If you are concerned about global warming, well, it's time to relax. Seems there is a bigger issue on this planet, and the issue is "fake news". I was trying to dig a bit into this issue, and then I started thinking to the "usual" problem about the truth: even having some authority like Facebook checking against "fake news", who controls Facebook then? Maybe Facebook would like to publish (fake) good news about Facebook, right?
Of course thinking like that ends in a loop, until I realized the point: saying "now we have a problem with fake news", is having sense only under the assumption **that we hadn't the problem before**. Of course, If I assume that before of the Trump's campaign all the news were saying the truth, of course we end at the point where yes, sure, we have an issue.
Unfortunately, this is not true at all.
The so called "post-truth" era should be called "still-bullshit" era, with the only difference that, during the Trump campaign, the orchestrator of fake news was the Internet, let's say the suburb of the internet, and not the mainstream media.
Take an example how the press is describing news: by example, we see that "the _country X_ is growing less than the predictions", so we think that the country X has a problem. Unfortunately, the same news should be written in another way: "prediction on Country X failed".
If you compare
- Country X has grown just 25% of prediction -> Country X has a serious problem.
- Predictions on Country X were wrong of 400% -> Predictors are incompetent
you see we are discussing of the same numbers. Still predictions were 4 times higher than reality. But, in one case we are discussing how bad the people doing predictions is, in the other we are discussing how bad the country is.
Who of two is right? In such a case, the answer is easy: since predictions must match reality, and not vice versa, it is clear that the 2. is the right one. If weather forecast aren't matching tomorrow's weather, you don't say the weather is wrong, right?
Here is the trick of the "fake news": even discussing of facts, the same fact may be written in different ways, thus producing a complete different news.
If I put this into account, and I go checking whether we had "fake news" or not, I see that basically to check facts is pointless. In the example I made above, the fact is the same for 1. and 2. : in both cases, predictions were 4 times bigger than what happened. But, in one case the country is to blame, in the other predictors are to blame.
"Facts checking" won't work: the fact is the same.
Now, imagine you have 2 candidates, like Hillary and Trump. The capability to put the news in such a way is basically the ability to sell the same facts putting the blame here or there. And no, facts would be the same.
In the same way, we are now told we are in the "post-truth" era. Which seems fine, until we assume the past was the "truth era". Even more, to listen at people saying "post-truth", will make people to think before they had the truth.
So the best was to say "what we've said in the past was true", is to say "we are in the post-truth era".
If anyone told you "we always said the truth in the past", you would probably make fun of them. You would scream "bullshit! You were always liar". But, telling you "we are in the post-truth era", you make your attention focusing to the present, maybe the future, while your mind accepts the assumption that , in the past, you only get the truth.
This is why, I think the very fake news we are having is that we NOW started to have fake news.
And the issue in this sentence is not "fake news", is "NOW".