At a time erstwhile even a powerful man like the president of the United States has apparent problems distinguishing fact from lies, does it make sense to talk about fact at all?
It is actual that this is simply a philosophical concept that has been attacked from different positions for centuries. In the 20th century alone, postmodernism did nothing but undermine its existence. Unfortunately, it turned out that the fruit of this is not only literary fun and Quentin Tarantino; the utmost right-wing found that practically everything that she thinks is actual is true, and what she thinks is false is not true.
No substance how much they have in common with the facts, let's give it a Masonic plot, negation of climate disaster, or harmful vaccination. As this example shows, inventions and ideas, which are an expression of the pursuit of beautiful, just and good things, or although funny, as in the case of Quentin Tarantino, bad people frequently usage as weapons against good, beauty and truth.
Today, groups equipped with louder megaphones and greater coverage on social media can preach their non-composite thesis on the ruins of a planet based on truth.
Picture by Oskar Hasiuk
And why do you think, now that we have specified considerable technological advancement in the service of discipline and verification of facts, as a human being, we have specified a problem with distinguishing fact from falsehood?
The revolution brought by postmodernism in creating narratives about the planet brought us herstory or historical position of colonized peoples, created a situation in which all communicative is worth listening to, not only the 1 written by white, heterosexual middle-aged men.
As a result, white men have not stopped doing mansplaining and have utilized another crucial concept, namely democratization and pluralism, to undermine what we have achieved through the improvement of science, which has any very strict requirements as to how we come to know. Democratisation and pluralism, alternatively of making all the voices heard, made the authorities fall.
Similarly, Russia uses our pluralism and freedom of speech against ourselves, helping to publicize voices that undermine the position of the government on abroad policy, our alliances or our political system. Just as many business actors, acting in their own interest, undermine our belief that smoking harms and causes lung cancer, and burning coal and oil affects the climate crisis.
The tools that have given us doctrine and social sciences can be utilized against democracy. It's kind of like individual utilizing a knife alternatively of cutting bread to stab another person. 1 cannot blame the knife, but in this situation we see how these concepts of social sciences and ideas, specified as Judith Butler or Jacques Derrida, are utilized by people who have no thought of them, but on the wave of philosophical pluralism they decided to shout out their unusual rations.
They are frequently called useful idiots, due to the fact that different interest groups, specified as political parties, corporations or companies, usage these groups to fight the work of vaccination, with fresh technologies like 5G, or advance any alternate versions of archaeology and history. They simply usage them to prosecute their own political interests. By telling us that inserting a calf into a wound causes pulling distant the vapors from it, they destruct what we have developed over the last fewer 100 years of science, undermine its achievements, specified as vaccines. First there is no truth, as the post-structuralists would say, there are only stories. So my communicative is besides very important, due to the fact that all voice must be heard. As a result, we perceive to these voices, which are frequently fueled by our hostile centres of political or financial power.
But possibly it's our choice. possibly we'd alternatively be lied to. possibly it's just easier due to the fact that the accumulation of cognition that discipline has brought us is so large that possibly it's easier and more comfortable to believe in myths than the truth, whatever it is.
It seems to me that myths and discipline are not mutually exclusive. Of course, the effort to reconcile these 2 orders systematically is impossible, but in the life of all man there are spaces in which any mythology and a symbolic, unscientific sphere are realized. If you believe that Jesus Christ is resurrected, you question the fundamental achievements of medical science.
But many believers in Jesus Christ believe in a tomograph, steam engine, or atomic reactor. So it seems to me that while the theoretical arrangement cannot be reconciled, in practice many people believe in irrational and rational things simultaneously, and symbolic things, and mythical things, and technological things. I would even say that the advancement of discipline has deprived people of many mythical spheres, and the coexistence of mythical and technological elements is essential to man due to the fact that he needs any spirituality. discipline has undermined many spiritual systems and makes people little inclined to believe in them. This does not mean that human request to believe in irrational disappears, religion begins to replace another themes.
But does this mean that misinformation and fake news have occupied the place of spiritual life, myths, or spiritual beliefs?
It was conspiracy theories that took the place of myth. frequently fake news are elements of conspiracy theories. The photos processed, the false information glued together in a reliable strategy are frequently bricks of large game narratives. But there's usually a conspiracy in which the elite hide the fact about reality, which is much more complicated or much simpler, depending on the version. With the current amount of information reaching the man, it is hard for him to know, to find any order in it. It's very hard for a man to believe that this is just a silva rerum, a forest of things. He feels lost, thrown like a blade of grass into the ocean. Space is an ocean that doesn't make any sense. It causes sadness, depression, large fear. Religions utilized to give meaning to life. Now the intent of life may be to discover the fact that is hidden from us by the lizard leaders of the conspiracy, who reside in the underworld of the swimming pool in Mszczonów.
Would you agree with the claim that fact became the same weapon as a rocket, tank, or missile? Even at the language level, we are talking about elf online hosts that fight Russian trolls.
It happened much earlier. At least since the time Art of War Sun Tzu dissolving false information in the back of the enemy is 1 of the most crucial elements of war. Destroying your opponent's morale can lead to triumph without winning any battle. If you make him believe in his own defeat, his forces will surrender without 1 shot. It is building disinformation that makes many citizens of Poland or the European Union believe in things that do not exist, considers their governments as enemies, and elites to be corrupt, lying gangs of pedophiles drinking children's blood. I don't think there's a more effective way than to destruct morale and believe in your own country.
And that is what is happening, and in addition, paying for anti-EU demonstrations in Chisinau or acts of vandalism in the Polish cemetery in Ukraine are cheaper than a rocket or tank. According to the leaked Russian e-mails, a demonstration of respective twelve people could be assembled for a 1000 euros, and the demolition of the monument was a cost of respective 100 euros. It's a tiny price to pay for an global argument and thousands of angry comments online. It's better to make the enemy surrender and open the door.
