We Live in a Post-Truth Society

Why AI is not the only one hallucinating

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” — George Orwell, 1984

Honesty and integrity have been foundational values in culture, religion, and education long before the Enlightenment, shaping moral frameworks and ethical principles across civilizations.

The truth is essential because it grounds us in reality, enables authentic relationships, sound decisions, and let’s us agree on genuine progress. Without trust actions, beliefs and feelings become misguided, leading to consequences detached from reality.

Despite the importance of honesty and sharing accurate information, people are not always truthful. Some of this has to do with human biases, others because people are able to avoid information that contradicts their narrative. In any case, our society is no longer centered on a fact-based objective truth.

This article will discuss why most people don’t even realize when they are dishonest because of the failure to distinguish between the subjective & objective truth. This is further exacerbated because people don’t trust the media anymore and there is an absence of consequences for lying.

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The Subjective & Objective Truth

“Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." — John 8:32

Each person lives in their own reality, made up of millions of thoughts, feelings, sensations and memories. Our reality is shaped by our experiences, and, like snowflakes, each person's reality is unique, as no two human experiences are ever identical. This is why, depending on where we live and how we spend our time, our reality might look very different than others in very different circumstances.

As real as our experiences feel to us, they remain subjective since they are seen and interpreted through our own lens. Even when we are trying our best to be objective, we frequently interpret things imperfectly because of the many biases we face. Daniel Kahneman (RIP), popularized many of these biases including the concept of the experiencing and remembering selves. The way we remember an activity will differ from the way we interpret it as it happens. This is why our personal reality is at best an imperfect reality, and this is before you introduce other people.

Humans are social creatures, we live in communities and rely on one another for survival and progress. This co-dependence means that in addition to our personal reality, there is also a collective or universal reality, which depending on how you look at it, is the summation or average of all the personal realities. You might believe that you are a great dancer but if everybody else at the nightclub thinks you are awful, you would only be talented in your personal reality.

This is of course a subjective example, if you danced in front of enough people or had the opportunity to plead your case, perhaps you might convince some of them to see things your way. When it comes to subjective matters, like dancing talent, the way the “truth” is determined, is an average of collective person realities. Opinions could also change over time, therefore there is at best only a temporary truth. This is why famous painters continue to grow in popularity after their death and there is still some hope for the Australian Olympic Break Dancer.

On the other hand, some topics are not a matter of opinion. If it’s raining outside, your beliefs/personal experience won’t change that. These objective matters, are factual, measurable and should be the same regardless of which person observes them. This works great in theory, unfortunately this rarely happens, because our personal biases are powerful.

Why People Don’t Trust The Media

You might wonder why I spent 500 words explaining something so basic. I did this because people regularly mistake subjective matters as being objective. How often have you seen a Newspaper headline mention something along the lines of “TV Show Y named best ever!” or “Country Y named most dangerous!”. If you bother to read the article, you’ll usually see within the first few lines something like “Survey data from Consulting firm ABC indicated…”. There is nothing objective about that statement. If you are surveying respondents, you are simply taking a pulse of people’s subjective experiences, which could be based on, absolutely nothing¹.

The article could be objective if they choose to cite actual verified crime data, but few readers or journalists do enough basic vetting to to asses the quality of such claims. If the message confirms what they already believe, they will generally support it, if it violates the story/narrative they built, they will ignore it or look for ways to discredit it (confirmation bias). This is why, even when there is an objective truth, it is difficult to build a consensus for everybody to acknowledge it.

So far, this should all be fairly uncontroversial but there was a noticeable blurring of the lines between the subjective and objective truths. In The Gray Lady Winked, author Ashley Rindsberg, posits that the New York Times (NYT) for decades has prioritized narratives aligning with specific agendas or political sympathies over strictly objective or fact-based reporting. This has not only misinformed their readers but also shaped world events. Rindsberg has gone as far to charge the NYT of trying to actively rewrite history in recent years based on the political ideologies of their journalists and editors. His book is a critique of the NYT but the same could be written for any other major news publication.

