Well, that's the dilemma, and a serious one. The solution - a solution - is good laws, enforced. Trump should have been incarcerated years ago.

Imagine a state enforcing historical and scientific truth and you’ll be imagining the most evil regimes in history.

↪tim wood I feel your pain, like half of America and about 90% of Australia, I'm vastly dissappointed by the re-election of DJT
— Wayfarer

You may want to think twice about that percentage. — Joshs

It says 'a chunk'. According to my preferred afternoon radio host, DJT had a spike in popularity amongst younger men. Older Australians and most female voters rated him negatively. I read somewhere, not that it's significant, that he would have lost any vote were he running in Australia. But, all water under the bridge now.

Bottom line, the lie itself can become a deadly tool, the liar a deadly danger. Like a virulent cancer. As with cancer, the earlier detected, usually the gentler the cure. Doctors of TPF, your suggestions? — tim wood

Simply make the detection/diagnose of a "post-truth" person and then treat him or her accordingly. Understand that he or she will tell the truth only if it suits his or her objectives and agenda. It just a power game, so get over the stupid fascination about truth and falsehood. The are playing a role and they want to give everything to that role. Assume he or she is pushing an agenda irrelevant of the facts. That's it.

Understand the underlying thinking: "Post-truth" people think that truth simply is a means to further your agenda, just like speech that sounds honest and credible. Truths are just a tool for argumentation. And repeating the lie of the leader simply shows that you are giving 100% percent for the cause.

Subjects and the subjective matters, objectivity is for pussies.

I wonder though how much Truth there was in the Truth Era as opposed up our current Post Truth Era. How much of is it that we just don't have a unified worldview and therefore we lack a subjectively consistent perspective?

Did the US and USSR.agree on the facts? Do Israel and Hamas agree on the facts? Do the Southern Baptists and atheists agree on the facts?

That is, is the Post Truth era really just a Post Common Ideology Era? We're used to people far away disagreeing with us on basic facts, but isn't a substantial part of this change just caused by our no longer agreeing with our neighbors?

From my perspective, the prior Trump election wasn't stolen. The arguments otherwise (which I hear among the educated where I live) are completely idiotic. But does the US Constitution really say anything about abortion? Are transsexuals truly women? Did Harris really have a chance like we were told? Not from your perspective, but what is the Truth?

Why do the murky areas of Truth always seem to land consistently with Ideology?

This isn't to dispense with the idea that there is Truth, but it is to suggest we've always found Truth/God on our side. We're just frustrated because we don't worship a common god.

The way that I think we need to deal with the definition of "post-truth" is that it's not about the perpetrators of lies, manipulations, deception, disinformation or misinformation etc. It is rather about the inability to decipher them as doing such. It's mainly about how society and culture erodes a collective understanding and consensus of "truth", of "facts" and how we rationally reason in order to arrive at them.

What it means to live in a post-truth world is therefor not about the liars at the top, but rather that when truth loses meaning among the people, the liars at the top are able to gain power. They are the consequence and symptom of post-truth culture, and as such we won't get rid of them by treating the symptom itself...

...we need to treat the sickness.

How much Truth (in the Truth era)? The exact same amount. What distinguishes the Post Truth era isn't the absence or lack of Truth, it's the marginalization of Truth and a degradation of it's public influence. Previously, there was a general public consensus of the way various entities work, say elections. Of course many disagreed with this understanding, but there was a price to pay for verbalizing (usually self serving) alternatives publicly, since acting in a blatantly self serving manner in a public forum went against the public interest, which meant something in the Truth era Thus speech about ideas such as gerrymandering, or electing election officials who would only certify one party's majority could only take place privately among others with the same viewpoint. In the Post Truth era, a leader pays no price for verbalizing self serving proposals since his constituents are only interested in his conclusion or goal, but don't care how he accomplishes it nor the "logic" he uses to justify it. So liberated from any downside from not adhering to the Truth, he's free to say (or do) essentially anything, and for the purposes of this thread, that includes lying.

But we've never trusted Russian elections or Iranian news. We've never agreed upon basic facts with our enemies. My question is whether the change is in what we take to be Truth as opposed to who our enemies are now. We find our enemies next door now, when we used to have to go far.

Isn't distrust just a symptom of polarization of viewpoints as opposed to something new?

