Post-Truth: Why Facts Don't Matter Anymore

This aged very well

You lost me that CNN is more credible news source. What a joke.

Coming back to this video while looking for antidote to post truth.

Ignorance is bliss - we chose to be ignorant - being educated to too much work.

7 years later, and Google Search is worse than ever and completely and utterly obliterated and useless, filled with SEO spam and trash. RIP this more optimistic past. lol

We need a remake of this video.

Being wrong isn't not the same as fake news or misinformation or disinformation. It still moves the conversation forward. As long as it allows for being wrong - even if the realization comes much later after that conversation is finished. And we won't often know. Which is the point. The truth doesn't depend on being known to be true. It just is. And since we know so relatively little about everything, were wrong about most of what we think we know. Because at best it's incomplete. So we should, we must allow for the sharing of even wrong ideas. And let the wisdom of the whole, the crowd, play it's role. As it is, we're over-programming the formulas and the algorithms for the "smartest" ideas. But the wisdom of the crowd outperforms the experts. So we're shooting ourselves in the foot by trying to leave out the "dummies", the low information people. And our new feudalism has concentrated too much influence in too few hands, exacerbating the problem. If we don't protect the voice of the lowest, the middle, and the top, we'll fail.
We shouldn't forget, that our culture has been dominated this last century by a culture born of "ignorance" in the black culture that was for centuries before that enslaved, tortured, and dehumanized. The greatest symphony is not a superior creative work to some songs played on guitars missing strings by men who have no inkling of music education as we knew it. Visual art as well. And it seems that we've forgotten this lesson as we have grown "smarter". An old proverb says pride goes before the fall. It's more like the fall arrives when we become convinced of ourselves.

Cgp greys video on evolution of ideals please?

Get rid of your smartphone, and start being smart again.

it is weird that people think "by having an international communication system is gonna make everyone happier and more tolerant to others around it because the internet is gonna people to people who are not like them" but not consider the opposite,
+lets say in average you rate people you don't know anything about 5/10,the internet introduces them to you so if one was to think logically,
1- they would rate people who are like them and people who like the same thing as them to a higher rating
2- they would also rate people who are not like them and people who hate the things they love to a lower rating

so in this sense saying internet will make everyone happy(rate others to a higher point)" is not a smart thing to say, as internet just polarizes people .
+about "internet making things more true"
1-most people have no way of determining if a thing is true or not , they just have to believe in some other people and/ or their knowledge of the subject, which is about as accurate about the people who are being trusted. An other point being that the science has grown so far out of average person's understanding that even the people who are on the science's side are thinking about it as something that needs to be believed in, instead of trying to understand it.
2-before the internet there used to be an information shortage, so people just absorbed any and all information that they could access, but with the introduction of internet there are massive amounts of information that a human , even an above average one is not even close to grasping it all, some just get the information on their own bias to satisfy themselves.
3-because people are profiting off of the populism not everyone tries to create the best, most informational things, some just create sensational fake information or biased information that will make readers feel good, which in turn makes most of the information on the internet a populist and full of "sweet lies".
People are trying to filter the massive amounts of information by themselves and failing miserably (but compared to the moderators of the platforms people who want to have a better access to information they need do a better job, which is surprising).
3*- Lets say there are 2 news a day, a person doesn't have to decide on what it can read , it can read both news and be done with it. Now considering a person can have access to more than a million news, the person has to choose, ****This**** is the crucial part in my opinion, the way people chose what to be informed about and how they react to it.

If companies hire better people, better editorial staff, better writers, who are hired based on truthfulness in their hiring requirements. There is obviously a desire for these qualities in the market. Look at what media companies viewership is compared to various podcasters viewership. We the people desire overall a greater representation of fact in order to formulate our informed decisions. Are we not the ones who decide what is best for us?

We all should have been presented in our lives with continual, reliable and representative ideas of who, what and why we are. We're going through about our daily lives to function and represent that which is most important to us all. Why wouldn't we all be continually instructed and constructed in these basic truths and ways of being. All of humanity has survived through constant challenge, death and demise. We are in our most protective, constructive, and Intellectually stimulating times of all time. We must nurture and foster truth in recognizance of our greater ideals dedicated to reality which is our humanity. Such simple truths can often be our greatest challenge, to fight might versus right. There are now as has always been, those who seek to deceive us all. Under a different name the game is still the same, divided we will fall. We're not always led to the light or taught right. We are all still human and posess the ability to go In a constructive way. Ask in your heart, seek truth and meaning and it will start, you will find the righteousness you need to convey.

