The Problem of Fake Truth
The scene starts with the camera focusing the confused and startled face of Neo looking around in wonder before pulling back to view into a wide-open empty space without a blemish. A smartly dressed Morpheus in a black business suit, green tie and shades announces “This is our construct. Our loading program” and informs Neo that this space allows them to load anything their imaginations desire as a simulation. Nothing is real.
Even how Neo perceives himself isn’t real, Neo appears as he has imagined himself what Morpheus calls “residual self-image” which is a mental projection. What comes next is the meat of the problem of truth. Morpheus notes that when reality can be simulated, it can fool the senses. “You’ve been living in a dream world” says Morpheus before showing Neo what the real world looks like. It’s a grim and harsh landscape to of charred and twisted buildings that look like the husks of prehistoric insects against a dark turbulent sky. For Neo, his entire world has been shaken. The lie is too great. What is the Matrix? Control. A dream world built to keep people under control in order to change people into a source of energy. What is fake Truth? Control. A lie build to keep people under control in order to turn people into a source of energy.
Fake Truth, fake news, alternative facts are all part of the post-truth landscape where peer-reviewed research and formerly authoritative sources litter the landscape as like charred husks. The word “post-truth” was Oxford dictionary’s word of the year in 2016 and we use it now to describe a time were “truth itself has become irrelevant” or more pointedly “the quality of seeming or being felt to be true, even in not necessarily true”.
How then do we defend ourselves against fake truth in a post-truth world? How do we navigate matrix of propaganda used to control us? Believe it or not, the Greek Athenian philosopher Plato offers some sage advice in his allegory of the cave. It describes the process of truth discovery and why seeing truth is so difficult. Before we examine that, I’d like to lay the groundwork a little more by taking a look at fake news and getting a glimpse of just how old this problem is.
Fake News is nothing new. The mass acceptance of a lie that seems or feels to be true, or propaganda as it has also been called, has been with mankind throughout history. During the time of ancient Rome when the Republic, after almost a century of civil war was brought it to its knees in near collapse, fake news struck with a devastating force.
An alliance that had formed between the heir of Julius Caesar, Octavian and his trusted confidant Mark Antony was failing, and a clash was inevitable. Mark Antony took the Eastern Roman Empire and moved to Egypt with Cleopatra. Octavian, who had now become his rival took up residence in Rome to influence the Senate and the people. By 33BC an intense war of propaganda between the two was in full swing. However, it would be a document that Octavian claimed was Mark Antony’s will that would win him the war.
The content of the will contained such controversial claims that it ultimately set both the senate and the people against Mark Antony’s and Cleopatra. The claims played to the fears, suspicions, and prejudices of ancient Romans. It is a powerful example of conformation bias and getting information from one source. Octavian was the only source of information about Mark Antony’s will, and people were looking for information to confirm their suspicions and prejudices about foreigners, those in power and the wealthy. The people were turned into a source of energy that propelled Octavian into Augustus, the first emperor of Rome. Was any of the claims that Octavian made about Antony real?
You are probably thinking, “okay, that’s fascinating but what does a movie and ancient Rome have to do with fake truth, fake news and the post-truth era?” I’m so glad you asked, like Neo and the people of ancient Rome we are looking for not just information but also truth. We make our decisions on what to eat, where to invest our time and money, how we treat others, who we listen to, who we vote for, and what we participate in based on not just information but truth. Also, like Neo and the people of ancient Rome, we were and are manipulated into being a source of energy either for a system or people.
n the digital age of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, and so many other sources of information the Matrix that Morpheus describe are the agendas of individuals and groups. The Octavian of our times are the channels of information that play to our fears, suspicions and bias. How do we know if what see and read is real or fake news designed to control us and our decision making? Remember earlier that I mentioned Plato? Surprisingly, ancient philosophy can help us solve that problem. Let me introduce you to Plato’s allegory of the cave.
Plato’s allegory of the cave is a representation of reality and how people see the truth, and more importantly the struggle and cost of enlightenment. As the story starts, we see that people who have been born and raised in darkness. Plato says, “Behold! human beings living in a underground den… here they have been from their childhood…”. Their education and opinion has been shaped by the limits of society and Plato illustrates this by saying that “their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads”. What they know of reality has come through identifying truth by observing the shadows displayed on the wall in front of them. They are chained in such a way that they have no choice but to look only at the shadows in front of them as illuminated by the light behind them. The den is constructed in such a way as to allow light and sounds from the outside world to filter in, and whatever shape passes by leaves a shadow on the wall the chained men can see. The men chained in the den represents the unenlightened, comfortable with the darkness and assumption of ignorance and as Plato points out “how could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?” That is, until one of them is suddenly freed and stumbles into the outside world where truth involves discomfort and pain.
