Can we ever escape from falsehood?
Posted at Reformation Scotland: Can we really trust what we see and hear? In the news and on social media, there is a crisis of confidence as people take an increasingly sceptical and cynical approach to some of the content they consume alongside a gullible and naively accepting approach to other sources. What we then share with others may not be disinformation — deliberately intended to deceive — yet it may still be misinformation, spread on the mistaken assumption that it is valid. With technological advances in social media and now AI, falsehoods can now easily be shared to large audiences in a plausible way that affects people’s thinking and behaviour. When we are all floundering in a fog of half-truths and uncertainties, the outcome is not to make people believe a specific lie, it is to make us distrust the possibility of a final truth. Yet there is a tension between the recent cultural assumption that truth is relative and flexible enough to be different for different people and ...
