Yuval Noah Harari extract: ‘Humans are a post-truth species’
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
So it's not now that's strange. It's 1950-2000, that's the weird time, where there were a few news sources that people more or less believed in.
I'm not saying we're not losing something but we are probably returning to the more common state of the "news".
Spreading disinformation for profit (and allowing trolls for clicks) is a pollution of a public good. It's as classic an example of a Tragedy of the Commons as any other.
Edit: I am also saddened by the loss of sarcasm and irony. Complexity must be replaced by simplicity again.
It's impossible to first create a measurement system for "truth" which could uniformly be used to judge any series of statements. Doubly so when the topics are not mathematically rigorous in nature.
On top of that, it's a major challenge to determine intention - eg. was the author of a piece of "fake news" duped, were they being malicious, is there a self-serving bias or is the author simply incompetent?
Third, what is the economic and political environment that the author resides inside? Does the author have a choice of what to write unencumbered or is there a economic or political system which is unreasonably burdensome that they have to hew to?
So it's not so simple to just assume that there is a unipolar evaluation that can be done when evaluating communications/persuasion/propaganda.
IMO any kind of system should be viewed through it's edge-cases & statistical outliers. It's where usually the truth gets questioned and often breaks down. Look at any system (social, political, etc) and the truth becomes unfortunately very fuzzy.
GEB has a lot of good points that should make one question the truth in every waking moment. If one were to attempt finding the truth (whether it's the ultimate theory of everything in physics, or why a person is the way they are in psychology) then you're always dealing with infinite complexity.
We're all Strange Loops
It's my theory but before things relied on a curating system of people, that inherently kept things integrated and sensical to a point. Even if you couldn't source, check .. there was a natural amount of trust to the system that was valuable for it to exist.
even for information, dosage is the poison.
I tried to educate myself about medicine, and I felt like drowning, if you actually want to stay mathematically objective, you're faced with an enormous sea of 'potentially..' and theories that can come and go. Most people don't want this they just want to vent so selection occurs and group forms, faster and larger now that we have the web.
Also I'd say your hyper-truth title reminds me of a sensation that I have since computers/internet became ubiquitous. We're trying to logify the whole world, everything is engineered, stored facts, backed by statistics. And it seems it became a culture, if not a cult. Nowadays most discussions will end up with 'what is your source' I'm not sure it was the same before. People would discuss, as a human relationship thing, they would try to express their views, and share, not try to make a provable thesis. I think that humans don't need 100% veracity to function, just a good amount of 'true enough' so people can get on with their daily lives, even if that mean local reality distortion, at the end of the day most of it is not life critical. And you can sense that with the news.. 24/7, many many channels, and this information is mostly noise, hoping from crysis to crysis.
Why “were”? They still largely are.
I'm sure there were many reasons, but the one I heard was that Russia said it was committed to defending Russian speaking populations wherever they are and said that the Russian speaking population in Ukraine was being discriminated against it repressed in some fashion.
Regardless of the primary reason, it seems these issues are more complex than a single primary motivating factor.
For example, why Crimea and not all of Ukraine? Why Ukraine and not another ex-Soviet satellite? Why now? Why not earlier?
I'm sure there were lies and disinformation, but I also think the issue is more complex than the author might be suggesting.
They can hold Crimea because it has a large Russian ethnic population and like it or not regardless of the reasons behind it a sufficiently significant portion of it seems to not to mind being under Russian control the same cannot be said for the rest of the country.
The reason why Russia isn’t going to go much beyond Crimea is the same reason why Turkey never really tried to annex the Greek part of Cyprus it knew it cannot control it and it doesn’t want another Kurdish situation which this time would be also supported by another NATO member.
There are a lot of reasons to why but none of them are really that complex.
Russia’s movements in theater are the same since the early days of the Russian empire and are governed by geography the rest can be easily factored in by measuring environmental factors and Russia’s own capacity and capability.
Syria as well isn’t that complicated, Russia didn’t want to lose an ally and their only port in the med and they as sure as hell didn’t want another NATO controlled zone in the region.
Beyond that they also needed a “real” conflict to test the modernization of their military its the first time Russia has been employing combined arms with precision ground, naval and air based strikes in its operational history.
Syria was a great excercise for them they got to test all their new toys on targets that the general public doesn’t really care about whilst Ukraine and previously Georgia had many more limitations due to geopolitical pressure.
1. States that there is a common modern fear that this is a moment of unprecedented ignorance of reality (i.e. people worry about "post-truth")
2. Counters this premise by reviewing the history of very wide-reaching and fundamental political lies providing examples including Russian, Japanese, Chinese, and Israeli.
