Post-truth

Post-truth is a concept, or an anxietyWikipedia entry on post-truth visit, where delineations in assertions as fact or not-fact are blurred. In contexts of politics, media, and the internet, post-truth is often identified by the use of alternative facts or disinformation. Facebook and Twitter are often seen as instigators in the rise of post-truth rhetoric because of 1) algorithms that result in echo chambers and 2) removal of context to fit the platform’s post style.

An old version of the Wikipedia entry on post-truth included a description for post-truth as “the disappearance of shared objective standards for truth”, though I can’t find the original source of this statement anymore. I liked this definition, since it emphasizes a social constructivist viewFor more on this, check out Bruno Latour visit about the nature of facts (which is maybe why Wikipedia got rid of it.)

Rhetoric around post-truth was at an all-time high with Tr*mp’s presidency, so much so that “post-truth” was Oxford’s 2016 Word of the Year. Despite this, Yuval Harari has posited that humans are a post-truth speciesAre we living in a post-truth era? Yes, but that’s because we’re a post-truth species. visit, drawing on the privileging of storytelling over truth as a driving force for group cohesion throughout much of our species’ history.

While this is compelling on its own, I’d add that we see this even in fields as cut and dry as math, where entire branches of mathematics topple as soon as you reject a single axiom. The idea of “truth” here is key.