6 ms·

A subset of the authors point is the "truth collapse". It's increasingly difficult to differentiate truth from falsehood. Also increasingly difficult to differ

A subset of the authors point is the "truth collapse". It's increasingly difficult to differentiate truth from falsehood. Also increasingly difficult to differentiate between truth and 'almost' truth. A further problem, likely in the future will be 'source collapse'. It will be increasingly difficult to determine the actual source of news, with unlimited sharing and distribution. Add in to this mix of chaos AI generated news articles, it may well be possible that people will shun internet news altogether.

heavenlyblue 6y ago
You could simply use cryptography to sign all messages sent by sources. Problem solved.
- kumarvvr 6y ago
  That will not solve the problem to the average user. Also, even if all sources are verified, it is already very trivial to create a new publication or a "news" source and make it look legitimate in a few months. It's a very messed up situation.
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    Agreed on the modal user, but two quibbles: (a) how often does anyone follow secondary sources that are only a few months old? (b) it is less trivial to create new primary sources. (not that publishers are in the habit of giving easily followed references)
- numpad0 6y ago
  Cryptography can be used to verify random person as authentic random person, yeah
- pjc50 6y ago
  "You can't sign a quote", said a spokesperson for the Misuse Of Crypto Bureau today.
- pixl97 6y ago
  Just remember to say nothing that the .Gov doesn't approve of.
ianhorn 6y ago
Today, a common "good" chain of custody of facts is a broken game of telephone that's hard to unwind anyways. How often on social media do you see something like someone on reddit/fb/wherever posting an article reporting on a mainstream publications's article reporting on a scientific study of some phenomenon. And then most people will still only read the headline, which is probably going to turn "Effects of blahblazine on rat tissue in petri dishes" into "Scientists say coffee makes you live longer." If that's the best the ecosystem can do to report on good science, what hope is there? Reality is almost always nuanced, but nuance doesn't go viral, and everything has to go viral to bubble up to visibility.
webdva 6y ago
> A subset of the authors point is the "truth collapse". It's increasingly difficult to differentiate truth from falsehood. Also increasingly difficult to differentiate between truth and 'almost' truth. It's kinda hard for there to be, in actuality and in an objective sense, a destruction of truth when, really, truth never existed in the first place except as a perspective-based pragmatic tool and even a self-actualized Other-being. Really, when one person claims that truth is becoming destroyed or something, such occurence is actually an instance of a contest of truths, all equally valid, in essence, with the one that has the most ambition able to enjoy the fruit of victory. That's why "fake news" is often touted: a transgressive action on its antithesis and opponent that is the "false."
- kumarvvr 6y ago
  Contest of truths sounds an awful lot like alternative facts. I disagree with you. There may be many perspectives to a truth, but there is always a singular absolute truth. Something that can be objectively stated, without judgement.
  - ranger207 6y ago
    >Something that can be objectively stated, without judgement. You can't always find the objective truth. Was Trump _really_ joking when he suggested people drink bleach? You can conclude with reasonable certainty that he was or wasn't based on his previous patterns of action or whatever, but the only way to truly know what he meant is to be him. And your interpretation of his previous actions will necessarily be incomplete: there's always going to be something that you don't know about that could potentially change your interpretation, and each event in his history that you base your interpretation on will have to be analyzed with the same amount of rigor. It's possibly for a person to perform this analysis, that's a biographer's entire job, but to do it for every person in current events, for every situation, for every conflict and incident is impossible. So yes, there is an objective truth, but you can't always be certain that you know it. If you're not dedicating your entire career to analyzing one thing then you'll have to rely on heuristics, and those heuristics will be built on top of your knowledge and analysis of past things which are also based on heuristics, which are based on more heuristics, etc. Those heuristics, the way you analyze and interpret events, are only as important as the information available to you for you to build upon. If your primary source of information is Fox News then your heuristics will be that of course the President was joking, but if your heuristics are based on information from HuffPo then you'll come to the opposite conclusion. If you want to reject your heuristics and find the truth based on first principles, or at least come as close to the truth as possible, you'll need to do quite a bit of research into the issue, and by the time you've finished there'll be another five things the President has said for you to find the truth of. It's simply impossible to determine the truth of current events without using heuristics and avoid falling behind, but those heuristics are based on known truth only indirectly. Does there exist an objective truth? Yes, but it can't be found in a reasonable amount of time. It's much more important to focus on the heuristics people use to determine truth for themselves. Postscript: algorithmic newsfeeds that optimize for engagement are optimizing for inevitable unconcious biases, confirmation bias in particular, and are great for biasing your heuristics unfairly. I'm not saying the truth is always somewhere in the middle, but I am saying that if your heuristics are always skewed to one side you won't be able to recognize when your heuristics are leading you astray and when the truth is in fact in the middle or even the other side. If you get anything out of this, at least try to figure out what echo chambers you're in and look outside of them.
roughly 6y ago
Neal Stephenson's latest book ("Fall, or Dodge in Hell") has a subplot around this that I really wish he'd developed further - I think it's the best part of the book.
- nicbou 6y ago
  Is the book any good? I loved Snow Crash and especially Cryptonomicon.
  - roughly 6y ago
    It was alright. I’m a big fan of Stephenson, and I can see what he was trying to do with it, but the main plot line of the book just wasn’t that interesting to me. Parts of the side plot felt almost prophetic, though - he draws out some contemporary trends in ways that feel frighteningly plausible.
class4behavior 6y ago
>It's increasingly difficult to differentiate truth from falsehood. Also increasingly difficult to differentiate between truth and 'almost' truth. Our decreasing ability to recognize truth is merely a consequence - and we've never been great at it anyway. It is the concept of consideration that is crumbling. A lot of people either don't take the time (wilfully or not) or simply don't have the ability to reason out their interaction with a sample of information before they accept and internalize that event as is. Especially the appeal of social exchange pulls in even the sturdiest critical thinkers to make an immediate judgment and an emotional investment. That is then the trap which forms our digital and eventually real life bubbles. The Information Age demands a strong familiarity with our own flaws, our behavioural, cognitive psychology, and sociological tendencies in particular. Since that is by far not the case, we've become a lot more vulnerable to self- and external manipulation. That is why content collapse has had such a negative impact on society.