Imagine a state enforcing historical and scientific truth and you’ll be imagining the most evil regimes in history. — NOS4A2

What does your nonsense even mean? And the trouble with your nonsense is that it seems to both mean and imply something. So let's be clear: truth involves facts. Facts and truth are not "enforced." And the association of facts and truth with "the most evil regimes in history" is vicious perversion.

Simply make the detection/diagnose of a "post-truth" person and then treat him or her accordingly. Understand that he or she will tell the truth only if it suits his or her objectives and agenda.It's just a power game — ssu

And thus the problem. Truth v. power. In a true society, law. In a power society, war. And the mistake - the lesson history large and small teaches repeatedly - is that the liar and his lies require immediate strong response. That, or they just get stronger and bolder. Trump was a criminal from his beginnings: imagine how the world would differ if he had simply been jailed for his crimes then.

And that leaves the question of what to do when law fails?

This isn't to dispense with the idea that there is Truth, but it is to suggest we've always found Truth/God on our side. We're just frustrated because we don't worship a common god. — Hanover

I think you're confusing things that in your own life you likely are not at all confused about. Which for brevity's sake I'll characterize as the difference between facts and "facts" and between truth and "truth." "Facts" of course not being facts, and "truth" not being true; both "facts" and "truth" being lies of one or another kind.

Most - I think all - lies are soluble in appropriate analysis. But this takes skill and work and time and energy. Truth, then, is always chasing the lie. And when it catches it, in my opinion it should tackle the liar hard, hard enough so that he, she, they, will think long hard thoughts about ever lying again.

and as such we won't get rid of them by treating the symptom itself...
...we need to treat the sickness. — Christoffer

Both. Education for the ignorant (which includes all of us), and appropriate penalties for liars. "Appropriate" meaning penalties that will strongly disincentivize lying.

It's very hard to fight against cults. Just looking at some of the survivors or people who quit - it takes a lot of time and they usually have to hit rock bottom to awaken and notice they've been had.

Truth is certainly a big component, the issue for me is that the standards of evaluation from which we can make informed decisions are labeled as "political" instead of being taken as facts.

I fear that only when people notice how f*cked they are, will they change their minds. By then too much damage will have been done.

Worst of all, if the Democrats keep with this centrist "bi-partisan" crap, they may win in 2028 - but if they don't change quite radically, the cycle will repeat itself all the time going further to the right, which drags everything to the right as well. That's not a path that will lead to sanity.

sn't distrust just a symptom of polarization of viewpoints as opposed to something new? — Hanover

You shall have to decide whether there is any such tig as a truth or a fact. Admittedly some that are claimed to be are not, quite. But that is not to categorically equivocate them as a class.

Equivocation - relativization - destroys not just the structures of facts, truth, and understanding, but also the ground they stand on. If all is just "polarization of viewpoints," then whence distrust? What do you distrust? And how, or why?

Both. Education for the ignorant (which includes all of us), and appropriate penalties for liars. "Appropriate" meaning penalties that will strongly disincentivize lying. — tim wood

Free education for all that is of equal quality for all. Media literacy as a major part of all education, not just interwoven in minor ways. All of this includes higher education as well, like nations who even incentivize students with funding for it.

There are many things that can be done, but such a large education reform makes the most difference fundamentally. It's not just about getting people past post-truth. Such a reform would generate more educated people working on solving complex problems as well as more educated people taking the place of manipulators and liars who scheme their way to the top. Why chose a maniac like Trump if the pool of educated and functioning politicians is larger? Why implement politics that cater to billionaires if there's educated people with philosophically sound political visions to market to voters?

Overall, a reform that makes education of the best quality available to every single individual in a nation, is the absolute best way to improve any nation and any society.

On education, agreed. Let's call that the carrot. Your opinions on the stick?

As to education, I have direct experience with the USA version, indirect with the "British" system. The general verdict seems to be that the British, though not itself perfect, is wa-ay better than the US. Best in my opinion, would be a lot of British, tempered with some American. What do you say?

Most - I think all - lies are soluble in appropriate analysis. — tim wood

An example: I was speaking to a Russian woman who's been in the US for decades. Her recollection of the "Miracle on Ice" when the US won the Olympic gold in hockey was that the Soviet team was paid off. She said there was no way a top rated professional team could lose to amatuers. She said for the right money, they'd have had sex with each other (her words).

What fit my narrative was freedom over oppression and that Americans can win if they just believe. What fit her narrative was that her team was superior but her nation was corrupt. I hadn't thought about it before, but who knows what actually happened? We have no evidence of cheating, so I go with the US version, but my guess is that Russians rolled their eyes at the result while the US cheered.

