
Why we're Post-Fact - ACow_Adonis
http://granta.com/why-were-post-fact/
======
avivo
A society becomes post-fact when information spreads irrespective of how
factual it is.

This can happen for a number of reasons, but the current primary reason is
that _social media is biased against facts_. Content that is controversial,
emotional, and timely spreads faster. Factualness in that environment is just
irrelevant and expensive.

It boils down to distribution and incentives. If the incentives don't change,
things will only get worse. And as lies are repeated and internalized they
will be used to inform policy. This has catastrophic consequences — if you are
driving a car, and ignore the "facts" out the window, you crash.

~~~
avivo
Some citations for if you're interested, skeptical, or want to doing something
about this.

Concrete evidence that facts & social media don't currently mix:
[https://firstdraftnews.com/recent-research-reveals-false-
rum...](https://firstdraftnews.com/recent-research-reveals-false-rumours-
really-do-travel-faster-and-further-than-the-truth/)

A chilling overview full of citations about how this affects dangerous
conspiracy theories (written by a bay area founder & VC who also helped win a
legislative battle against anti-vaxxers)
[http://www.fastcoexist.com/3059742/social-network-
algorithms...](http://www.fastcoexist.com/3059742/social-network-algorithms-
are-distorting-reality-by-boosting-conspiracy-theories)

Another overview by the Editor in Chief of the Guardian
[https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jul/12/how-
technology...](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jul/12/how-technology-
disrupted-the-truth)

Feel free to contact me (email on my profile page) if you want to learn more
about bias mitigation strategies (something I'm actively exploring).

------
StanislavPetrov
>Not merely a world where politicians and media lie – they have always lied –
but one where they don’t care whether they tell the truth or not.

>How did we get here?

This whole article is based on the false assumption that we ever lived in a
fact-based world. Before recently people never had accurate and cheap means of
data recording and information sharing that let them look behind the curtain
and realize that they have been lied to all along. From the Lusitania to the
Gulf of Tonkin to the USS Liberty to WMD in Iraq, history is built on lies and
distortions. The internet allows people to get occasional glimpses behind the
curtain, which is one of the reasons restricting the internet and stifling
free speech is the dream of dictators from Beijing to Moscow to Washington DC.

~~~
x0x0
And here's the biggest lie of them all -- both sides do it.

    
    
       Not merely a world where politicians and media lie – they have always lied – 
       but one where they don’t care whether they tell the truth or not.
    

It's not politicians. It's Republicans and the pro-Brexit camp. I'm not saying
every Democratic politician is perfect, but there simply are no widespread
beliefs in the Democratic party or base equivalent to

* 43% of republicans believe Obama was born abroad [1]

* the usual lies about anthropogenic global warming

* Iraq had WMDs

* Sarah Palin or Donald Trump are fit for office

* crime is up (it's down; American hasn't been this safe in ~50 years)

* racism doesn't exist, or anti-white racism exists

[1]
[http://www.salon.com/2015/09/14/a_staggering_number_of_repub...](http://www.salon.com/2015/09/14/a_staggering_number_of_republicans_believe_president_obama_is_a_muslim/)

~~~
aaron-lebo
I really really don't want to get in an argument about politics, but if you
really believe what you are saying you need to look yourself in the mirror.

> anti-white racism exists

Yeah, so Dallas didn't happen. Go read some extreme BLM propaganda. Some (a
lot) of it is blatantly racist.

And if we're talking about lies, one only needs to look at Clinton's political
career. Excuse me, you only need to look at the last month.

That's the whole point of this article. Don't delude yourself. Both parties
are controlled by a bunch of liars.

~~~
logandavis
I should make a bot that trawls HN for the phrases "anti-white racism" and
"reverse racism" and replies with the following:

"When people say that reverse racism (AKA anti-white racism) does not exist,
they are using the word 'racism' to mean 'a socioeconomic power structure that
_systematically_ disadvantages people of a particular race'. By this
definition of racism, they are absolutely correct. There is no systematic
oppression or disenfranchisement of white people in America.

