8 ms·

Are we living in the age of info-determinism?

64 points by pseudolus 2y ago

pseudolus 2y ago
https://archive.ph/tYpml https://archive.ph/tYpml
setopt 2y ago
Betteridge would say no.
JohnFen 2y ago
> How can a society function when the rejection of knowledge becomes a political act? It cannot. Living in a "post-truth" society is just a sanitized way of saying living in a society without truth. Such a society must inevitably collapse.
- blueflow 2y ago
  > Such a society must inevitably collapse. No evidence for that.
  - JohnFen 2y ago
    I think that there is, but in true post-truth form, that's not relevant to my statement. I was stating an opinion.
    - blueflow 2y ago
      And I'm saying that countries like North Korea, unfortunately, don't collapse.
      - JohnFen 2y ago
        North Korea and such nations aren't post-truth at all, though. They have little-t truths that most of their people believe in. That's what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about capital-T Truth (of the objective sort).
      - s1artibartfast 2y ago
        I would argue that North Korea has already collapsed, and we are looking at the results.
      - rob74 2y ago
        Well, North Korea doesn't have "post-truth". It has good (or bad) old propaganda and brainwashing, but "post-truth" for me implies a plurality of (increasingly polarized) opinions. So "post-truth" can only happen in democratic societies, and is actually used by non-democratic states (Russia, North Korea, China...) to destabilize them.
- evgwugegwhwgeg 2y ago
  Rejection of beliefs not knowledge. There is a significant difference between the two.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    20 years ago, I studied philosphy. Can you define "knowledge"? We had the tripartite definition, a "justified true belief", and the argument against it exemplified by a person looking at a fluffy white creature in a field and justifiably saying that they know there is a sheep in this field, but unbeknownst to them what they're looking at is a komondor and though there is a sheep elsewhere in the field it is not visible from where they are. I think there is only belief, that we can have degrees of certainty about our beliefs but there is no way to transition to P(1) or P(0), and no specific probability other than 0 and 1 where we can reliably say that we "know" something to be true or false.
    - evgwugegwhwgeg 2y ago
      Knowledge is seeing a white pattern in visual field. Belief is labeling the pattern and calling it a sheep. Belief is also the labeling the pattern a Komondor. Belief is thinking there is a person seeing the sheep.
      - ben_w 2y ago
        > Knowledge is seeing a white pattern in visual field. That definition classifies every dream I have dreamed, every video I've seen, every game I've played, as "knowledge". If anything, it is an easier thing to dismiss than the examples you give as "beliefs". See "naive realism": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naïve_realism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naïve_realism
        evgwugegwhwgeg 2y ago
        Can beliefs exist without sensory inputs? Also isn't dismissal also just another belief?
- bee_rider 2y ago
  Most societies collapse eventually. Societies built on lies can go on for quite a while, there are tests, a war for example, that can finish them off. But even then, they might stumble along.
- silverquiet 2y ago
  I don't think there is such a thing as truth; at least not for anything that matters to human meaning. The truth is we're just apes living on a planet that we're unable to stop ourselves from destroying; a tiny, ultimately meaningless rock that will be gone one day in a universe that won't even notice, let alone care. That truth is very hard to accept (I never really have) and so we create other stories to give us meaning, but these stories are too arbitrary and subjective for us to collectively agree upon.
  - hoorayimhelping 2y ago
    >I don't think there is such a thing as truth This is a self-defeating statement. It's false on its face. If there is no such thing as truth, then this statement can't be true because it would mean there is at least one truth.
    - gadflyinyoureye 2y ago
      Not really. It’s a hyperbolic statement. It needs to be understood as such. Normally this falls into the realm of moral truth. Or perhaps in a broader sense existential truth. For example: rape is wrong is not an absolute truth. It’s just like your opinion man. In an entirely materialistic system morality is not universal. It merely the taste of whatever society wants at a time. Morality is ultimately might makes right. If you can enforce your morality through force, your morality wins. If the pro-rape camp could enforce their view, within a few generations we’d all say that the anti-rape camp was on the wrong side of history.
      - throaway814 2y ago
        [flagged]
    - throaway814 2y ago
      [flagged]
  - dgfitz 2y ago
    > I don't think there is such a thing as truth; at least not for anything that matters to human meaning. 1+1 = 2, the earth is ~80% water, water freezes at 0degC. What to you mean there aren't truths? Do you mean people form opinions that are wrong? Sure. After sitting back at looking at it, it seems like the big problem is: there are small circles of power that make decisions for the rest of their population under the guise of "best interest of the people" when in reality we all know this isn't true. So these small groups make the little people distracted with things that are very hot-button topics that affect a very small majority of people, by making appeals to emotion on both sides. The small folks eat this up, rip a huge divide, and the small circle people sit back and laugh.
- sgu999 2y ago
  > Such a society must inevitably collapse. What are the examples of that? It's closer to a phase transition than an actual collapse at the kind of scale we're talking about here. I'm not disagreeing with your sentiment, though.
  - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