And so if I'm as entrenched in US culture as Trumpians are in Trump culture, I can't imagine things being other than they appear. Does this give rise to conspiracies? Of course it does, but that's what breeds this post truth thing.

In the Truth Era, I wonder how much truth there was, or were we just more accepting due to homogenuity of ideology.

It's very hard to fight against cults. — Manuel

I invite you to consider that while fighting is itself hard, that the difficulty is not the fighting with the cults, but making the decision to fight them, and how to fight them. That's their head-start on the rest of us. They act; we react - and for lots of things, that is how it must be. But I would like to see laws that make the reaction time shorter and more direct and explicit.

I have elsewhere offered that lies should be subject to possible criminal and civil penalties, not for their content, although that possible, but for the mere fact of they're being lies.

Trump, apparently one of many, is post-truth. His - their - lies should not be, cannot be, accepted. — tim wood

It seems to me that the Trump narrative, that things used to be good and have gone to shit is fundamentally true and agrees with the experience of middle America. So the only lie is the promise to make it great again.

Whereas the democrat's lie that everything is fine because the stock market is up, which feeds on the lie that everyone is an entrepreneur (though who is left over to make the trade that everyone takes a cut of is a mystery); that lie is not convincing any more.

Ordinary people are being screwed, and deceived into voting for the people who are screwing them, by misdirecting their discontent towards Johnny Foreigner and feeble democrats offering no solutions to a problem they are pretending isn't happening. The lies are on both sides and the result is no communication and the breakdown of society.

Idiot Wind.

Well - maybe in certain situations such a measure could be appropriate.

In the meantime, it's not as if one is going to go to Truth Social or some site like that to reason with anyone. Yes, we react - maybe that should change.

I don't see where to start at the moment, other than donating to causes, participating in events. The thing is to communicate with those that are not yet completely gone.

What fit my narrative.... — Hanover

Two "narratives," neither factual. And neither true. And that leaves open and untouched the question of what the truth is - what the facts are. That information readily available from various sources. Mainly, the US team were a select, experienced, highly trained, very highly motivated group of young players. The Soviet team being then merely a very good professional team. Herb Brooks understood that the Russians were beatable, but they had to be beaten at their own game. Which is what he selected and trained his players to do. Some luck? Sure.

Mike Eruzione of the US team quotes Brooks as saying - which is deleted from later accounts - as they prepared to exit the locker room, that, "If you lose this game, you will take it to your fucking graves, to your fucking graves." Brook's own hockey history argues that he knew what he was talking about, and his players know that too. I doubt the Russian coach gave a similar speech.

It seems to me that the Trump narrative, that things used to be good and have gone to shit is fundamentally true and agrees with the experience of middle America. So the only lie is the promise to make it great again. — unenlightened

How much Kool-Aid have you drunk? You must have a very high tensile strength, being so twisted and stretched without shattering. Look at the history, man! Let's start with a first lie: whose inauguration was bigger, Obama's first or Trump's? Answer! And we can play this game for years, because that is how many lies Trump has told - or forever because he is still lying. And if you repeat and maintain them, then you're a liar as well. Just look at the history.

On education, agreed. Let's call that the carrot. Your opinions on the stick?

As to education, I have direct experience with the USA version, indirect with the "British" system. The general verdict seems to be that the British, though not itself perfect, is wa-ay better than the US. Best in my opinion, would be a lot of British, tempered with some American. What do you say? — tim wood

The Finish school is considered best in the world. They generally excel at national tests. And in Sweden you get paid to go to school.

However, I'm in the strong opinion that education should be even more of a financial focus for tax funding and support. Teachers should be paid more, but also have more demand on them to reach a certain level of quality as teachers. Classes need to be smaller in size overall in order to structure education to support the differences between children's learning capability and psychological leaning (some are better at math at certain ages, some are better at language and so on). There should be a greater push to support education in poor regions and education needs to be mandatory for all children.

I'm less fond of sticks as they usually just create villains when a problem have been stricken away with that stick. But I would have laws and regulations demand that constant factually wrong statements in politics, especially to the public during campaigning will lead to the dismissal of that politician from politics. It would incentivize politicians to structure their politics around actual facts and truth rather than manipulation of the publics opinions to support their agendas.