However, many people (especially those less familiar with modern feminist
discourse) understand the word 'racism' to mean 'an _instance_ of a person or
group treating another person or group poorly because of their race'. By this
definition, anti-white racism _does_ exist. White people are certainly
sometimes treated poorly because of their whiteness.

Arguments over the existence of 'reverse racism' almost always occur between
people who do not agree on the definition of the word 'racism'. Before you
respond to this post about reverse racism, please consider the possibility
that the person to whom you are responding is neither crazy nor stupid.
Instead, they may simply be using a different definition of 'racism' than the
one to which you subscribe. If you interpret their post with a different
definition of 'racism' than your own, do you suddenly find it to be much more
reasonable? If so, you may have been missing the point.

It is always best to agree upon shared terminology before engaging in debate."

~~~
aaron-lebo
I'm in academia and have read Douglass, DuBois, Ellison, etc. I'm not unaware
of definitions.

Yes, African Americans are discriminated against. But it's not just them. It's
anyone without power or money that is systematically disadvantaged. To make it
a racial issue is to ignore that, and it's to fall into a divide and conquer
strategy that people in power play off of.

~~~
vorotato
Classism exists, saying racism exists is not saying other forms of oppression
don't exist...

------
mnemonicsloth
This article spends a lot of time on Donald Trump, The author doesn't
understand his supporters or why they tolerate his truthlessness. They do it
for a reason. I know this because of an article I read today, a dialogue
between a journalist and a Yale law grad who's written a book on the white
working class he grew up in.

Here's the article. It's better than this one.

[http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/trump-us-
polit...](http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/trump-us-politics-
poor-whites/)

~~~
Mithaldu
If you're american and don't believe you guys, as a country, love shitposting
in every form, then you are honestly badly out of touch.

I spent the weekend talking to a lot of americans about the events in munich,
and a big majority of them was happy to quite simply shitpost about it en
masse even if every evidence that came out contradicted them. CNN didn't help
either.

~~~
mnemonicsloth
I am out of touch. I still think the word 'shitposting' makes you sound like a
loudmouth with a poor grasp of English.

And I think you've replied to the wrong post. I haven't said a word about what
Americans like or don't like. So maybe you're a little out of touch too.

~~~
Mithaldu
> I still think the word 'shitposting' makes you sound like a loudmouth with a
> poor grasp of English.

Not my creation, welcome to the youth of the usa (30 and below). Try googling
it.

As to "wrong post", i could swear your post originally called the author of
the article out of touch. Either i am misremembering or you edited it. (And i
just checked, HN does not mark edited posts.)

Further, the author does spend a lot of time on trump, but this part condenses
to "americans like shitposting and trump exploits that":

> This is a (dark) joy. All the madness you feel, you can now let it out and
> it’s okay. The very point of Trump is to validate the pleasure of spouting
> shit, the joy of pure emotion, often anger, without any sense.

------
rayiner
> When the Brexit campaign announces ‘Let’s give our NHS the £350 million the
> EU takes every week’ and, on winning the referendum, the claim is shrugged
> off as a ‘mistake’ by one Brexit leader while another explains it as ‘an
> aspiration’, then it’s clear we are living in a ‘post-fact’ or ‘post-truth’
> world.

How does not living up to a statement of future intent have anything to do
with living in a "post-fact" world?

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Well, the 350 million per week, which isn't a future intent, didn't exist, so
no matter what they do in the future, they're already post-fact.

This was pointed out repeatedly, by various official statistical agencies etc.
but they just refused to back down from the lie.

They had some stock lines about "gross vs net" (also a lie), about how the
figure wasn't 350 but could be increased without UK consent (also a lie), or
they just switched to quoting the accurate figure in yearly terms and hoped
that no-one in their voting demographic could divide by 52.

Also, roughly half the actual figure is spent on UK farmers, deprived regions
and so on, and they'd also promised to maintain those payments.

So, lies upon lies basically.

------
carsongross
We were never fact-based.

We just have the internet now to, occasionally, figure out just how duped
we've always been.