    Well, a technological society that loses the idea of truth as it relates to science and technology must inevitably collapse in its level of technology. You can't maintain functioning tech on a "nothing is true" basis, because you cannot tell what will work from what won't.
- complianceowl 2y ago
  "truth doesn't exist" -- except for that truth statement you just made? If no truth can exist, then why are you making a truth statement? Truth does exist. And the ultimate truth is Christ. Yes, those words ring as ignorance to most, but just like we are forced to reckon with gravity and the laws of physics, we all will one day reckon with the ultimate truth. But it is not my job to compel anyone to believe this. I just find it fascinating that non-believers will believe in magic, ghosts, simulations, aliens, evolution, but that a Creator that exists outside of time, space, and matter created this universe? Nah, that's ignorant religious thinking.
  - JohnFen 2y ago
    > "truth doesn't exist" -- except for that truth statement you just made? I never said that truth doesn't exist.
- bloopernova 2y ago
  I think "post-truth" is a symptom of unequal power. The rich and/or powerful can push their version of truth with little or no consequences for them. Unfortunately for them, there's a tendency for those in power to start believing the yes-men: For example, in World War 2, the Japanese authoritarian regime took over newspapers and newsreels. Any time they would lose a battle, or have to withdraw, that would be stated as a victory. By the end of 1942, they had stated that the Imperial Japanese Navy had sunk "11 aircraft carriers, 11 battleships, 46 cruisers, 48 destroyers, and 93 submarines" (December 8th, 1942) The Japenese people could look at maps, and see that the "glorious victories" were somehow occurring further and further west, closer to home each time. But they had no power, no way to challenge the newspapers and announcements from Navy and Army HQs. And the constant propaganda had warped the perspectives of everyone, including progressives and liberals, so they fell in line too. A large part of Japan's defeat was because they fought an opponent capable of out-producing and out-training them. They had started to believe their own bullshit about being a superior race, about being simply better than the Americans, and as you said, collapse was inevitable. Before the atomic bombs convinced Hirohito to accept unconditional surrender, Japan was close to famine. If the war had lasted into 1946, millions of Japanese people would have died of starvation.
oldpersonintx 2y ago
[dead]
vouaobrasil 2y ago
Absolutely, we are. The greeks recognize the phenomenon early through their concept of logos, and how it comes about is teche fromw here we get the word "technology". Currently, we have built our systems so strongly that we practically develop technologically deterministically. Can we help but develop new computer security technology? No. Can we decide NOT to make computers faster, even if making new technology constantly requires the unsustainable extraction of raw materials and is polluting the entire planet? No, because SOMEONE will make their computer faster, so we call have to do so to keep up. Our modern society is so intertwined, that we cannot make decisions at ALL on which technologies to develop and which technologies not too. The Amish do it, because they have some foresight into it social impact, and because they've structured their society to place their way of life ABOVE that of technology. But the outside world IS technology now, and we are but cells in the new amalgamation of humanity and machine and we can no longer do anything about it... ...that is, until someone starts a revolution and destroys it.
39896880 2y ago
This piece mentions Harari’s new work. Has anyone read it? I find his style appealing but I have also read comments here that are eyerolls similar to how Malcolm Gladwell is received, so I am wondering if I should even bother.
- klabb3 2y ago
  My understanding is that he wraps Twitter hot takes in an aura of credibility through narrative and authority without necessarily providing any proof. So in that way I’m skeptical. And it’s also ironic that an article about post-truth lifts up those kinds of ideas. On the other hand, you could argue that at a certain philosophical high level, you can’t use current generation paradigms to meaningfully explore next generation paradigms anyway – so how else are we gonna intuit the world we’re transitioning into? I suspect that to explain emerging social phenomena we’re going to have to adopt some strange ideas, whether it’s neo-religious, postmodernism or Harari-style scientism. Pick your flavor I guess..
hungie 2y ago
Is the article worth finishing? It opens with a CIA agent complaining it's harder to be an authority when people self organize into communities and don't just listen to newspapers and political figures. Which, yeah. Of course it is, and that's a great thing. Sure, we get some fringe communities but on the whole we get so many more communities of people who want to help each other.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
dfxm12 2y ago
For more and more people, a random YouTuber seemed preferable to a credentialled expert People are too used to "having a platform" being a credential in and of itself. They wouldn't let just anyone be a TV News anchor or have a drive time talk radio show or write a book, right? There have always been snake oil salesmen, but what's unique about today is that it's very easy to make yourself look like Dan Rather or Barbara Walters or even Hunter S. Thompson. Some people fall into this false authority trap. Anecdotally, I find that older generations are more willing to accept what they see online just because it is "published" online. Hopefully this is something that works itself out as more and more people grow up with these platforms.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 2y ago
