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Comment by the__alchemist | Hacker News Reader

Neal Stephenson explored this in this book Fall; or, Dodge in Hell (And to a lesser extent, Termination Shock). In this depiction, parts of the world; especially red state USA, has succumbed to a post-truth society, made possible through the internet. The narrator implies that we had a limited window in human history where people took a fact-based approach to knowledge, starting with the scientific revolution, and ending with internet circa ~2010.

Examining mainly the pre-truth half, Carl Sagan goes into this in Demon Haunted world, and focuses on remnants that have stuck around, eg UFOs, cults etc.

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This makes me think of Wilbur's writings on the pre-trans fallacy, the idea that 'post truth' and 'pre-truth' are identical. A lot of the 'facts based' approach did require trusted authorities, and there wasn't much thought paid as to who was a trusted authority. Now that some serious abuses of authority have happened we're suddenly aware of just how screwed we can be if we trust the wrong authorities, but the answer isn't to do away with all trust in authorities. The people most able to navigate complexity seem to update both their mental models of the world and their trust in given authorities gradually, neither over-nor-undercorrecting when new information is added to the whole. At least that's my belief after reading 'superforecasters', something I recommend to anyone wrestling with the implications of the post-truth era.

Sounds very Baysian.

It is. The book is basically a primer on Bayesian thinking for everyday life.

> especially red state USA

This is funny because you can say exactly the same about blue state USA. They seem to live in a totally alien world.

There’s little use arguing that point with parent, because he was summarizing Stephenson rather than postulating anything.

My dad believes 30-foot tall giants once roamed the earth, and that the archaeological evidence is being suppressed by mainstream academia and the government. He believes this based on a passage from the Bible and some YouTube videos.

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