I can't see how such regulations and laws against politicians would have negative effects. The only thing to keep an eye on is so that politicians then don't put money into research institutes to "produce facts" through research papers that conclude something that aligns with their politics. But putting a long prison sentence onto such corruption and strict observation of the money, where it comes from and its use would spot it easier and the blowback would be too severe for politicians to attempt it.

Obama's first or Trump's? Answer! And we can play this game for years, because that is how many lies Trump has told - or forever because he is still lying. And if you repeat and maintain them, then you're a liar as well. Just look at the history. — tim wood

Yes, I already drank that cool-aid, and I'm wondering why it turns out most people are sick of it. Yes Trump only lies when he opens his mouth. But there is a lie you and all the righteous pedantic democrats have missed that they are telling, that matters and that people know is not true for them, that everything's fine except Trump's mouth. Really, people are poorer, and they don't like it, and everything is not fine. To people who are suffering, happy-clappy looks plain stupid. As stupid as worrying about who has the biggest hands/crowd/dick. And that's what you come back at me as the fucking issue? Maybe swear off your own cool aid for a day. You know how many times I've been told that Hannibal Lector is a fictional character? I been listening to too many democrats already. You're looking the wrong direction, man, you bin misdirected and you lost. Think about that. You corrected all the lies people don't give a damn about, and you lost, because people vote for demagogues who spew hate when they are full of hate because they are suffering.

You can play your being right game for years, and go on losing and not understanding as long.

To people who are suffering, happy-clappy looks plain stupid. — unenlightened

Responding as succinctly and concisely as I can (I looked them up): in many respects Democrats are the messenger, and the stupid shot them.

Some people are poorer (they're always with us), and everything is never fine. But to the extent that any party controls the better and the worse, which do you think has in the US governed for the worse, since, say, Hoover?

The stupid here are like the frogs in Aesop's fable: they wanted a king; they got one, a stork.

I am under the strong impression that the original intention of the founders in establishing the electoral college was to reverse the outcome of the popular vote, should that deserve reversal. They should have done it in 2016,and to be sure, in 2024.

So we have the results: they matters of fact. But the cause(s), the large lies built out of smaller facts and as well other lies.

But to the extent that any party controls the better and the worse, which do you think has in the US governed for the worse, since, say, Hoover? — tim wood

It really doesn't matter much what I think. Americans seem to think... well I'm an ocean away, see if you can get an idea of what they think. But I think that they think, since you ask, that you're all a bunch of incompetent greedy lying buggers, and they're messing with your heads by voting for the greedyest, lyingest, incompetentest, bugger around to give you a taste of the medicine you've been force feeding them from both parties since, say, Hoover.

I'm not saying this is a good idea; I think it's going to work out really badly for America and the world. I wish it hadn't happened, but it gives too much intelligence to Trump to make him totally responsible. Democrats have been getting it badly wrong for a long time and this is their fault as well as ordinary republicans fault. Maga happened because they both failed.

Trump was a criminal from his beginnings: imagine how the world would differ if he had simply been jailed for his crimes then.

And that leaves the question of what to do when law fails? — tim wood

Democracy or a Republic works only if the citizens uphold the values. Even in school I remember my philosophy teacher reminding us that there's no limit to what a Parliament can decide: it can jail redheads if it wants as it can change the constitution (with 3/4 majority votes, but still). Even for the US Constitution there have been 27 amendments.

The real problem is when corruption is basically made legal. Or where do you put it when Jared Kushner starts a private equite firm and gets an investment of 2 billion from Saudi Arabia? At least Trump is talking about Saudi Arabia very favorably. Naturally there's been the allegations of Hunter Biden, which just shows how usual this is.

you're all a bunch of incompetent greedy lying buggers, — unenlightened

Nothing says nuance like using a punt gun on a flock of pigeons. May I recommend a double charge?

Big picture, dude. You do the closeups! Never mind carry on.

I found it almost literally incredible that even a large minority of Americans could vote for Trump, never mind a majority. How did it come to pass - the credulity required is incredible?

Even for the US Constitution there have been 27 amendments. — ssu

The original ten, leaving seventeen. Many administrative, two foolish, and six substantive as to rights. Not bad for 230+ years. As to citizens upholding values, they - we - spoke, and God help us all! Trump is a welsher par excellence on promises, guarantees, obligations, debts, and contracts. And a flouter of laws and judgments.

My limited knowledge of Finnish history tells me Finns have been through matters like this. Smaller scale maybe, but with much greater danger and lethality. Maybe you know a secret or two on how to cope. Share?