  Speaking of Dan Rather, remember he tried to pass off a forged memo as real and was called out on it by a bunch of bloggers. And recently Hollywood released a movie that tried to whitewash this. A lot of the hand-wringing about how no one cares for the truth is mainly the elite crying over the loss of power to define truth for everyone.
  - dfxm12 2y ago
    It's important to add that CBS also retracted this story.
    - pessimizer 2y ago
      Which doesn't really happen anymore. How are you going to retract Russiagate Pulitzers?
      - pjc50 2y ago
        Which Russiagate Pulitzer are you referring to, the 1932 one?
        lazyeye 2y ago
        Obviously not.
svieira 2y ago
Earthweb (https://www.baen.com/earthweb.html https://www.baen.com/earthweb.html) is a story of a version of the internet where Gurri's "acerbic internet" was a more PH-neutral environment.
bsuvc 2y ago
> I realized that I couldn’t restrict my search for evidence to the familiar authoritative sources without ignoring a near-infinite number of new sources This happens because the so-called "authoritative sources" have lost their trustworthiness, creating a vacuum that is filled by new sources, some good and some bad. The problem is, people are bad at thinking for themselves, and basically outsource their beliefs to third parties. Are we worse at this than we used to be, or has it always been like this? We need more primary sources of information, and less filters trying to persuade us, who often have unseen agendas and different motivations.
- tbrownaw 2y ago
  Gathering and evaluating information is hard work and can be a significant time sink. Most people have other things going on in their lives that they'd like to have time for.
- giancarlostoro 2y ago
  Throw in AI crap that can be insanely convincing into the fold posted by trolls and people seeking ad eyeballs.
  - fuzzfactor 2y ago
    >I realized that I couldn’t restrict my search for evidence to the familiar authoritative sources without ignoring a near-infinite number of new sources This was in the early 2000's when the CIA analyst said this, but with familiarity of a time when the majority of online sources had been trustworthy (if not completely authoritative), it was easier to navigate the pitfalls at the time. It was still possible to judiciously exploit the new sources for deep research to a worthwhile degree for another reason because there was lots more info (but noisier by far) coming from all directions, but I wouldn't say they were exactly near-infinite. Not compared to today. Now I would say it's near-infinite. Although AI may not have yet had the full effect that it could be capable of. So I could be underestimating . . .
- dageshi 2y ago
  Who really has the time or energy to actually do all that?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
RcouF1uZ4gsC 2y ago
What is funny about all this is treating Harari as some kind of expert. His training is in medieval military history. He is not an anthropologist. Yet he is always make grand pronouncements about human behavior. Most of his fame is not due to his academic achievements but because he can write very engaging popular works. Harari has a lot more in common with a popular YouTube “expert” than he would care to admit.
- pessimizer 2y ago
  Since he's using the New Yorker's journalism license here, he becomes an authority on whatever subject he wants. Disagreeing with him here is some sort of "-information" with prefix, and may get you deleted on facebook.
- carlmr 2y ago
  >His training is in medieval military history. He is not an anthropologist. Yet he is always make grand pronouncements about human behavior. Some of the best software engineers studied something else. Only because his training is in something else doesn't mean he didn't read up on it or is not knowledgeable about human behavior. Also history kind of chronicles aggregate human behavior, so it's at least a related discipline. I'm not saying he is knowledgeable, mind you, I just think you shouldn't pigeonhole people based on doing exactly what they studied. Because many people don't do exactly what they studied and are experts in it.
JohnMakin 2y ago
I have too often lately been in a situation where I cannot find any authoritative sources for a topic where there should be one. The first time this happened it was deeply unsettling - I couldn't recall going back a decade a single time I couldn't find a random piece of information - it was sometime mid-2022. Now it's so commonplace I just resign myself that I may just not get an answer to whatever question I have. The most ironic thing would be if this "post truth" situation we seem to be in drives people back to brick and mortar libraries.
- keiferski 2y ago
  I am curious about the problem from the perspective of a startup idea / nonprofit website. What would you look for in an authoritative source that doesn't exist now? And which topics were you looking into?
  - JohnMakin 2y ago
    It's not really that they don't exist, but it's silly stupid to find them now. For instance - ddg, google, doesn't really matter the search engine - typing in something like "ohtani batting average with runners in scoring position with 2 outs" used to be so easy it'd practically pop up in the quick answers with the exact link to the ESPN table or dudewhoneverleavesbasement.com that has tracked every baseball stat for the last 150 years. Now you just get basically the same results for "ohtani batting average" or "ohtani news." It's impossibly frustrating. It's like that with everything now. I guess that's more of a problem with search than anything else, but honestly, search is the main way people navigate the web. If I want anything authoritative, honestly, I'm probably going to wikipedia to see a source list and then checking out authors in the local library. Anything dated post 2022 I consider inherently unreliable.
    - keiferski 2y ago
      I've had the same bad experience with search as you've had, but my conclusion was that AI tools are just going to replace "using a search engine" in the near future. Google is more and more unusable to me. That doesn't exactly solve the authoritative problem, but theoretically it makes it more centralized (one AI company vs. innumerable websites.)