This is problematic and highly detrimental to society. Dating back to the 18th century, newspapers were considered the “Fourth Estate”. Referring to their role as a powerful force in society, to keep the other three traditional branches of power: the clergy, the nobility, and the commoners, in line. The media is meant to play the critical role in reporting and revealing the truth. With this, those who try to distort the truth can face the consequences of public scrutiny and/or the penal system. The media has become far more tribal in recent years. Instead of trying to report the objective truth, they only seem interested in speaking truth to power when that power disagrees with them politically.

The mainstream news media no longer has a monopoly on the public’s attention or the truth. People can get their news from any source they want. Whether that’s Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, Joe Rogan or a stranger on TikTok. Even amongst these different sources, their competition isn’t just each other but also Netflix, Youtube, Instagram, or anything that competes for their viewers attention. Attention is their currency, since all of these mediums are advertiser or subscriber sponsored. The truth isn’t always interesting, so they need to sensationalize. People only want to consume content that reinforces their position, so journalists only feed them what they want. This unfortunately comes at the expense of the truth.

Joe Rogan or Call Her Daddy can survive whether or not their viewers think they are accurately reporting current events, since that is not the business they are in. They are entertainment shows, and are both excellent in their own way. The traditional mainstream media on the other hand, are trying to behave like an entertainment show under the guise of informing their viewers. CNN’s streaming platform, CNN+, launched in early 2022, lasted only one month. The platform, which had invested heavily in original content and high-profile hires like Chris Wallace and Kasie Hunt, struggled to attract viewership, with reports indicating fewer than 10,000 daily users. In 2024, traditional media isn’t doing a good job of telling the truth or attracting viewers. This is not a winning strategy. This is why President Trump and Vice President Harris are going on Joe Rogan and Call her Daddy; people want to be entertained and are less concerned with the truth.

The Absence of Consequences

“I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky, I never told anybody to lie, not a single time, never. These allegations are false.” — Bill Clinton, 1998

Why don’t people care about the truth anymore? It’s because they can find somebody that will argue that the so-called objective truth is nothing but a bias filled, subjective truth masquerading as objective. There are countless content creators on every platform, offering the specific flavor of truth you are seeking. Whether that’s conspiracy theories, fear porn, or complete nonsense, if people are looking for it, somebody will provide it. Even worse, these voices can get amplified all over the internet, giving life to ideas that would never otherwise see the light of day.

This is an unfortunate consequence of giving everybody a voice; the internet has done this. Some believe the solution is to repeal Section 230, which protects Facebook and the other social media companies from liability related to user generated content. This might help eliminate some conspiracy theories and weird content from the web, but this would now force Facebook and the social media platforms to play an even more active role as the arbiters of the truth. While some people say they want this, but they have not considered the second order consequences.

In the 2012 election, Facebook was accused of suppressing content related to Republican nominee Mitt Romney. They were subsequently accused among many things, of overcorrecting for the 2016 election, some calling for them to have more oversight on the content shown on their platform. Earlier this year, Mark Zuckerberg admitted that Facebook was pressured by the FBI to suppress the Hunter Biden stolen laptop story prior to the 2020 election. After Elon Musk bought Twitter, he exposed what was called the Twitter files, which also exhibited the extent to which government officials were trying to pressure the social media platform to censor certain types of information. People might think repealing 230, will force the social media companies to take more editorial control, and it might but that will also come with the government’s ability to limit speech they don’t agree with.

The solution is more complicated than that. People need to believe that the objective truth is important. The only way I see that happening is for there to be consequences for lying. This should come in the form of public scrutiny but even when the truth does come to light, with intense competition for the public’s attention, and their continually shrinking attention span, this alone is not a major deterrent. They might be angry the moment they learn about it, but quickly move on to another scandal. This creates the wrong incentives since what you stand to gain, is much greater than what you can lose. This is why the Instagram generation feels no shame staging photoshoots in fake private jet hangars.

It is unclear where these consequences will come from. Perhaps people will need to get burned by following the wrong politician or a TikToker that convinces them they can steal money from ATMs free of consequences. Right now at least, people are not interested in the objective truth and the media is not trying to give it to them. This is why at this current moment, we live in a Post-Truth society, and we will likely remain here for a while.

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1. People might respond that they find Brazil to be the most dangerous country in the world, without ever even visiting it; they just associate it as a dangerous place. It would be accurate to say something like Survey X polled ### respondents with x demographics, and they reported that city X was perceived as their most dangerous city to visit as a tourist.