~~~
sjwright
That is true, however the parallel truth is that politicians now have better
access to these sources of information as well. Greater availability of
correct information has shifted the _default assumed motive,_ however
slightly, away from sincere ignorance and towards willful, means-justify-the-
ends deception.

~~~
carsongross
_shifted the default assumed motive_

For me, not even a little bit.

------
ZeroGravitas
There's some research that suggests conservative people have a preference for
simple answers. I think I see elements of that in Brexit and Trump.

Trump for example, rails against NAFTA. And let's just set aside the fact that
he blames Clinton for it, when it was written and signed and voted in by
Republicans. Even if it was a Clinton or Democrat thimg, whether it is good or
not is complex, I'd want an expert to explain it to me. That leaves an opening
for people like Trump.

~~~
sinxoveretothex
> There's some research that suggests conservative people have a preference
> for simple answers

That's quite the study you have there… Also, how simple is the statement
"conservatives are the ones looking for simple answers"?

It's also puzzling that you would liken Trump to "conservatives", when it
seems like there's quite a few definitely conservative people out there who
flat out refused to endorse him (all three Bush for example, Ted Cruz, John
Kasich among others).

[http://time.com/4372882/john-kasich-donald-trump-
republicans...](http://time.com/4372882/john-kasich-donald-trump-republicans-
election/)

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Here's an article arguing against my claim:

[http://heterodoxacademy.org/2016/01/07/are-conservatives-
rea...](http://heterodoxacademy.org/2016/01/07/are-conservatives-really-
simple-minded/)

But note they begin by stating that it is widely regarded as true, by people
with various different backgrounds and specialist knowledge, and they're not
really that confident in their rebuttal even though they've presented a paper
that undermines the evidence of that theory in one particular narrow area.

 _" The current consensus in psychology is that political conservatives are
uniquely simple-minded. Indeed, even the famous critic of political bias and
Heterodox contributor Jonathan Haidt (and colleagues) suggested that there is
a “consistent difference between liberals and conservatives” on several
measurements related to cognitive complexity"_

------
dimino
One question this article doesn't attempt to answer is why doesn't this
"everybody lies" narrative work in an infinite loop? Putin makes a lie, his
opponents call out the lie, Putin says "but everybody lies"... why don't his
opponents point that back at him, saying, "You, being everyone, are lying
now!" Is there a drop off of interest? Can people not follow beyond the first
circle of blame? Or do people follow as far as they need to for the blame to
land where they already want it to land?

Was it always like this? I hear a great deal about how things are getting
"worse", but throughout human history, hasn't it almost always been the case
that the people in charge defined truth? From Hammurabi, the Pharaohs, the
Athenians (with a _brief_ stop in democracy), the Romans, the Holy Roman
Empire, the Ottoman-Turks, and now the Americans, hasn't power _always_ lied?
Why do people expect this not to be the case?

For us to be living in a post-fact world, don't we have to have lived at one
point, in a fact world? I'm not sure we did...

------
rahkiin
I think this is a very troublesome development. I was angry about the lies
during the Brexit compaign and I am no UK citizen. I am still angry about all
lies from Trump and Clinton and I am no US citizen.

I wonder, how can we revert this? How can we go back?