haunter 2y ago
>authoritative sources The opposite is a problem too when authoritative sources on X topic start to talk about Y topic as if they still have the same knowledge and expertise and we should trust them. I see this more and more everywhere, here on HN too.
soared 2y ago
I wonder if this is partially caused by the internet spreading accurate knowledge for the first decade or so of its existence, which went against people’s existing sets of beliefs. After which they’re primed that the beliefs they held for decades (pre-internet) could easily be wrong. How many times have you believed and old wives tale, but then found out it’s not true at all? Now apply that less to specific beliefs but more generally, and scale it across all your beliefs.
- netsharc 2y ago
  > After which they’re primed that the beliefs they held for decades (pre-internet) could easily be wrong. I wish the majority of dwellers of the Internet is able to do this (I feel I'm quite reflective), but it seems like a lot of the noise online is people insisting that they've been right the whole time...
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
adolph 2y ago
The author would have done well to read "The Beginning of Infinity" by Deutsch which has well rounded discussion of different methods of epistemology espoused over time. The development past authority need not result in anarchy. Deutsch's view, embracing fallibility can achieve an advancement of human creativity and knowledge.
isaacremuant 2y ago
Meh. Most comments here seem to be playing this pretense game that having to be critical about what you read is something that happened post 2016 and pretending the internet somehow changed things for the worse when media, biases, political influence and propaganda hasn't been a think since the Inception of the written word. If you think we're suddenly "worse" then you're probably too used to your alleged set of beliefs being spread and shared by the major narrative setters and you were too comfortable in that echo chamber. But hey, it's easier to call anyone who thinks differently some name (Today it's customary to rail against the evil right, in "the west" but your mileage may vary) and write "insightful articles" about post truth eras and the like.
akira2501 2y ago
> You can learn more about how Americans live just by looking at the backgrounds of YouTube videos—those rumpled bedrooms and toy-strewn basement rec rooms—than you could from 1,000 hours of network television.” Back then, info-determinism was exciting. Today, it feels like a challenge which we must surmount, or else. ♦ You can learn more about the deranged minds of CIA officers and "public intellectuals" from the backgrounds of their arguments than you can from taking them at face value. These people are _completely afraid_ of living in a world which does not require their permission or ideology in order to function. This article is written entirely from the "state" point of view and completely lacks any "humanity" whatsoever. > And yet, “the public opposes, but does not propose.” Demolishing ideas is easy in a subreddit; crafting new ones there is mostly beside the point. Give me a break. Tons of new ideas and new systems and new projects have been created on the internet using precisely this mechanism and with zero government authority involved. This is a completely ridiculous assertion by the article. > How can a society function when the rejection of knowledge becomes a political act? Is it the rejection of knowledge or simply the rejection of authority? Perhaps people expect those in authority to actually explain themselves, to act in a transparent manner, and to not use their power to unfairly benefit one group over another. > But democracy on a mass scale depends on mass institutions—mass media, mass education, mass culture—that seem likely to fracture or mutate with the arrival of A.I. The forms of government that flourished in one info-epoch may not thrive in the next. I'm sorry, but what a total crock of shit, this idea that "mass anything" is somehow _required_ for "mass democracy" to function, or even that "mass democracy" is something experienced in any of our governments. It really sounds like these people want to diminish humanity at all costs, in favor of AI, so they can regain control of our information space, and have the ability to manipulate the entire world en masse and without any oversight or responsibility for it. I'm completely grossed out by this article and the people within it.
- ElevenLathe 2y ago
  Thank you for articulating these criticisms. IMO people like the author are pining for high modernism when we've been in a postmodern media (and cultural) landscape for at least a couple decades now. It's the same impulse that has extremely online right wingers pining for "trad" values while posting waifus. They seem to wish we could live in the Eisenhower administration forever. Unfortunately for these people, that's just not possible. Edit: also want to add this quote: >...disillusioned voters might adopt more realistic expectations about how much leaders can improve their lives. This article positions itself against "nihilism" but this is the most nihilistic thing I've seen in a piece of political writing. This is no more than a way to say that elites should tell voters: "Peons, stop expecting your lives to get better. That's not our relationship. This is not a democracy, and your role in society is to suffer silently while also praising us."
kkfx 2y ago
IMVHO and perception we live in an era of very informed ignorance, NOT in the Socrates sense of course... I can speculate about various cohort of informed ignorant (me included), like those who demand "numbers" but not care how they was generated, so for them a "good looking" page of data CERTAINLY it's true or those who read only a specific news source and so on. The signal/noise ratio it's not a new thing of course, but the real problem is mean (absence of) culture not information per se.