3. Cites the historical adherence to religion as another counterexample. States that people find value in guiding "myths" even if not fact. Likens Harry Potter to the Bible.
4. Quotes Hitler and Goebbles on how effective propaganda/lies are to get people to believe in a common cause.
5. Extends the point, by likening modern advertising to such lies/myths.
6. Examines whether the inherent value of currency can be seen as such a myth. Though of practical value at first, some grow to see it as an ends in and of itself.
7. Suggests sports is another form of myth.
8. Proposes an inherent conflict between honesty and holding power.
9. Clarifies that despite the history of myth and inevitably of dishonesty, that there is still value in differentiating truth from lie.
10. Proposes that for free news sources, one should be skeptical of the motives of those providing that information.
It's not so much that there are alternative methods of achieving knowledge but that scientific theories with robust experimental confirmation and obvious utility can simply be shouted down by people who have political or economic reasons for not accepting them.
It also misrepresents his argument about "achieving knowledge" - which isn't something he argues - rather, that such a concept of coming to some foundational conclusion is actually mythology. It's subtle but important.
p.s., I'm not arguing that scientific theories are correct in some absolute sense, only that they have proven utility like being able to guide moon missions.
I think the challenge when it comes to having discussions about philosophy of science with people who aren't rigorous or academic about philosophy, is that it can easily be interpreted as anti-science.
Feyerabend specifically was unnecessarily harsh with his critique, and somewhat of an outsider, so he attracted more vitriol than was likely warranted.
His point about the lack of universal methodological rules across the disciplines of science is a fair critique, which is a statement about scientism at large and the dogmas that form inside of it being insidious. It was decidedly NOT a critique of any particular method or function of science. To the contrary, his point was that Science is too important to try and enforce one methodology where it is incompatible - and would be corrupting.
He was pretty widely hated and derided, so it's not a comfortable path to take - thus, I expect few are taking it.
Is Feyerabend still widely hated? Or just back in his day? Because many people I've met regard him as one of the foremost philosophers of science.
But then the author makes one mistake after another.
First, he conflates the use of currency with fiction. Currency doesn't need fiction to function, it can be survive even if every human was completely rational and couldn't be tricked with fiction. That's because the mechanism that gives currency its value is game theoretic equilibrium / focal point.
Then he starts complaining that bad guys use fiction. Come on man, you just explained that humans are inherently wired to follow fiction, so why are you blaming people for using it?
The author also goes into political and moral arguments and starts taking sides. Given that both sides of any conflict use fiction, this seems out of place.
Finally the author encourages people to read scientific literature, without explaining how to identify the rare thoughtful writing among the tons of fiction that academics write. Academics, after all, aren't stupid, and also follow the approach of writing fiction into their papers to make their work more impressive to the outside world and more appealing to journal editors.
Overall, I'm very disappointed since the topic is important and deserves a better treatment.
To your first point, currency is a fiction, and any fiction can survive even if you are cognoscente of the fact that it is a fiction.
To your second point regarding only the 'bad guys' using fiction. He give the example of the tribe rising up against the Germans as 'good guys' using fiction, as well as Churchill.
To your third point regarding taking sides, how is discussing the sides of an argument taking sides? And even if sides are taken, how does that weaken the core argument being made?
The suggestion to seek out scientific literature for topics that an individual cares about is not a bad suggestion by any means. You are correct that the literature isn't perfect. Buy you are more likely to start gaining a less biased, holistic view of a topic than you would by reading any other sources. The core argument suggests that people simply need to ingest 'facts' with due diligence and a healthy degree of skepticism.
So, this is a good treatment of the topic that has been published in a place that hopefully many people will read and take away a better understanding of the flow of facts in the world today than if they had not read it.
On currency as fiction: the author uses a very precise meaning of fiction: "untruth". I don't think that currency fits that meaning. Can you explain?
On bad guys using fiction: ignore the word "bad". Why does the author complain that people use fiction, if he just explained it?
On taking sides: in several modern conflicts he mentioned, the author emphasizes the use of fiction by one side but not the other. It's pretty obvious which side of the conflict the author is on. I didn't feel his expression of personal political views improves the article.
I found the presentation of the fact that we as people tend to create fictions (which I would prefer to think of as narratives) in order to give ourselves some 'meaning' to latch onto a profound one.
I also found it interesting to think of the current focus on fake news as a good thing.... In other words, we have become self aware enough to recognize what is happening at a macro level at least.