As his eyes hasn’t experience light before, the brightness hurts his eyes. This is the awakening mind struggling to understand new truth and ideas that may conflict with what it previously believed or held sacred. The chains and darkness that once controlled him represents popular opinion, the bliss of willful ignorance, groupthink, or any force that limits exploring the truth. However, it takes time for the freedman to be not only accustomed to the light of truth, but to be able to identify the new things he has learned and place them in their proper context. Included in this new context are ideas about his own identity, thinking and place in the world.
Now this man, having witnessed the light from a new world of ideas, the freedman returns to den where his companions still stand looking at shadows. This is the philosopher bringing back truth the free the masses. However, there is resistance. His companions would rather continue to praise their own intellect which is chained in darkness than see the light of a new opposing idea. Of these people still held prisoner in the prison-house of the world of sight, Plato remarks that “they were in the habit of conferring honors among themselves on those who were quickest to observe the passing shadows and to remark which of them went before, and which followed after, and which were together; and who were therefore best able to draw conclusions as to the future”.
“Everyone ... has a cave or den of his own, which refracts and discolors the light of nature, owing either to his own proper and peculiar nature; or to his education and conversation with others...”
This occurs often in social media, where opinions are rarely steeped in the light of research done in the pure pursuit of truth but rather truth that seems to be right or worse shadows of truth designed to convert people into the energy of trends, agendas, gossip and “likes”. The internet hasn’t made us smarter, but rather has allowed us to choose our idols and biases. In much the same way Octavian used claims that were not verified to move the masses into action, Plato’s allegory of the cave shows us that as Francis Bacon states “Everyone ... has a cave or den of his own, which refracts and discolors the light of nature, owing either to his own proper and peculiar nature; or to his education and conversation with others; or to the reading of books, and the authority of those whom he esteems and admires; or to the differences of impressions, accordingly as they take place in a mind preoccupied and predisposed or in a mind indifferent and settled; or the like.”
Plato’s cave allegory presents a fact, there is a common truth. The same world that the prisoners in the clave were living in was the same world that held the truth as revealed by the sun and the outside world. The cave and the outside world are different realties of the same world. The Matrix, the simulation designed to fool and control the masses existed in the same world as the machines, the destroyed cities and the scorched skies. They were different realities. To break free, you can’t rely on what you already know and have already experienced as an absolute truth. Be courageous enough to be wrong.
The prisoners in the cave, much like the people of Ancient Greece used only one source to verify the truth of what they believed. The prisoners used only themselves and each other to gauge the accuracy of truth and when an opposing truth was introduced by the escaped prisoner, it was rejected. Their views, suspicions and ideas were confirmed by sources that were aligned with their bias. This allows people to be manipulated the same way Octavian manipulated people thousands of years ago but playing to their bias. It is to this end that you have to be willing to accept that you have bias.
Agnotology is the study of culturally induced ignorance or doubt. It’s a phenomenon that is the result several long-cycle trends, one of which is that there is a widening gap between what individuals know and the collective knowledge of mankind. Second, the complex systems of events and actions in one place have unpredictable consequences in another. Technology has played a part in our ignorance, absolutely, but all of these things together help to create the chains that hold our mental arms and legs in place. Keep in mind that we live in world where we are at any time, part of a number of cultures, not one. Religious culture. Business culture. Political culture. Music culture. Family culture. Social media culture. Each of our cultures contain a cave or caves. Put yourself out of your comfort zone to see other perspectives even if you don’t agree.
I movie The Matrix when a character engages in an act of betrayal. The character’s desire to be inserted back into a simulation rather than deal with the rejection and cruelty of the real world causes him to sum up his state of mind with the statement, “Ignorance is bliss”. In this case, the same desire for willful ignorance that led to an act of betrayal is the same willful ignorance of the prisoners in the cave.
The character knows the simulation is a fake truth but would rather believe it, than deal with the pain and struggles of the real world. He in fact kills a number of people in his resistance to the real world. The captive prisoners for their part, violently reject the testimony of the escaped prisoner story about light and the truth of the shadows they had known their entire life.
The next time you are engaged on social media, talking with your friends, or are reading or watching the news, keep in mind that not every lie is intentional and not every truth offers the full story. Keep in mind that your habits may have you drawn to the comforts of sources that tell you what you already want to believe and that the truth may only come at the cost of your comfort. The truth may cost you the bliss of your ignorance, because sometimes the truth requires us to be held accountable for what we know.
Keep in mind that information isn’t only a tool, but a weapon and that more information doesn’t mean it is true. Propaganda, disinformation and fake news have always been a part of mankind’s history but in a post-truth world there is a level of skepticism that rebels against a common and objective truth. The problem of fake truth isn’t just the lie that surrounds itself with a bodyguard of truth, but the eager mind that waits for the lie to take center stage; serenading the mind with eloquent ideas riddled with deception.