64 points by pseudolus 2y ago

pseudolus 2y ago

https://archive.ph/tYpml https://archive.ph/tYpml

setopt 2y ago

Betteridge would say no.

JohnFen 2y ago

> How can a society function when the rejection of knowledge becomes a political act? It cannot. Living in a "post-truth" society is just a sanitized way of saying living in a society without truth. Such a society must inevitably collapse.

blueflow 2y ago
> Such a society must inevitably collapse. No evidence for that.
- JohnFen 2y ago
  I think that there is, but in true post-truth form, that's not relevant to my statement. I was stating an opinion.
  - blueflow 2y ago
    And I'm saying that countries like North Korea, unfortunately, don't collapse.
    - JohnFen 2y ago
      North Korea and such nations aren't post-truth at all, though. They have little-t truths that most of their people believe in. That's what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about capital-T Truth (of the objective sort).
    - s1artibartfast 2y ago
      I would argue that North Korea has already collapsed, and we are looking at the results.
    - rob74 2y ago
      Well, North Korea doesn't have "post-truth". It has good (or bad) old propaganda and brainwashing, but "post-truth" for me implies a plurality of (increasingly polarized) opinions. So "post-truth" can only happen in democratic societies, and is actually used by non-democratic states (Russia, North Korea, China...) to destabilize them.
evgwugegwhwgeg 2y ago
Rejection of beliefs not knowledge. There is a significant difference between the two.
- ben_w 2y ago
  20 years ago, I studied philosphy. Can you define "knowledge"? We had the tripartite definition, a "justified true belief", and the argument against it exemplified by a person looking at a fluffy white creature in a field and justifiably saying that they know there is a sheep in this field, but unbeknownst to them what they're looking at is a komondor and though there is a sheep elsewhere in the field it is not visible from where they are. I think there is only belief, that we can have degrees of certainty about our beliefs but there is no way to transition to P(1) or P(0), and no specific probability other than 0 and 1 where we can reliably say that we "know" something to be true or false.
  - evgwugegwhwgeg 2y ago
    Knowledge is seeing a white pattern in visual field. Belief is labeling the pattern and calling it a sheep. Belief is also the labeling the pattern a Komondor. Belief is thinking there is a person seeing the sheep.
    - ben_w 2y ago
      > Knowledge is seeing a white pattern in visual field. That definition classifies every dream I have dreamed, every video I've seen, every game I've played, as "knowledge". If anything, it is an easier thing to dismiss than the examples you give as "beliefs". See "naive realism": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naïve_realism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naïve_realism
      - evgwugegwhwgeg 2y ago
        Can beliefs exist without sensory inputs? Also isn't dismissal also just another belief?
bee_rider 2y ago
Most societies collapse eventually. Societies built on lies can go on for quite a while, there are tests, a war for example, that can finish them off. But even then, they might stumble along.
silverquiet 2y ago
I don't think there is such a thing as truth; at least not for anything that matters to human meaning. The truth is we're just apes living on a planet that we're unable to stop ourselves from destroying; a tiny, ultimately meaningless rock that will be gone one day in a universe that won't even notice, let alone care. That truth is very hard to accept (I never really have) and so we create other stories to give us meaning, but these stories are too arbitrary and subjective for us to collectively agree upon.
- hoorayimhelping 2y ago
  >I don't think there is such a thing as truth This is a self-defeating statement. It's false on its face. If there is no such thing as truth, then this statement can't be true because it would mean there is at least one truth.
  - gadflyinyoureye 2y ago
    Not really. It’s a hyperbolic statement. It needs to be understood as such. Normally this falls into the realm of moral truth. Or perhaps in a broader sense existential truth. For example: rape is wrong is not an absolute truth. It’s just like your opinion man. In an entirely materialistic system morality is not universal. It merely the taste of whatever society wants at a time. Morality is ultimately might makes right. If you can enforce your morality through force, your morality wins. If the pro-rape camp could enforce their view, within a few generations we’d all say that the anti-rape camp was on the wrong side of history.
    - throaway814 2y ago
      [flagged]
  - throaway814 2y ago
    [flagged]
- dgfitz 2y ago
  > I don't think there is such a thing as truth; at least not for anything that matters to human meaning. 1+1 = 2, the earth is ~80% water, water freezes at 0degC. What to you mean there aren't truths? Do you mean people form opinions that are wrong? Sure. After sitting back at looking at it, it seems like the big problem is: there are small circles of power that make decisions for the rest of their population under the guise of "best interest of the people" when in reality we all know this isn't true. So these small groups make the little people distracted with things that are very hot-button topics that affect a very small majority of people, by making appeals to emotion on both sides. The small folks eat this up, rip a huge divide, and the small circle people sit back and laugh.
sgu999 2y ago
> Such a society must inevitably collapse. What are the examples of that? It's closer to a phase transition than an actual collapse at the kind of scale we're talking about here. I'm not disagreeing with your sentiment, though.
- AnimalMuppet 2y ago
  Well, a technological society that loses the idea of truth as it relates to science and technology must inevitably collapse in its level of technology. You can't maintain functioning tech on a "nothing is true" basis, because you cannot tell what will work from what won't.
complianceowl 2y ago
"truth doesn't exist" -- except for that truth statement you just made? If no truth can exist, then why are you making a truth statement? Truth does exist. And the ultimate truth is Christ. Yes, those words ring as ignorance to most, but just like we are forced to reckon with gravity and the laws of physics, we all will one day reckon with the ultimate truth. But it is not my job to compel anyone to believe this. I just find it fascinating that non-believers will believe in magic, ghosts, simulations, aliens, evolution, but that a Creator that exists outside of time, space, and matter created this universe? Nah, that's ignorant religious thinking.
- JohnFen 2y ago
  > "truth doesn't exist" -- except for that truth statement you just made? I never said that truth doesn't exist.
bloopernova 2y ago
I think "post-truth" is a symptom of unequal power. The rich and/or powerful can push their version of truth with little or no consequences for them. Unfortunately for them, there's a tendency for those in power to start believing the yes-men: For example, in World War 2, the Japanese authoritarian regime took over newspapers and newsreels. Any time they would lose a battle, or have to withdraw, that would be stated as a victory. By the end of 1942, they had stated that the Imperial Japanese Navy had sunk "11 aircraft carriers, 11 battleships, 46 cruisers, 48 destroyers, and 93 submarines" (December 8th, 1942) The Japenese people could look at maps, and see that the "glorious victories" were somehow occurring further and further west, closer to home each time. But they had no power, no way to challenge the newspapers and announcements from Navy and Army HQs. And the constant propaganda had warped the perspectives of everyone, including progressives and liberals, so they fell in line too. A large part of Japan's defeat was because they fought an opponent capable of out-producing and out-training them. They had started to believe their own bullshit about being a superior race, about being simply better than the Americans, and as you said, collapse was inevitable. Before the atomic bombs convinced Hirohito to accept unconditional surrender, Japan was close to famine. If the war had lasted into 1946, millions of Japanese people would have died of starvation.

