone righteous has to be allowed to make it through the Democratic primaries if we hope to ever move forward in this respect.

wutbrodo 7y ago
> And rather than the left being shocked into a higher state of consciousness and considering they may need to rethink their overall political strategy, instead it seems they've essentially decided to double down with more of the same theater. Every time I think I've found the first mover, there's a justification that goes further back. I'm a solid left-liberal, represented most closely by Obama, who discovered through the left's increasing embrace of dishonesty/bigotry/other dirty tactics that his liberal identity was more important than his leftist one. This was years and years before Trump ever entered the scene, and I know people on the right who consider Trump almost as much of a monster as I do, but also consider him to be a necessary fight-fire-with-fire evil against the left's dirty tricks. And of course, many leftists who embraced illiberalism in that period can reasonably point to something that GWB did as their justification for further weakening norms. And so on and so on ad infinitum. Anybody with a brain and a history book understands that that's a positive feedback loop that's caused untold amounts of suffering over the course of history, and the social technologies we call liberalism smooth out the tendencies of this cycle to escalate and sublimate the "kill everyone you disagree with" impulses of most of history into progressively gentler forms of resolving conflicting ideas of how the world should be, while still allowing for progress. That isn't to say that norms and institutions are always sacrosanct and that sharp breaks are never a good idea, but thinking that this started with Trump betrays a misunderstanding of the way these things work and why liberalism exists in the first place.

kian 7y ago

I wonder to what degree weaponized propaganda is aimed at liberalism and its component beliefs directly. Perhaps this could explain to some extent the speed of dissolution? Or has it always been this way?