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.

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.

A central concept of human psychology is that we strive to avoid psychic discomfort. It is not a pleasant thing to think badly of oneself. Some psychologists call this “ego defense” (after Freudian theory), but whether we frame it within this paradigm or not, the concept is clear. It just feels better for us to think that we are smart, well-informe

Fake news is not simply news that is false; it is deliberately false.27 It has been created for a purpose. At the beginning of the 2016 election season, perhaps that purpose was “clickbait.”

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.

The “other side” of the post-truth debate does not consist of people who defend it—or think that post-truth is a good thing—but those who deny that a problem even exists.

Here we arrive at the second thesis of postmodernism: that any profession of truth is nothing more than a reflection of the political ideology of the person who is making it.

One of the barriers to critical thinking is bathing in a constant stream of confirmation bias.

In some instances laypersons feel it is in their interest to question both the motives and the competence of scientists. And this is where “science denialism” is born.