oldpersonintx 2y ago

[dead]

vouaobrasil 2y ago

Absolutely, we are. The greeks recognize the phenomenon early through their concept of logos, and how it comes about is teche fromw here we get the word "technology". Currently, we have built our systems so strongly that we practically develop technologically deterministically. Can we help but develop new computer security technology? No. Can we decide NOT to make computers faster, even if making new technology constantly requires the unsustainable extraction of raw materials and is polluting the entire planet? No, because SOMEONE will make their computer faster, so we call have to do so to keep up. Our modern society is so intertwined, that we cannot make decisions at ALL on which technologies to develop and which technologies not too. The Amish do it, because they have some foresight into it social impact, and because they've structured their society to place their way of life ABOVE that of technology. But the outside world IS technology now, and we are but cells in the new amalgamation of humanity and machine and we can no longer do anything about it... ...that is, until someone starts a revolution and destroys it.

39896880 2y ago

This piece mentions Harari’s new work. Has anyone read it? I find his style appealing but I have also read comments here that are eyerolls similar to how Malcolm Gladwell is received, so I am wondering if I should even bother.

klabb3 2y ago
My understanding is that he wraps Twitter hot takes in an aura of credibility through narrative and authority without necessarily providing any proof. So in that way I’m skeptical. And it’s also ironic that an article about post-truth lifts up those kinds of ideas. On the other hand, you could argue that at a certain philosophical high level, you can’t use current generation paradigms to meaningfully explore next generation paradigms anyway – so how else are we gonna intuit the world we’re transitioning into? I suspect that to explain emerging social phenomena we’re going to have to adopt some strange ideas, whether it’s neo-religious, postmodernism or Harari-style scientism. Pick your flavor I guess..

hungie 2y ago

Is the article worth finishing? It opens with a CIA agent complaining it's harder to be an authority when people self organize into communities and don't just listen to newspapers and political figures. Which, yeah. Of course it is, and that's a great thing. Sure, we get some fringe communities but on the whole we get so many more communities of people who want to help each other.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

dfxm12 2y ago

For more and more people, a random YouTuber seemed preferable to a credentialled expert People are too used to "having a platform" being a credential in and of itself. They wouldn't let just anyone be a TV News anchor or have a drive time talk radio show or write a book, right? There have always been snake oil salesmen, but what's unique about today is that it's very easy to make yourself look like Dan Rather or Barbara Walters or even Hunter S. Thompson. Some people fall into this false authority trap. Anecdotally, I find that older generations are more willing to accept what they see online just because it is "published" online. Hopefully this is something that works itself out as more and more people grow up with these platforms.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 2y ago
Speaking of Dan Rather, remember he tried to pass off a forged memo as real and was called out on it by a bunch of bloggers. And recently Hollywood released a movie that tried to whitewash this. A lot of the hand-wringing about how no one cares for the truth is mainly the elite crying over the loss of power to define truth for everyone.
- dfxm12 2y ago
  It's important to add that CBS also retracted this story.
  - pessimizer 2y ago
    Which doesn't really happen anymore. How are you going to retract Russiagate Pulitzers?
    - pjc50 2y ago
      Which Russiagate Pulitzer are you referring to, the 1932 one?
      - lazyeye 2y ago
        Obviously not.