Even cheaper are the useful idiots who do it for free.
Yeah.
You besides do technological disinformation organized.
First of all, I deal scientifically with all the movements that want to overthrow liberal democracy by force. In Poland, these movements are working very intensively with the Russian Federation, which in practice resulted in researching the influence of Russian misinformation or Russian intelligence apparatus in Poland. I wrote 2 books on this subject: Drug and chip. Political dimension of opposition movements to the mandatory vaccination and 5th generation telephone networks (2024) and Russian Party (2023).
My father bought a magazine called The Unknown World. I read them as a kid with specified interest that as an 11-year-old I became a follower of the concept of Daniken and ancient alien. I got over it beautiful quickly. This alternate planet was as absurd as the planet of 5G opponents and anti-vaccination movements. Nevertheless, Russia's fueled followers gain a crowd of followers and, as opposed to the lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic, can undermine citizens' assurance in the state and lead to thousands of deaths. I deal in both books with conspiracy narratives and types of misinformation.
But it's not like the Russian trolls are bad, and the democratic side, the Western planet is good. So do the Russians, the Americans, the Ukrainians and we usage information as a tool to accomplish our goals. We cannot say that we win morally and fact is our tool, and lying is the weapon of Russian trolls.
It seems to me that each of us, in communicating with the world, is utilizing PR tools that contact against lies. Example one: filters posted on social media photos. Russia does the same by letting deep faki into the network that people all over the planet swallow like young pelicans. It is simply a public lie in the service of the doctrine of a abroad state. If we want to win this war, we should apply precisely the same to the Russian side, directing it to the Russians.
But you gotta remember that this weapon can burn us in the face. Russia utilized an anti-vaccine communicative and fueled this communicative in the planet and received ricochet. The Russians began to rebel against the usage of vaccines, not that they meant that there were losses in people.
The situation in Afghanistan can besides be recalled. We remember the movies RamboIn which the good mujahideen fought against these evil communists. As a result, they grew from the erstwhile Taliban. In that sense, the Americans did it to themselves. Be careful what weapons are utilized against your opponent. However, we are unquestionably victims of misinformation. We have freedom of speech, freedom of the press and pluralism. Russia does not have this, so in this sense the state better controls the flow of information. I nevertheless believe that the same weapons should be utilized against these countries.
So what tools can you usage to control the context that comes to us from outside, from X, Facebook, etc. platforms that are almost non-regulatory?
I believe that X should be delegated in the European Union. I think it is 1 of the major sources of misinformation. We are not in the States, we have no amendment in Europe to the Constitution of absolute freedom of speech. We have very many restrictions on freedom of expression regarding hatred speech, denial of the Holocaust, calling for murder, harm. Absolute freedom of speech is not in our tradition. It is alternatively the right hand that is highly Americanized and they think they live in the US. That's one.
Secondly, I believe that the promoters of various types of conspiracy narratives, if they are, for example, harmful to the wellness of the population, should be sued ex officio. In situations specified as lockdown, specified persons should be brought to justice for endangering citizens' wellness or death. I think that this kind of punishment would shortly end with the confusion of the folk stands.
The 3rd thing is that Russia is just hooking up, strengthening the visibility of harmful theories that germinate in our backyard, and we don't rip them off in time with roots. It was easy to track the main promoters and remove them from YouTube, but it was not done due to the fact that YouTube had adequate selective attitude to content in another languages than English for many years. Bringing the content to the photograph was complicated. This was the case with the National Media or inRealu24.pl, where quite a few conspiracy narratives related to public wellness appeared and only the translation of this into English helped. Unfortunately, we do not have the same tools as the English-speaking Internet. And I remind you, we're not in the States. There is nothing we can do in the US, in Poland, in the European Union, and I think we should.
We both belong to a generation of 40-year-olds. By watching, listening on the Internet, or in the reality of teenagers today, do you not feel that they were born in the times of post-truth and what we are talking about here is academic discussion for them? These are not children who learned from the encyclopedia, but from TikTok.
I did not learn from the encyclopedia either, but from public and private television.
Yes, but those were times erstwhile we were watching "Big Game" shows where we could truly learn something, not "40 versus 20".
You can find out now too. If you turn on your podcasts. I guess the planet doesn't change that much. To say that the planet has changed is to presume the laying down of arms, specified a typical woe to the old people who say that it utilized to be, and now it doesn't. I think the access to cognition is bigger now. Bullshit is far more ubiquitous. However, there are quite a few people who have quite a few knowledge, and they besides break through in this soup.
I think we're at a point where there's always chaos. The same happened during the transition from the deficiency of newspapers to newspapers, from newspapers to television, from tv to the Internet, or from the net to social media. It seems to me that each time it causes the fall of certain authorities, the emergence of fresh ones. Doesn't mean things are going smoothly. On the way, we have many turbulence, which can be terrible turbulence in consequences for the full generation. Like a terrible turbulence for the full generation were planet War I and planet War II.
So it doesn't mean it's gonna be okay, but it doesn't mean it's the end of civilization, and we can put out the light and that there'll be fools or lazy intellectually. People are not that stupid, although what dominates and what is most visible is stupid. But I don't think it's any different in another ages. People did quite a few stupid things, too. The percent of fools in the population does not change. There are usually 90 percent of them, so in this sense it doesn't substance what times we talk about. It's always the 10 percent that's going to pull the case forward.
Let us conclude with a quote from 1 of the most powerful mythological books: “Know the fact and the fact will set you free.”