heavenlyblue 6y ago

You could simply use cryptography to sign all messages sent by sources. Problem solved.

kumarvvr 6y ago
That will not solve the problem to the average user. Also, even if all sources are verified, it is already very trivial to create a new publication or a "news" source and make it look legitimate in a few months. It's a very messed up situation.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  Agreed on the modal user, but two quibbles: (a) how often does anyone follow secondary sources that are only a few months old? (b) it is less trivial to create new primary sources. (not that publishers are in the habit of giving easily followed references)
numpad0 6y ago
Cryptography can be used to verify random person as authentic random person, yeah
pjc50 6y ago
"You can't sign a quote", said a spokesperson for the Misuse Of Crypto Bureau today.
pixl97 6y ago
Just remember to say nothing that the .Gov doesn't approve of.

ianhorn 6y ago

Today, a common "good" chain of custody of facts is a broken game of telephone that's hard to unwind anyways. How often on social media do you see something like someone on reddit/fb/wherever posting an article reporting on a mainstream publications's article reporting on a scientific study of some phenomenon. And then most people will still only read the headline, which is probably going to turn "Effects of blahblazine on rat tissue in petri dishes" into "Scientists say coffee makes you live longer." If that's the best the ecosystem can do to report on good science, what hope is there? Reality is almost always nuanced, but nuance doesn't go viral, and everything has to go viral to bubble up to visibility.

webdva 6y ago

> A subset of the authors point is the "truth collapse". It's increasingly difficult to differentiate truth from falsehood. Also increasingly difficult to differentiate between truth and 'almost' truth. It's kinda hard for there to be, in actuality and in an objective sense, a destruction of truth when, really, truth never existed in the first place except as a perspective-based pragmatic tool and even a self-actualized Other-being. Really, when one person claims that truth is becoming destroyed or something, such occurence is actually an instance of a contest of truths, all equally valid, in essence, with the one that has the most ambition able to enjoy the fruit of victory. That's why "fake news" is often touted: a transgressive action on its antithesis and opponent that is the "false."

