Of course it does – I hear you all say. Of course, I agree. However there are some nuances to explore and – more specifically, some examples of where truth seems to have no place in the conversations. Strangely it is almost exactly a year (took so long to do this one that it is now 5 years!) since I wrote Face It – You Don’t Know which in some ways explored the same topic – but from a slightly different viewpoint.
This post has been a long time coming – both in terms of “since my last blog entry” and in terms of how it has stewed around in my head (and as a draft) for a long while. There are multiple things which contributed to my thinking, however the “big” one both in terms of importance to my thinking and in terms of importance to “the world” is the war (or special operation) in Ukraine and specifically the different portrayal of the events there by the two opposing sides.
I have, it must be said, no reason to doubt that what we – in the West – are being fed by the media is in any way less accurate than what the Russian people are being told. Something else that I have touched upon before is the fact that in today’s connected world the “old rules” and “old strategies” are often inappropriate – simply because it is much more difficult – although clearly not impossible – to avoid the facts. It is still possible – and this is something widely used by all sorts of people, not just the Russian leadership – but with cameras everywhere and ‘instant’ information availability (to many) the “facts” are shown to the world before the spin can be applied.
Now – here is where things get complicated because “truth” and “facts” are not (for many people) the same thing. It is difficult – though not impossible – to deny facts. Perspective and interpretation then makes truth a much less precise thing. Look through other posts where I have effectively been stating just that in terms of there being much less black and white in the world and much more shades of grey.
Sometimes it seems as though some people go beyond this – the so-called “big lie” in the US these days is perpetrated by many who – surely – know it is just that – a LIE – but it suits them to act as though it were not – even when the facts get in the way. Just listen to the way that some of them argue away anything that does not fit their view – when confronted by a video of the ex-Attorney General stating that there was no material fraud in the 2020 election and that what was being put forward by the former president and his “allies” was complete nonsense the response “well someone must be paying him to say that”!
Whilst that is, as I am sure you would agree, not entirely outside the bounds of possibility – given the context and the “supporting evidence” it doesn’t seem likely that it is the case.
Unfortunately, those who are on the side of conspiracy or “fake news” are usually working on the basis of a pretty flimsy layer of information – so it is easy for them to debunk more cogent arguments by adding similarly unsound and thin arguments against them – they do not see the fact that this becomes nonsensical eventually.
Where my thinking takes me though is to something much less clearcut than simply crazy people believing nonsensical conspiracy theories, because we can all at times come up with the “what if…” sort of thinking that results in totally ridiculous conclusions. Instead, I want to explore a little about the critical thinking side of things – how do we know that what we think is ‘right’ – how do we know that we are not simply delusional about some things.
This is a much more nuanced thing to delve into because whilst in some situations things are, indeed, clearcut – we are able to reconcile facts with truth and what we believe with reality – in other situations it can be enormously difficult to determine what is real and what is made up – perhaps the mere fact that we can consider these two possibilities is a thing that distinguishes us from the conspiracy theorists.
If something happens to us “first hand” whether we actually experience it directly or simply witness it ourselves then we can be reasonably sure that (for the most part) we know the facts and that they are true. This needs to be caveated by the fact that most people are very unreliable witnesses and by the fact that in many cases how we ‘react’ to things is a result of our own biases and perceptions – which may, or may not, be appropriate in any given situation.
Our interpretation of what we have seen happen will inevitably be coloured by our past experiences and also by what we know (perhaps erroneously) about any of those who are contributing to the situation. It is, without doubt time that I rounded off this post since it was started several years ago now – but is, if anything, even more pertinent now. I have over recent years come to ‘know’ many of those who present ‘late night news’ on american TV. Just this week, two of them have – in different ways – tackled this matter of ‘truthfulness’.
In one case the way that they addressed the issue was by – to all intents and purposes – spreading disinformation quite deliberately – but in a humourous and most certainly unbelievable way. Although having said that I sort of suspect that there will actually be those who believe it. 🤦♂️ The format is – take a subject (the two that I have seen are “5G” and “Boat Wakes”) and create a narrative around those things that is borderline believable and continue to make nonsensical connections until a web is created which – if it weren’t so absurd – would be difficult to deny.
In the other case the format is (sort of) the reverse – so take something that has really happened and point out the absurdities until there remains little of the original narrative. It is amazing how often this is very easy to do.
In yet another – completely different – situation the comments on an article published on Substack were prime examples of how those who disagree with the narrative outlined in the article are quick to dismiss it as untrue and entirely fictitious – despite the fact that the article itself was actually talking about how something could be staged to give the appearance of something happening in order to further a particular story.
In that particular case, the majority of the article was generated by AI – so one would imagine that the logic was sound (although that is notwithstanding the fact that an AI knowledge database could be filled with falsehoods as easily as it could be filled with truths). Will the rise of AI help or exacerbate the problem of “truthfulness”? That is a whole different subject.
Where I want to end though is by ‘sort of’ answering the question in the title. Does truth matter? Throughout history there have been alternative stories being told to explain the inexplicable. Would it be reasonable to say that very few of these stories have been fully ‘true’? In Western cultures religion has played a huge part in directing the narrative. So here we seem to have belief being more important than truth. Note that here I am not saying that there is no truth in religion – rather it is seemingly clear to anyone who has thought through the subject that huge parts – perhaps an overwhelming majority of it – are, given our current understanding, simply unknowable and therefore can only be supported by belief.
The problem is not the belief systems so much as those who promote falsehoods as part of such a system. Many years ago I wrote that my belief was that no one – absolutely not one person – actually knew what the effect of Brexit might be. That did not stop those – on both sides of the argument – for putting up various ‘stories’ purporting to be ‘facts’ on which people built their belief systems about Brexit. I believe that this happens over and over again about all sorts of things.
So – yes – truth does matter, since it is imperative that our belief systems are built on truths – including the truth that there are things that we do not know. The more we make those things explicit, the better our understanding of the world.
Sort of brings it full circle to the point of the blog – feeding my ignorance – where the first step is identifying where the ignorance lies.