I thought exactly how you do about how amazing the internet would be. I learned so much science, history, math, coding, philosophy, and how to videos that I thought this was the best thing that could possibly happen to mankind.

My friend who is smarter than I am said.... "you are 100% wrong. The internet will make people stupid". I didn't believe him. Now I do.....

You are 100% spot on on your analysis.

Love your show. My son watches it.

The solution is humility. So practically, there is no solution until the Truth is revealed.

It is important to realise that Google's amplification of 'truth' is only as good as its Western bias/influence allows.

And it's important to expose ourselves to uncomfortable truths in order to grow.

Negative things are more likely to engage us because something positive is resolved faster. Think about how long you'll take to fix something than to enjoy something that works.

So I've started thinking how powerful it is to keep conversations civil, precise and brief, to help the neutral observer accept what you're saying and move on with improved knowledge rather than a need to respond. And then quit while you're ahead.

Really interesting video!
For the record i would have started defining truth according to a dictionary. Thanks a lot for your video i have enjoyed

This is some next level desperate coping. People are open minded now, that's why they know the truth. They aren't so boxed into their one perspective. They are able to entertain a new perspective and challenge what they might have thought was true.
If you just keep your head into the dirt and calling everybody else crazy and not as smart as you, you won't realize how ironic it is what you are saying

Another way to set that up is "it has never been easier to resolve differences of opinion by obtaining concrete data." People dislike being proven wrong, but where we were once forced to just agree to disagree we now have more readily available answers than at any previous time. And how often have people in any era changed their minds solely because of evidence? But dismissing facts as "just, like, your OPINION, man" doesn't work, so they must be invalidated AS facts and reduced to opinion so we can then safely dismiss them.

As someone who grew up in the age of the internet and knows very little about what it was like before, it seemed like those who came before actually understood the true nature of the internet better than those who grew up with it!

Heres what i believe is the true problem. Those who are unable to recognize nor admit to being wrong. That and places that want more views and dont care about the truth of the statements made as long as they get views. Like newsnstations ad companies and social accounts. These selfish notions kill the truth. We all want to think we are right, no one wants to think they are wrong. But as soon as your prepared to admit this to yourself a world of truth opens up. You just have to be humbled enough to consider if you are wrong.

Veritas

Free speech is very important and limiting speech to the truth will lead to Totalitarianism. You are right to want Truth told so tell the truth. But how do you know what is true? Some of the Veritasium videos show that knowing what it true is not easy.

I question the target in the solution. Redirect to truth is not comparable to what brought us to the current problem.

The problem didn’t arise from algorithms tweaked to land on fake news. This was ire byproduct

For all the facts that exists, q good amount can be deemed subjective or simply agreed upon. Therefore there is an element that can be debated or deemed objectionable to some. Many?

Going back to my main point, the fix would have to be the byproduct of something else that has the effect of possibly bringing people together at best, making them less polarized at minimum.

Tweaking technology to somehow prioritize truth and voila! Problem solved seems a fools errand to my mind.

These swedes are YAPPING eh...

Huh, so true in 2024. I guess one of the underrated videos of Veritasium that deserves a remake!

Critical Thinking is still number one.
You don't believe stuff, you don't dismiss it... You suspend judgement and form relationships between information.

I agree that it becomes difficult to abandon something that has become who you are in that the longer it's a part of who you are, the more decisions you have made from that part of yourself and invalidating that part of yourself opens you up to the notion that many, if not all, of your decisions were the wrong decision because they were based on a falsehood to begin with.

In the end, "swapping papers" isn't as easy as it sounds as it requires people to also reexamine every decision they've ever made, every opinion they've ever formed, and find new solutions to every problem they've ever faced since they adopted their false belief. From this perspective, "swapping papers" is impossible at best.

I wonder what he thought when he heard some scientists, doctors, and universities coming out falsely claiming men can get pregnant?

I don't see any difference with the outside world. What is popular will always be more "true" than what is not. And claiming that something is "truth" is the wrong attitude anyway.

Everything manifested into this physical realm will be influenced in some or all ways that either benefits it or gets hijacked or destroyed. HU

It’s not what you know; or who you know. It’s who likes you……

"CNN is more likely to be true than Breitbart news" I am genuinely curious why you'd hold this opinion? Aside from the illusion of truth that is. Because every single time I have fact checked both of these outlets I find them to be equally as engaged in propaganda and false reports.