The horrific thing is: if I ask someone if the leave campaign will be charged
for fraud, they think I am nuts. As if lying politicians are above the law.

~~~
Kenji
Let's be fair here: The stay campain was lying just as much, if not more, as
the leave one. Don't let your political opinion seep into your judgement of
who lied and who didn't, or you too are post-fact.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
No. Don't be ridiculous.

The leave campaign regularly told lies about even unimportant things. Simple
fact-checkable assertions, which they made were simply not true. Not
debatable, or open to interpretation.

This is from Boris announcing his candidacy: _" Sometimes these EU rules sound
simply ludicrous, like the rule that you can’t recycle a teabag, or that
children under eight cannot blow up balloons, or the limits on the power of
vacuum cleaners. Sometimes they can be truly infuriating – like the time I
discovered, in 2013, that there was nothing we could do to bring in better-
designed cab windows for trucks, to stop cyclists being crushed. It had to be
done at a European level, and the French were opposed."_

The bike one is particularly infurating, as while the French wanted to delay
the introduction of the rule, the UK actually opposed it. Which he knows,
because he protested this at the time:

"London Mayor protests UK block on EU ‘safe lorries’ law"

[https://www.euractiv.com/section/transport/news/london-
mayor...](https://www.euractiv.com/section/transport/news/london-mayor-
protests-uk-block-on-eu-safe-lorries-law/)

------
Animats
Roger Ailes did it. He made Fox News what it is today.

(Yes, he just got fired by Fox. He's now advising the Trump campaign.)

The classic remark on this is, of course:

 _" All this was inspired by the principle — which is quite true within itself
— that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because
the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper
strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in
the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the
big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in
little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It
would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they
would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so
infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought
clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to
think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie
always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact
which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire
together in the art of lying."_ Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf.

This wasn't original with Hitler. What was new was the ability to use radio to
promote a big lie. Radio allowed scaling the big lie technique. Goebbels put
that into practice effectively. His version: "If you tell a lie big enough and
keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."

Now, too many people have enough bandwidth to do that, and we're buried under
a mass of bogus info.

~~~
marcoperaza
Fox News is just the people doing it on the right. The rest of the media has
been run by truth-twisters on the other side for a very long time. It's the
long march through the institutions, and the left has been quite successful at
it.

~~~
madgar
This false equivalency is a huge part of the problem.

~~~
marcoperaza
False equivalency? The only reason why you see one or the other as more or
less biased is because you believe a larger portion of the narrative they
spin. I will admit that Fox is a bit more blatant about it, but CNN and MSNBC
are wholly political outfits themselves.

~~~
sjwright
The question of bias is a red herring. Everyone has bias whether they admit it
or not. The issue most people _should_ have with Fox News is that their
opinion leaders frequently prosecute their agendas with deeply misleading and
often hypocritical slants on their opponents and their views.

For example, look at the way Jon Stewart chose to skewer Sean Hannity
recently. Say what you will about tone and bias, but the meat of it was a
legitimate question of hypocrisy backed up with citations. (Tellingly,
Hannity's response was _exclusively ad hominem_ and ignored the central
charge.)

~~~
marcoperaza
As opposed to commentators on the other side? The ones who just call
conservatives sexist and racist at the sign of any disagreement.

~~~
sjwright
If they do so without reasonable evidence or to distract from an unrelated
topic of discussion, then I would agree. And I'm sure it happens, but it would
be interesting (and potentially enlightening) if you could provide a recent
citation from an influential left-wing commentator.

(What I won't accept, however, is a technical wiggling between "he's a racist
person" versus "he has made racist statements". I agree that this distinction
sometimes matters, but generally it does not. For example, I don't think Trump
is a racist person at heart, but he does make statements that legitimize the
charge of being racist. When the latter is true, the former is irrelevant.)

------
doctorstupid
When you feel powerless the truth seems irrelevant.

------
guard-of-terra
I would say that we saw the facts and were so seared by them that we now shun
them.

For example, how do I live with my country doing what will be "sometimes
eating roasted children" if it was a person?

And that I know for fact. I choose to "worry" which will probably give me
cancer, but simpler people choose to ignore facts for good and live
peacefully.

------
MichaelGG
Does Trump flat-out lie? On the times I've examined what he's said, it seems
he's rather careful to leave himself an out. I.e. he might be "technically"
correct. Looking over Politifact on him, for instance, shows many cases where
he'll make a claim on XYZ that's actually sourced, but it's on the high-end of
their range, or from a source that's not very good.

Or it's things that can't be backed up, like his personal eyewitness accounts.

~~~
nl
_Does Trump flat-out lie?_

Yes. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
fix/wp/2016/07/01/do...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
fix/wp/2016/07/01/donald-trump-has-been-wrong-way-more-often-than-all-the-
other-2016-candidates-combined/)