Tl;dr: I think your points have merit, I was just reactionary because I saw something profound and wanted everyone to see it too, falling into the same trap as always.
and he does takes sides.
I just can't seem to find any real analytical or explanatory value in anything he's written thus far.
Still he has a way with words and it's an enjoyable read so far even if large parts are academic humanities nonsense.
It puzzles me how an educated person from the late 20th - early 21st century, who spends all his time learning and writing, can utterly fail to understand the structural and economic mechanisms of the modern world.
It took several thousand years for a significant number of humans to free themselves from religion.
The analytical value he has is that fictions change, and his point in the second book is that the pace of that change is accelerating rapidly. Fifty years from now may not look anything like the present, in very serious ways.
He argues that equilibrium conditions necessary for validity of the supply-demand curve almost never actually occur. So what Harari writes is by no means nonsensical, certainly it has respectable academic support.
I don't see this in any way supporting Harari suggestion that any kind of fiction is involved in price discovery.
"Thus the theoretical dream world of “market equilibrium” allows economists to avoid talking about the reality of pervasive rationing, and with it, power being exerted by the short side in every market. Thus the entire power dimension in our economic reality – how the short side, such as the producer hiring starlets for Hollywood films, can exploit his power of being able to pick and choose with whom to do business, by extracting ‘non-market benefits’ of all kinds. The pretense of ‘equilibrium’ not only keeps this real power dimension hidden. It also helps to deflect the public discourse onto the politically more convenient alleged role of ‘prices’, such as the price of money, the interest rate."
Whether Werner supports his own argument adequately is an interesting question. What's not in doubt, to me at least, is that he is in agreement with Harari regarding price discovery being a fiction.
>But if the chief says “the sun rises in the west and sets in the east”, only true loyalists will clap their hands.
I'm not that political but as a personal prejudice am kind of truth and scientific evidence focused and that behaviour was puzzling to me. It seems a good chunk of the population does not judge truth on the evidence but on loyalty to the leader of their faction who is saying the stuff. Maybe that's old hat but I kind of came across that analysis through Harari. Also the evolutionary psychology angle - maybe the people who believed the great leader was infallible did better in ancient history than us skeptics.
Disagree. Currency exists because humans cooperate on a common medium of transaction. If cooperation didn't exist (via fiction), then the equilibrium wouldn't exist.
The author seems to not understand that there are reasons beyond untruth that can make this situation possible. crazygringo reply to my comment gives a specific example of this gap in the author's knowledge.
Our civilization idolizes the human expert, like they were possession of some magical unquestionable truth. But to general human interaction, no such truths are available. To the mass of humanity, all they have is their experience of the world, and belief in the foundational institutions of their culture.
One such institution is belief to a better tomorrow, and that it's worthwhile to improve oneself. I think it is a wonderful institution - but image of the self or the child in the future, educated and improved, is whisful fiction until it becomes actualized through years of work - or does not become actualized if tragedy, trauma or change of life's priorities occurs.
We are not creatures of knowledge. We are a creatures of fiction. Some of us can grasp at - perhaps glimpses - of true knowledge in the strict mathematical sense - but that is a rare and wonderful aberration to typical way humans live.
> ...conventions such as the dollar?
> Such conventions, however, are not clearly distinct from fiction...
Not clearly distinct seems kind of ok. While you might have dollars in a completely rational society in practice people have funny ideas about currencies especially when you get on to the crypto ones.
Is this per se a cause for reduction in credibility? What's wrong with making political and moral arguments and taking sides?
Any one of these positions makes a presenter more credible, not less. These are all accurate, true positions; there is no trust deficit inherent in pointing that out.
This fallacy underlies the bulk of his arguments, and makes most of his writing worthless.
Harari uses the word correctly.
To a physicist there is nothing unmythical about a contract. It is based on the belief that the words on the paper will entice the other party - like some sort of golem that can be commanded with words - to act accordingly. It is one of the wonderful unbelievable symmetries of human behaviour that often the other party will belief likewise, and this common belief makes the contract actualized.
Note - there may be several reasons why it is rational for the other party not to brake with the contract, but constructing the complete cost benefit scenario for the other party in ones head is quite labour intensive - this is not how fundamentally people in general approach things - but rather people follow accepted norms and believe they will work as expected.
It is totally wonderfull and unexpected that this common web of belief and action makes the human civilization work.
I think Harari's description of human interaction is philosophically deep and cuts to several points if one wants to create a "system theoretical" model within ones mind how and why humans can function as a coherent civilization.
He probably chose to use "myth" instead of "social construct" because it sounds less pretentious.