this is pedantic, but I think its important. We can say that a truth and lie are exclusive. when we lie, we know the truth. we just make up something else because it fits our agenda better. post-truth implies that the distinction doesn't matter anymore. nothing is true, everything is true. no statement can be evaluated outside the intent in which its delivered. that's much more substantial shift than just presenting a set of lies as the truth. a post-truth society is almost compelled to devalue science or any other pursuit of knowledge. by making all the voices selfish and mundane, it explicitly rejects beauty and accomplishment.
Whenever I can, I try to think of modern events from the point of view of archaeologists digging through the layers, at some point in the distant future.
Given that perspective, my thought was: "Hey Bob, look at these morons, they called easily proven lies 'post-truth!' Can you believe that? In a civilization based on science, with AI, nuclear, and biological weapons?! No wonder they died out right after this. How did they not see this coming? Anyway, what's for lunch?"
It indicates that it's a follow-on to postmodernism. To a significant degree the post-truth era is built on a reactionary attack on postmodernism - you can see it on HN, where many people reflexively attack like a mob anything they perceive is postmodern. You can see it in so many people who will accept lies and disaster over postmodernism.
And post-truth is a postmodern term - ironic, ridiculing, makes you think, has some energy to it. How absurd to be literally //post-truth//.
> era of lies
That's a post-postmodern term. No irony or wit; a term of despair. :)
>It indicates that it's a follow-on to postmodernism.
How? it's just postmodernism itself.
There is no truth because everything is relative. There is no singular, objective truth, facts are intrinsically bound to their context, hence post-truth.
> How? it's just postmodernism itself. / There is no truth because everything is relative. There is no singular, objective truth, facts are intrinsically bound to their context, hence post-truth.
That's not postmodernism but a caricature of it by its critics.
Postmodernism cares deeply about truth. It is highly skeptical of power, bias, perception, etc. and provides tools to mitigate these risks to truth.
Post-truth is cares very little about truth and is especially non-skeptical, imho.
> Postmodernism cares deeply about truth. It is highly skeptical of power, bias, perception, etc. and provides tools to mitigate these risks to truth.
I think someone told you this and you believed it, but the track record of postmodernists in academia tells a different story.
I once saw a history lecture from a dean of the history department who had written of a book on WWII in the Philippines. This is one of the most heavily studied and well documented periods in human history. There are dozens of books and hundreds of papers on this topic.
My father-in-law, who was born there and lived through the war there, read the book. He called it historical fiction. The book cherry-picked facts badly, ignored events which countered the narrative of the book and in general made every effort to promote an entirely counter-factual narrative of events. In addition, the author had no real expertise in military or naval warfare and didn't seem to understand even the basics about how wars are fought.
When things like this happen on a regular basis, it is hard to say that postmodernism cares about objective truth in any way. In fact, they seem to actively dislike reality. This isn't a caricature, this is from the horse's mouth. If you want people to have a different perception of postmodernism, make events like this have some sort of penalty, because he's still the dean many years later.
> I think someone told you this and you believed it
Obviously you don't care about the truth but just fabricate bullshit about other people that's convenient to you. I know the topic well; you clearly don't.
Your father is one source; he no doubt has his experience and memory which are important to him. If you look at the sources of a scholarly history book, you'll see thousands of people - that's how history is done, by researching primary sources like your father. Of course not everyone will agree; people will have widely varying perspectives (which is something that postmodernism helps you understand and dealt with).
These cheap shots at me, scholarship, and postmodernism - which has its flaws, but not this stuff - are an insult to everyone's intelligence, including yours.
It's hilarious to read American history and read in every book how everyone who had something the US wanted, or went counter to US interests accidentally happened to have been evil in some way so the US could conveniently show up out of selfless desire just to right the wrongs and end up with the geopolitical result that it wanted in the first place.
People with decades long scholarly careers write this shit (some even having the highest credentials), and people eat it up.
History as written by (especially US) historians is just racist boomer fanfiction (pushed as propaganda to enforce the national myth) for your own country. This is especially true of the US.
And their errors and not subtle by any means. When they write something that is so wrong about you that every man on the street who even has cursory familiarity with the subject would reject as not even wrong, so far from the truth it's clear to the observer that the one who made these claims doesn't even have basic familiarity with the subject.
You've countered this argument with an appeal to authority (his word against thousands of researchers) - how fortunate was a person like Galileo who could just make people look into a telescope and show his numerous and highly distinguished opponents that they we wrong - unfortunately no such thing can exist for history. The next best thing I could recommend to US scholars is to have their work reviewed by top and highly respected local scholars for obvious errors, not biases of overarching narrative but, basic shit and continuity errors that common man on the street wold laugh at.
How could this be? Do I believe Americans to be specially dumb? Just like Big Tobacco pushing studies on the health benefits of smoking for pregnant mothers, and Coca Cola delegitimizing the view that sugar is bad, US historians have a vested interest in propping up US imperialism - or are acting as reactionaries saying everything the US (or white people) has ever done was purely evil, what you have is a partisan shouting match (also called activism), that is the exact opposite of scholarly work.
Caricature? Foucault talked about "regimes of truth" determining that context and society are what determine truth. Baudrillard straight up said "The simulacrum is true" putting it over objective fact. Derrida's whole deal was about how language constructs, rather than describes, reality.
If all of this sounds ridiculous that's another matter, if I actually wanted to cast shade upon them then gee, I'd just quote their stances on sex with minors.
First, I mean no personal insults. Let's discuss ideas.
As someone who grew up being de-programmed from Soviet propaganda by my parents every time I came home, starting from pre-school, I cannot even begin to communicate how allergic I am to this discourse. "There is no truth" is some grade-A bullshit to me. What's next? Maybe Stalin wasn't Hitler's military ally to start WWII? Maybe we live in a simulation? What's the point of anything? 1+1=3!
I could just be dumb, but my theoretical view from 30,000 feet, or 30,000 years in the future can be read here:
But “era of lies” doesn’t sound nice because nobody wants to be a liar… so “post-truth” sounds better: “I'm telling the truth. Almost. But I'm not lying.”
The inevitable AI investment bubble popping is going to be a big deal, but I believe that the larger bubble of political lies popping is much more interesting to think about.
What is that going to look like? How does one hedge against that eventuality?
Interesting reference. I had not heard of him, or that book from 2013. 10B is now projected to be our peak, and at 7B we have so much spare food that we burn it as automotive fuel. And now... we realize that population "collapse" is much more likely to happen than endless growth.
Obviously I have not read the book, but do you think it holds up in 2025?
Many books on the subject are very much "doomsayers" or "preppers" style.
The Roman Empire has been crumbling for 400 years, so it's likely that we won't experience the collapse of society as described in most history books either - life is too short for that. Unless a black swan comes along…
To answer your question, I like to come back to the book because it's written in the style of Dan Brown :) - short, punchy chapters. And it still makes sense (to me).
Worldwide population peaked sometime between 2015 and 2020 at somewhere between 7.2 and 7.4B. So my take on the book is that it isn't very good.
Also, biofuels based on most crops other than sugar cane, in addition to not being very helpful in the fight against AGW, triggered large price spikes and political turmoil in a dozen different countries at once. Perhaps you heard of this event, we call it the Arab Spring. We are still dealing with the fallout of it.
I know it’s completely normalized and the official name, but this has to be the most dangerous euphemism of our time.
It’s the era of lies.