Truth is Not Social
Post-Truth
By Lee McIntyre
MIT Press, 2018
215 Pages
You might have heard about plans to launch a new social media platform called “Truth Social.” That’s quite the oxymoron. The notion that social media platforms, which profit from a flood of unvetted, unverified information, could be trusted sources of truth is ridiculous.
Social media, however, is just a piece of a much larger problem: We live in a post-truth society, an age “when ‘alternative facts’ replace actual facts, and feelings have more weight than evidence," writes
Lee McIntyre, a research fellow at Boston University and instructor of ethics at Harvard Extension School, in his book Post-Truth.
The deliberate practice of post-truth tactics, he adds, “undermines the idea that some things are true irrespective of how we feel about them. . . . Post-truth is not so much a claim that truth does not exist as that facts are subordinate to our political point of view” (p. 11).
Stated more bluntly, the practice of post-truth involves the willful, intentional process of creating false or distorted narratives that promote a certain commercial, political, or personal objective. Post-truth practitioners spin the truth to take control of a narrative so forcefully that many people fall under the spell of the central lie. The goal is to gain some sort of power.
According to McIntyre, post-truth practices stem from influential postmodern philosophers who over the past hundred years have promoted “perspectivism,” the notion that there is no objective reality, just multiple perspectives. All “truth” is fabricated, so facts don’t matter. The most important thing is to control the narrative.
McIntyre cites an example of this from the business world, specifically the tobacco industry. In the 1950s, when undeniable scientific evidence showed that tobacco use caused cancer, the leaders of major tobacco companies set out to “fight the science” by forming the Tobacco Industry Research Committee. This pseudoscience institute published “alternative facts” to create doubt in the minds of consumers about the causal relationship between smoking and cancer.
It worked. The companies raked in billions for the next forty years—at the expense of hundreds of thousands of lives. Thankfully, in 1998, the courts finally proved that the tobacco industry had knowingly published false data. They were forced to pay a $200 billion settlement. Later they were also found guilty of fraud for conspiring to suppress the truth about smoking and cancer (p. 25).
Post-truth efforts like those used by the tobacco industry are more widespread today. A tragic example of post-truth is the famous 2016 story of “Pizzagate,” in which a man came to believe a social media conspiracy theory that a Washington, D.C. pizza restaurant was the headquarters for a child trafficking operation run by democrats. He entered the establishment with a gun and fired once before being arrested. (Source: Man Motivated by ‘Pizzagate’ Conspiracy Theory Arrested in Washington Gunfire - The New York Times (nytimes.com). The man had fallen under the spell of social media groups who proffered false narratives to defeat democrats during the 2016 election.
The belief in false narratives is nothing new. In his first-century letter to his friend Timothy, the apostle Paul stated that many would fall prey to conspiracy theories and information echo chambers.
“For a time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching (abandonment of critical thinking), but having itching ears (confirmation bias) they will accumulate for themselves teachers (echo chambers) to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths (conspiracy theories)” (2 Timothy 3-4).
McIntyre’s book is important today. The book brings to our attention a danger we all face. Never in history have humans been surrounded by so much unverified information. Social media platforms give immense power to individuals who spread falsehoods around the world with no accountability. Social media companies hide behind legal protections that exempt them from any responsibility for what they publish.
In these post-truth times, we need to be more self-protective. Post-Truth provides helpful advice for how to do this. For one, McIntyre emphasizes that we all need to be humble, to recognize that we are not exempt from the effects of post-truth tactics. We need to make every effort when making important decisions to check our beliefs against empirical evidence. We can improve our critical thinking and logic skills (there are many good books on that topic). We can rely on fact-checked publications that are held legally accountable for the content they publish. We should not rely on what friends send in emails and social media messages. We can remember that TV “news” programs are merely shallow, superficial opinion programs. For topics of great importance, we can read peer-reviewed academic books.
We can never know everything. Thus, we all make decisions (career, investing, relationships) that necessarily involve an element of faith. But if we make decisions or form opinions without any concern for careful thinking or sound evidence, we are acting in “blind faith.”
“The danger of post-truth is not just that we allow our opinions and feelings to play a role in shaping what we think of as facts and truth,” McIntyre writes, “but that by doing so we take the risk of being estranged from reality itself” (p. 172).