There is also an issue between facts and truth. For example it is a fact that not a single woman's voice was heard in the video. Is it true that women have nothing to contribute to the conversation? That women who asked questions were edited out? That women were proportionally represented and there were a negligible number of women in the room in the first place? That social dynamics when unchallenged mean women's voices are marginalised ? Many of these things may be the truth behind the simple observable fact. How do we get algorithms to quest out truth when they can barely identify varifiable facts?

A portion of the problem is the American educational system and more specifically the lack of scientific literacy amongst the population. People with STEM degrees are profoundly much more immune to instances to mis and disinformation. Because they've been trained to place red flags on outrageous statements with little attachment of evidence to align. The can differentiate between opinion, statements of fact and the spectrum of reputations amongst where the information is coming from. All these factors play into the discernment of truthful information and the opposite. Whether it is at risk of being tainted by political ideologies of either side. All that is at play and reinforced in that field of study. Logos. It trains you to remove the ego from the outcome. That being incorrect simply means you have just gained wisdom, rather than it being a win-loss paradigm. But our problem seems to be that people seem to discredit the data if it misaligns with their worldview. They've internalized the ideology as a portion of their human psyche.

If we placed more emphasis on scientific literacy in the classrooms, I hypothesize that this would be much less of an issue. I feel like STEM graduates don't join cults

This video should be shown to everyone

We have access to all information through the internet.

That doesnt mean everyone actually understands it and can separate good information from bad information.

We have the information, we are just not smart enough to do something with it.

This should be your most watched video. Thanks for making it.

People seem to be not as interested in facts as in narratives that work for them, toward the achievement of their aims, if they would be leaders, or toward the at least psychological fulfillment of their wishes, if they would be followers. By the manipulators, language (utterances) are used as a tool to get something done. And only the level of truthiness/plausibility sufficient to get a critical mass of belief and movement in the direction that helps them is required to be deployed. Deployed couched in all the (audience targeting tech customized) rhetorical tricks to bolster the plausibility among the target audience. By the followers, laziness, or being overwhelmed by the complexity of today's world and all its information and misinformation, means a tendency to accept what is said by the favourite, "tribally aligned" authority figure. It is the social use of language; its use as a weapon, wielded on the nearly defenseless, that is overwhelming the perceived importance of objective truth.

The election results wasn't due to "fake news" - we've had the internet and social media since before this election, but political parties (both left and right) in US are pushing further out to the extremes, and then they respond to each other by being even more extreme which creates this positive feedback loop. I'm sure Derek is arguing against the election for Trump, but every "I can't believe Trump won" person fails to take into consideration what was the alternative to Trump - yes, YOU think that Hillary would have been better, but that's because your tolerance of the left is much higher - people on the right (and independents) saw Hillary's left party as a "my way or the highway" party and decided they didn't want to take part in a government that swings so far left that it suppresses any and all "right" thinking.

The polarization is due to each side going more extreme as an answer to the other side's extremism. This video was six years ago - look at where we are now. Would you say we are more polarized or less? I'd say more - it just keeps going up. And Facebook and Twitter tried censoring anything they deemed "fake news" and that FURTHER polarized people, not less. Now, instead of the much more reasonable candidates like McCain vs Obama, we have a clown show - the alt right vs. woke left.

Derek! That you (of all people!) would be inclined to believe the ICE car emission story is... CRAZY!

You said you looked it up, but where did you look it up?

And even if it was true (which it isn't!), how would you arrive at the conclusion that the actual way to go about reducing emissions is not to develop EVs in the first place?

Please make a video about this, because your argument is entirely illogical and one of the fossil fuel industry's biggest lies.

This is actually a lovely support for the philosopher Alvin Plantinga’s argument against the conjunction of evolution and atheistic naturalism. We do not evolve towards a greater proximity with the truth and facts, but we evolve for survival. They’re not the same goal. So his conclusions from “the best I [Veritasium] can reason about why we care less about facts” is really a natural consequence of Plantinga’s critique. (I’m assuming he’s using “we” all inclusively.)

the evolving strawman of the echo chamber, interesting observation.

Two things would significantly improve the current state of misinformation and disinformation. One, if more people would do their due diligence of proper research, which most importantly includes noting the sources. Two, if more people would discern and/or admit the things to that which they are unsure of. Too often people allow ego to drive even though the best drivers are: curiosity, intrigue, suspicion and compassion.