I have experience in an unusual domain that's shaped the way I think about truth and misinformation. I play super smash bros melee for the Nintendo gamecube competitively, and I view it as an odd sort of sanity test for the limits of truth.
The deck is impossibly stacked in favor of truth in melee. To start off with we actually have Truth with a capital T. Press Y and dpad down and you bring up white text telling you exactly what state your character is in. Imagine being a psychiatrist and instead of the messy uncertain process of diagnosing patients you can press a button that freezes time and white text from a debug menu god forgot to remove from the public release of life appears. Time switches to frame advance mode and "DepressionModerate 27" floats over your patients head.
Not only do we have the truth, but we have a community that values performance and has a vested interest in the truth.
And not only that, but there isn't even political or partisan resistance to the truth.
Ok, so this is a world where pure objective truth exists, science tools are free easy and available to all, the populace cares about truth, politics doesn't exist, there's no real incentive to spreading misinformation, and there are no large scale or individual actors purposely spreading misinformation. And yet even in this best of all possible worlds microcosm truth always seems to be barely hanging on by the skin of its teeth.
There's always someone around the corner who says that powershielding an attack incurs no shield stun.
I don't think people appreciate just how fragile the truth is even before adding in bad guys. I think we fall too quickly into viewing truth and misinformation through the most exciting narratives. Like getting in a frenzy over shark attacks and neglecting the thousands of people killed by the boring old flu.
The deck is impossibly stacked in favor of truth in melee. To start off with we actually have Truth with a capital T. Press Y and dpad down and you bring up white text telling you exactly what state your character is in. Imagine being a psychiatrist and instead of the messy uncertain process of diagnosing patients you can press a button that freezes time and white text from a debug menu god forgot to remove from the public release of life appears. Time switches to frame advance mode and "DepressionModerate 27" floats over your patients head.
Not only do we have the truth, but we have a community that values performance and has a vested interest in the truth.
And not only that, but there isn't even political or partisan resistance to the truth.
Ok, so this is a world where pure objective truth exists, science tools are free easy and available to all, the populace cares about truth, politics doesn't exist, there's no real incentive to spreading misinformation, and there are no large scale or individual actors purposely spreading misinformation. And yet even in this best of all possible worlds microcosm truth always seems to be barely hanging on by the skin of its teeth.
There's always someone around the corner who says that powershielding an attack incurs no shield stun.
I don't think people appreciate just how fragile the truth is even before adding in bad guys. I think we fall too quickly into viewing truth and misinformation through the most exciting narratives. Like getting in a frenzy over shark attacks and neglecting the thousands of people killed by the boring old flu.