svieira 2y ago

Earthweb (https://www.baen.com/earthweb.html https://www.baen.com/earthweb.html) is a story of a version of the internet where Gurri's "acerbic internet" was a more PH-neutral environment.

bsuvc 2y ago

> I realized that I couldn’t restrict my search for evidence to the familiar authoritative sources without ignoring a near-infinite number of new sources This happens because the so-called "authoritative sources" have lost their trustworthiness, creating a vacuum that is filled by new sources, some good and some bad. The problem is, people are bad at thinking for themselves, and basically outsource their beliefs to third parties. Are we worse at this than we used to be, or has it always been like this? We need more primary sources of information, and less filters trying to persuade us, who often have unseen agendas and different motivations.

tbrownaw 2y ago
Gathering and evaluating information is hard work and can be a significant time sink. Most people have other things going on in their lives that they'd like to have time for.
giancarlostoro 2y ago
Throw in AI crap that can be insanely convincing into the fold posted by trolls and people seeking ad eyeballs.
- fuzzfactor 2y ago
  >I realized that I couldn’t restrict my search for evidence to the familiar authoritative sources without ignoring a near-infinite number of new sources This was in the early 2000's when the CIA analyst said this, but with familiarity of a time when the majority of online sources had been trustworthy (if not completely authoritative), it was easier to navigate the pitfalls at the time. It was still possible to judiciously exploit the new sources for deep research to a worthwhile degree for another reason because there was lots more info (but noisier by far) coming from all directions, but I wouldn't say they were exactly near-infinite. Not compared to today. Now I would say it's near-infinite. Although AI may not have yet had the full effect that it could be capable of. So I could be underestimating . . .
dageshi 2y ago
Who really has the time or energy to actually do all that?

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

RcouF1uZ4gsC 2y ago

What is funny about all this is treating Harari as some kind of expert. His training is in medieval military history. He is not an anthropologist. Yet he is always make grand pronouncements about human behavior. Most of his fame is not due to his academic achievements but because he can write very engaging popular works. Harari has a lot more in common with a popular YouTube “expert” than he would care to admit.

pessimizer 2y ago
Since he's using the New Yorker's journalism license here, he becomes an authority on whatever subject he wants. Disagreeing with him here is some sort of "-information" with prefix, and may get you deleted on facebook.
carlmr 2y ago
>His training is in medieval military history. He is not an anthropologist. Yet he is always make grand pronouncements about human behavior. Some of the best software engineers studied something else. Only because his training is in something else doesn't mean he didn't read up on it or is not knowledgeable about human behavior. Also history kind of chronicles aggregate human behavior, so it's at least a related discipline. I'm not saying he is knowledgeable, mind you, I just think you shouldn't pigeonhole people based on doing exactly what they studied. Because many people don't do exactly what they studied and are experts in it.

JohnMakin 2y ago

I have too often lately been in a situation where I cannot find any authoritative sources for a topic where there should be one. The first time this happened it was deeply unsettling - I couldn't recall going back a decade a single time I couldn't find a random piece of information - it was sometime mid-2022. Now it's so commonplace I just resign myself that I may just not get an answer to whatever question I have. The most ironic thing would be if this "post truth" situation we seem to be in drives people back to brick and mortar libraries.

keiferski 2y ago
I am curious about the problem from the perspective of a startup idea / nonprofit website. What would you look for in an authoritative source that doesn't exist now? And which topics were you looking into?
- JohnMakin 2y ago
  It's not really that they don't exist, but it's silly stupid to find them now. For instance - ddg, google, doesn't really matter the search engine - typing in something like "ohtani batting average with runners in scoring position with 2 outs" used to be so easy it'd practically pop up in the quick answers with the exact link to the ESPN table or dudewhoneverleavesbasement.com that has tracked every baseball stat for the last 150 years. Now you just get basically the same results for "ohtani batting average" or "ohtani news." It's impossibly frustrating. It's like that with everything now. I guess that's more of a problem with search than anything else, but honestly, search is the main way people navigate the web. If I want anything authoritative, honestly, I'm probably going to wikipedia to see a source list and then checking out authors in the local library. Anything dated post 2022 I consider inherently unreliable.
  - keiferski 2y ago
    I've had the same bad experience with search as you've had, but my conclusion was that AI tools are just going to replace "using a search engine" in the near future. Google is more and more unusable to me. That doesn't exactly solve the authoritative problem, but theoretically it makes it more centralized (one AI company vs. innumerable websites.)

