> It will make more ideas have to stand on their own merits This is a reasonable position to take, but I'm afraid it's somewhat at odds with the current realit

> It will make more ideas have to stand on their own merits This is a reasonable position to take, but I'm afraid it's somewhat at odds with the current reality on the ground. The problem being stated here isn't that "absent the ability to provide image/video/audio evidence and trust it as untampered, we will be left adrift in a sea of confusion", it's that we aren't ready to compensate for the problems that lack of trust creates yet. For the vast majority of people in our society, nothing has changed since 15 years ago. They still trust that everything they see on the news (at least, the news source of their choice) is real. (This despite the fact that it's been terrifyingly easy for decades to create a narrative with no actual alteration of the source footage—just clever editing. See, eg, "The Illusion of Truth", from the 4th season of Babylon 5, aired in 1997, for a great illustration of this effect. Not to mention a great example of how science fiction draws attention to real social issues of the time, but can't easily predict what technologies we'll have available—or they just would've made deepfakes of John and Delenn there instead.) All in all, I hope you're right—and I think that ultimately, we will develop a more robust ability, as a society, to make up our minds based on principles and values rather than on who says what...but I'm afraid that we will have some very rough times in the near-to-medium term before we can get there. Because we're not ready yet.