When you tell someone something they want to hear, they will believe it. This can be called (loosely) "confirmation bias". All this means is that you accept something, even if it is blatantly false, if it fits your idea of something. If you see someone with dark hair and clothes on, and the person next to you says something like "that person hates everyone," and this fits your idea of that person better than that person loving people, it fits your preconceived idea of that person. It is almost like stereotypes. You believe something beforehand, and if someone says something that fits that narrative, you believe it without any questions. If you vote for party X and you hear something bad about party Y even if it is blatantly false, the likelihood that you will believe the lie is very good because you already disliked party Y. Something like that. So where does this go from here? Let us start with the first problem.

First Problem

The problem can be stated as follows: We want to hear certain things. We want certain things to fit the narrative we live in, or we believe. If there is a bombing or a shooting we already form a story without even hearing any of the facts. We want something to be true, so we believe in the lies we form in our own mind that is influenced by our beliefs. So this is where the post-truth fits nicely: we will believe lies because it fits the narrative we want to believe in. This is very interesting to note because of the time we live in. With the press of a button, we can search google for books and articles and blogs we can read that are in a way unbiased and close to the facts and thus close to the truth. But this is very problematic, with emphasis on very, and thus the second problem.

Second Problem

As stated above, we want to believe certain things in certain situations to fit our own narrative. We will thus believe blatant false things: I am a smoker, and if someone says smoking is healthy, I will agree and keep on smoking even if I feel sick and get cancer. The problem is then that some people can control that narrative that person x will follow. If a person only reads one newspaper or magazine, that person will likely believe what that paper or magazine tells them. In other words, the person's unique narrative they believe in, is formed in a way by the magazine or newspaper. If the paper or magazine tells only lies, the person's narrative will be based on a lie. This is unproblematic in a sense because you have the option to buy or not buy the paper or magazine. The problem comes in with factual peer-reviewed articles and sources of knowledge. Take for example Google. If Google decided to show you only uncredible sources your narrative will be uncredible if you wanted a credible one. Sources of knowledge needs to be unbiased. This is where the third problem comes in.

Third Problem

There is a saying that goes something like this: keep the masses uneducated because it is easier to rule them. When you are able to control the narrative that people believe or follow, the truth will be worth nothing. The truth will be something pragmatic: that what is more useful to believe in. But this to me seems so far away from the truth, or Truth with a capital T. Pragmatic notions of truth is just a belief, and not the truth. The same is when those in power control what should be believed. It is the mere beliefs of those in power that are believed. It is not close to the truth. Thus the idea of our post-truth era: we want a certain type of narrative to be true, and this narrative mostly comes from those in power. We want to believe that group X is inferior and different from us because that is the narrative that those in power push us to believe. Not because it is true, but because it serves the (false) narrative. We are thus too lazy to question the status quo, or the (false) narrative that is pushed to be believed by the masses. Most countries are not controlled by some bloodthirsty dictator who kills if you don't follow his/her narrative. In these countries who are not controlled by such a dictator, we are subtly forced to believe these narratives without even knowing it. (This will be a future post.) Now the last problem.

Fourth Problem

Believing that we are in a post-truth era is believing the (false) narrative of those in power. As mentioned in my previous post, thinking about "post-truth" is so far from the truth. We are not in an era where people believe witches exist. We are not in an era where ghosts are believed to exist. (Yes certain people believe this, but for most of the world, in my view at least, believe in some sort of scientific realism.) Most people know that for example, water is H2O and not some foreign and weird substance. The problem is thus that we are too lazy to think for ourselves. As mentioned in the previous post, we are rather in a post-belief era (even though a lot of people still believe some untruthful things). I want to add that we are also living in a post-think era. A lot of people are too lazy to think for themselves. There are so many studies today that show people want to be like other people, fitting neatly into groups. We don't want to be different. Being different is considered to be weird and unattractive. We need to think for ourselves and question.

Conclusion

Not questioning something before you believe it can be dangerous. Confirmation bias and group thinking are some of the dangers. Politics and the way society is structured can be influenced by lies, creating something we don't want. People are killed for the truth, people are killed for lies. The sad truth is that the truth is something elusive. The Western world of science thinks that it got everything figured out. But this is in itself a lie. Karl Popper, a famous science philosopher, proposed that science should be striving towards falsification. What this means, simply, is that we should try and refute scientific hypotheses rather than proving them as correct or as truth. There are a lot of problems with this kind of thinking, but if the reader who knows these problems would allow me to overlook them, I want to conclude with this idea. The truth is something we won't achieve because no one knows how it looks. If some philosopher claims that he/she has found the truth that person will be deemed a lunatic. If a scientist claims that he/she found the truth, the next scientist will show him/her to be wrong. We once believed the earth to be flat and the earth to be the centre of the galaxy. But we can strive toward the truth, like a lost traveller searching for water in the desert. If a mirage pops up we will soon find it to be false and not a source of water (or a source for truth). We will move on toward the next mirage. This is what science should be, but also our own life. We should not be happy with believing without questioning. We should question the basic foundation of our beliefs and try to justify it. We should move from the current mirage toward the next, and then keep on moving. Because if we stop for too long at a mirage, we will die of thirst.