Post Truth.
If nothing is true, you can believe anything you want.
What is real? Really real. René Descartes said there was a foundation of reality. He could think, therefore he was real. That was rock solid.
Of course, we now know that rocks aren't solid, not really. They are made of atoms and electrons and protons and smaller things yet. Those particles move around and there appears to be space between each of those atomic and sub-atomic particles. And where they are at any one time is unknowable and a matter of probabilities. A rock is a useful day-to-day concept, but it isn't a thing at the quantum physics level.
I don't really know what I just wrote about rocks. I have read that physicists believe this about atoms and quantum physics. I read simplified summaries of what they think, and I take what they say on faith.
Elon Musk wrote that the universe may be a grand illusion.
If you assume any rate of improvement at all, games will eventually be indistinguishable from reality. We’re most likely in a simulation.
Maybe life is but a dream, like the song says.
This revery on reality was occasioned by an email from a reader of this blog. It had a link to this video. It shows Ukrainian air defenses. It is a dangerous time to be a Russian helicopter pilot, he wrote. The video is 71 seconds long. Dangerous, indeed.
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It looks real to me. I have never seen helicopters being shot at by anti-aircraft missiles, so the video seemed plausible. It turns out to have been footage from a video game. So it was real--real video game footage. It wasn't really the Ukrainian sky.
TV viewers in Russia and Ukraine watched President Zelenskyy tell Ukraine soldiers to lay down their arms. Only it wasn't Zelenskyy. It was a Russian deep fake.
Journalists wrote that the voice was a bit off and the appearance was imperfect. I look at the two images and they look the same to me. In fact, the one on the left looks a bit more "real" than the other. Shortly after the Russians published the fake video Zelenskyy went on Ukrainian TV and said the images they were seeing now were the real Zelenskyy. Keep fighting, that TV image said.
A quick Google search of the words "deep fake" and "AOC" immediately brings one to a rich library of pornographic videos purporting to show Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in realistic close up. This is not "photoshop" where a face is pasted over the neck of someone else. In deep fake, the eyes, mouth, lips, tongue are somehow digitally transformed using data drawn from other videos of the deep fake victim. We are seeing real pixels of AOC. What is simulated is the rearrangement of the pixels depicting words and actions she didn't do.
Apparently most people in Russia believe what they have been told that Ukrainians had been torturing and killing Russian speakers in Ukraine and that the "military action" is a humanitarian mission. In the broader context of what they have heard, it seems plausible to them. In the context of a regular viewer of Fox News, it makes sense that Biden could not possibly have won the election, especially since Trump is so adamant he won.
If nothing is really true for sure, then people are free to believe whatever story makes them happiest. This may not be consistent with a system of self-government.
9 comments:
“If nothing is really true for sure, then people are free to believe whatever story makes them happiest.”
That raises an interesting question: What is it about Trump’s hateful, destructive and just plain crazy lies that make so many people happy?
There was a time when we shared a common reality and it was generally accepted that everyone was entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. In our post-truth world, there seems to be no difference.
What Descartes should have said was, “I think, therefore I think I am.”
If the Russian people are supporting Putin, they are complicit. Ignorance only shields you so far. Therefore it's completely moral to do whatever we can to make them as accountable as their government.
This is true for us as well...
Also...our media constantly is warning us against just this kind of fakery. Every American should always be skeptical.
This does suggest a larger discussion about people's willingness to accept lies and false realities. Certainly we know that some do it for profit.
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy devoted to trying to figure out how we know what we know. Many people have said that we are currently in the initial phases of an “epistemic crisis.“ The Internet and things like deep fakes are making it more and more difficult to tell what is true from what isn’t in the midst of a blizzard of “information.”
Coupled with this, we have a very justified breakdown in trust between the masses of people and the cultural/journalistic/managerial elites, who have proven over the past decades that they are mainly self-interested and don’t give a rip about everyone else. In darker moments, I imagine things like stationing large numbers of Stinger missiles around Davos.
I have no idea what a solution might be, or how all of this is going to work out.
In college I studied psychology. I was fascinated by an experiment involving implanted memories. The subject was first convinced the person telling them a story was credible. The subject would often have a puzzled expression (video taped) and as the "actor" would smile and say something like "I see why you might not want to recall this (storyline)." Then, in a matter of seconds, the subject would look into the face of the actor and a smile of recollection would dawn on the subject. They would conclude the implanted memory was TRUE.
The volunteer subject at the conclusion of the study was shown the tape and the transcript and meet again the actor. The study was reframed as to the intension of implanting a memory that never occurred. The subject would often find it difficult to believe they'd been tricked. The subject would resist and say something like "Oh yeah! You guys are working me now to make me doubt myself." The implanted memory was stronger than their actual life experience, more vivid.
What is truth? Can we make enough people believe the story? Look no further than H G Wells "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast about the Earth being attacked by Martians. Yes we can be manipulated. It happened. It is happening now. Sales and Marketing execs stake their careers on such success. So do political operatives and propaganda specialists. PsyOps is real but the storyline is fake.
Look at how the mainstream media and tech companies buried the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Facebook has done research demonstrating their ability to influence voting via subtle algorithmic manipulations.
George Orwell’s “Ministry of Truth:” it’s not just fiction anymore.
For anyone not familiar with the story, a pro-Trump computer repair guy allegedly had laptops supposedly abandoned by Hunter Biden that were unencrypted and had all sorts of damning evidence on them. He made copies of the hard drives and gave them to Rudi Giuliani, Steve Bannon and the Post (a right-wing tabloid), which printed the contents two weeks before the 2020 election.
For some reason, reputable media were skeptical and wouldn't run with it but hey, this is post-truth America so believe whatever makes you happy.
The more mainstream the media, IMHO, the more likely it is based in truth. The checks and balances, the sheer number of eyeballs involved in the subject at hand, the less likely fake stuff is to make the headlines. Another good check is simply using character judgement and common sense. I don't think Hillary enjoys porn in a pizza parlor, for instance, based on her character. This is not rocket science in most cases, not all.
The Hunter Biden laptop 'burial' wasn't some conspiracy of the mainstream. It was, at the time, a Alex Jones headline, hardly a objective source.
Reputable media have a duty to confirm information, fact-check and retract errors.
Unfortunately, the US is awash in media that does not do that.
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