haunter 2y ago

>authoritative sources The opposite is a problem too when authoritative sources on X topic start to talk about Y topic as if they still have the same knowledge and expertise and we should trust them. I see this more and more everywhere, here on HN too.

soared 2y ago

I wonder if this is partially caused by the internet spreading accurate knowledge for the first decade or so of its existence, which went against people’s existing sets of beliefs. After which they’re primed that the beliefs they held for decades (pre-internet) could easily be wrong. How many times have you believed and old wives tale, but then found out it’s not true at all? Now apply that less to specific beliefs but more generally, and scale it across all your beliefs.

netsharc 2y ago
> After which they’re primed that the beliefs they held for decades (pre-internet) could easily be wrong. I wish the majority of dwellers of the Internet is able to do this (I feel I'm quite reflective), but it seems like a lot of the noise online is people insisting that they've been right the whole time...

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

adolph 2y ago

The author would have done well to read "The Beginning of Infinity" by Deutsch which has well rounded discussion of different methods of epistemology espoused over time. The development past authority need not result in anarchy. Deutsch's view, embracing fallibility can achieve an advancement of human creativity and knowledge.

isaacremuant 2y ago

Meh. Most comments here seem to be playing this pretense game that having to be critical about what you read is something that happened post 2016 and pretending the internet somehow changed things for the worse when media, biases, political influence and propaganda hasn't been a think since the Inception of the written word. If you think we're suddenly "worse" then you're probably too used to your alleged set of beliefs being spread and shared by the major narrative setters and you were too comfortable in that echo chamber. But hey, it's easier to call anyone who thinks differently some name (Today it's customary to rail against the evil right, in "the west" but your mileage may vary) and write "insightful articles" about post truth eras and the like.

akira2501 2y ago

> You can learn more about how Americans live just by looking at the backgrounds of YouTube videos—those rumpled bedrooms and toy-strewn basement rec rooms—than you could from 1,000 hours of network television.” Back then, info-determinism was exciting. Today, it feels like a challenge which we must surmount, or else. ♦ You can learn more about the deranged minds of CIA officers and "public intellectuals" from the backgrounds of their arguments than you can from taking them at face value. These people are _completely afraid_ of living in a world which does not require their permission or ideology in order to function. This article is written entirely from the "state" point of view and completely lacks any "humanity" whatsoever. > And yet, “the public opposes, but does not propose.” Demolishing ideas is easy in a subreddit; crafting new ones there is mostly beside the point. Give me a break. Tons of new ideas and new systems and new projects have been created on the internet using precisely this mechanism and with zero government authority involved. This is a completely ridiculous assertion by the article. > How can a society function when the rejection of knowledge becomes a political act? Is it the rejection of knowledge or simply the rejection of authority? Perhaps people expect those in authority to actually explain themselves, to act in a transparent manner, and to not use their power to unfairly benefit one group over another. > But democracy on a mass scale depends on mass institutions—mass media, mass education, mass culture—that seem likely to fracture or mutate with the arrival of A.I. The forms of government that flourished in one info-epoch may not thrive in the next. I'm sorry, but what a total crock of shit, this idea that "mass anything" is somehow _required_ for "mass democracy" to function, or even that "mass democracy" is something experienced in any of our governments. It really sounds like these people want to diminish humanity at all costs, in favor of AI, so they can regain control of our information space, and have the ability to manipulate the entire world en masse and without any oversight or responsibility for it. I'm completely grossed out by this article and the people within it.

ElevenLathe 2y ago
Thank you for articulating these criticisms. IMO people like the author are pining for high modernism when we've been in a postmodern media (and cultural) landscape for at least a couple decades now. It's the same impulse that has extremely online right wingers pining for "trad" values while posting waifus. They seem to wish we could live in the Eisenhower administration forever. Unfortunately for these people, that's just not possible. Edit: also want to add this quote: >...disillusioned voters might adopt more realistic expectations about how much leaders can improve their lives. This article positions itself against "nihilism" but this is the most nihilistic thing I've seen in a piece of political writing. This is no more than a way to say that elites should tell voters: "Peons, stop expecting your lives to get better. That's not our relationship. This is not a democracy, and your role in society is to suffer silently while also praising us."

kkfx 2y ago

IMVHO and perception we live in an era of very informed ignorance, NOT in the Socrates sense of course... I can speculate about various cohort of informed ignorant (me included), like those who demand "numbers" but not care how they was generated, so for them a "good looking" page of data CERTAINLY it's true or those who read only a specific news source and so on. The signal/noise ratio it's not a new thing of course, but the real problem is mean (absence of) culture not information per se.