What can we trust? Why is the 'information ecology' so damaged, and what would it take to make it healthy? This is a fundamental question, because without good sensemaking, we cannot even begin to act in the world. It is also a central concern in what many are calling the "meaning crisis", because what is meaningful is connected to what is real.

It’s how all propaganda campaigns, all the way back to Edward Bernays in the 1920’s to Soviet misinfo in the Cold War roll out–the goal isn’t to replace the truth with a lie. The goal is to muddy the notion of knowable truth so thoroughly that people give up ever finding it. (a much lighter lift and just as effective)

How Not to Get Climate... See more

What bothers me most about this inflammatory language is that it provides ideological cover for only the shittiest of knee-jerk solutions. In the Progressive era, Beauregard observes, commentators believed problems could at least be fixed. Terms like “crisis,” “doom loop,” and “urban death” carry a far more intractable connotation or at least... See more