Post-Truth (The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series)
"If we turn this wonderful technology we have for knowledge into a weapon for disinformation," he told me, "we are in deep trouble." Why? "Because we won't know what we know, and we won't know who to trust, and we won't know whether we're informed or misinformed. We may become either paranoid and hyper-sceptical, or just apathetic and unmoved. Both... See more
Tom Chatfield • Daniel Dennett: 'Why civilisation is more fragile than we realised'
Few questions today are more salient or more vital than the ones we’re asking about truth. Who determines the truth? How do we know when it’s true? Does it even matter? Can my truth be different from your truth? And what happens if it is? These issues have arisen alongside a parallel question about lies and falsehood. Google Trends shows that the p
... See moreAshley Rindsberg • The Gray Lady Winked: How the New York Times's Misreporting, Distortions and Fabrications Radically Alter History
For the first time there are facts and (in Kellyanne Conway’s notorious phrase) ‘alternative facts’. As facts become fluid they become contestable; the truth becomes (once again) something you assert, not something you prove. It used to be a peculiar characteristic of totalitarian regimes that they made the facts fit their purposes; now it seems th... See more
Diana M. Smith • Putting an end to political nonsense
It is often said, rather casually, that truth is dissolving, that we live in the ‘post-truth era’. But truth is one of our central concepts – perhaps our most central concept – and I don’t think we can do without it.