kumarvvr 6y ago
Contest of truths sounds an awful lot like alternative facts. I disagree with you. There may be many perspectives to a truth, but there is always a singular absolute truth. Something that can be objectively stated, without judgement.
- ranger207 6y ago
  >Something that can be objectively stated, without judgement. You can't always find the objective truth. Was Trump _really_ joking when he suggested people drink bleach? You can conclude with reasonable certainty that he was or wasn't based on his previous patterns of action or whatever, but the only way to truly know what he meant is to be him. And your interpretation of his previous actions will necessarily be incomplete: there's always going to be something that you don't know about that could potentially change your interpretation, and each event in his history that you base your interpretation on will have to be analyzed with the same amount of rigor. It's possibly for a person to perform this analysis, that's a biographer's entire job, but to do it for every person in current events, for every situation, for every conflict and incident is impossible. So yes, there is an objective truth, but you can't always be certain that you know it. If you're not dedicating your entire career to analyzing one thing then you'll have to rely on heuristics, and those heuristics will be built on top of your knowledge and analysis of past things which are also based on heuristics, which are based on more heuristics, etc. Those heuristics, the way you analyze and interpret events, are only as important as the information available to you for you to build upon. If your primary source of information is Fox News then your heuristics will be that of course the President was joking, but if your heuristics are based on information from HuffPo then you'll come to the opposite conclusion. If you want to reject your heuristics and find the truth based on first principles, or at least come as close to the truth as possible, you'll need to do quite a bit of research into the issue, and by the time you've finished there'll be another five things the President has said for you to find the truth of. It's simply impossible to determine the truth of current events without using heuristics and avoid falling behind, but those heuristics are based on known truth only indirectly. Does there exist an objective truth? Yes, but it can't be found in a reasonable amount of time. It's much more important to focus on the heuristics people use to determine truth for themselves. Postscript: algorithmic newsfeeds that optimize for engagement are optimizing for inevitable unconcious biases, confirmation bias in particular, and are great for biasing your heuristics unfairly. I'm not saying the truth is always somewhere in the middle, but I am saying that if your heuristics are always skewed to one side you won't be able to recognize when your heuristics are leading you astray and when the truth is in fact in the middle or even the other side. If you get anything out of this, at least try to figure out what echo chambers you're in and look outside of them.

roughly 6y ago

Neal Stephenson's latest book ("Fall, or Dodge in Hell") has a subplot around this that I really wish he'd developed further - I think it's the best part of the book.

nicbou 6y ago
Is the book any good? I loved Snow Crash and especially Cryptonomicon.
- roughly 6y ago
  It was alright. I’m a big fan of Stephenson, and I can see what he was trying to do with it, but the main plot line of the book just wasn’t that interesting to me. Parts of the side plot felt almost prophetic, though - he draws out some contemporary trends in ways that feel frighteningly plausible.

class4behavior 6y ago

>It's increasingly difficult to differentiate truth from falsehood. Also increasingly difficult to differentiate between truth and 'almost' truth. Our decreasing ability to recognize truth is merely a consequence - and we've never been great at it anyway. It is the concept of consideration that is crumbling. A lot of people either don't take the time (wilfully or not) or simply don't have the ability to reason out their interaction with a sample of information before they accept and internalize that event as is. Especially the appeal of social exchange pulls in even the sturdiest critical thinkers to make an immediate judgment and an emotional investment. That is then the trap which forms our digital and eventually real life bubbles. The Information Age demands a strong familiarity with our own flaws, our behavioural, cognitive psychology, and sociological tendencies in particular. Since that is by far not the case, we've become a lot more vulnerable to self- and external manipulation. That is why content collapse has had such a negative impact on society.