
Post-Truth (The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series)

One of the barriers to critical thinking is bathing in a constant stream of confirmation bias.
Lee McIntyre • Post-Truth (The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series)
Daniel J. Levitin entitled Weaponized Lies: How to Think Critically in the Post-Truth Era (previously published under the title A Field Guide to Lies, but retitled after the post-truth craze).
Lee McIntyre • Post-Truth (The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series)
Post-truth is not about reality; it is about the way that humans react to reality. Once we are aware of our cognitive biases, we are in a better position to subvert them.
Lee McIntyre • Post-Truth (The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series)
In an era of post-truth, we must challenge each and every attempt to obfuscate a factual matter and challenge falsehoods before they are allowed to fester.
Lee McIntyre • Post-Truth (The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series)
Yet the real problem here, I claim, is not merely the content of any particular (outrageous) belief, but the overarching idea that—depending on what one wants to be true—some facts matter more than others. It is not simply that climate-change deniers don’t believe in facts, it’s that they only want to accept those facts that justify their ideology.
Lee McIntyre • Post-Truth (The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series)
The Oxford Dictionaries define “post-truth” as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”
Lee McIntyre • Post-Truth (The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series)
The goal of propaganda is not to convince someone
Lee McIntyre • Post-Truth (The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series)
When we open our ideas up to group scrutiny, this affords us the best chance of finding the right answer. And when we are looking for the truth, critical thinking, skepticism, and subjecting our ideas to the scrutiny of others works better than anything else.
Lee McIntyre • Post-Truth (The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series)
Fake news confuses us and makes us doubt whether any source can be trusted. Once we don’t know what to believe anymore, this can be exploited. Perhaps true propaganda comes later—once it doesn’t matter whether we believe it—because we already know who is in charge.