this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2024
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Relevant XKCD. Humans have always been able to lie. Having a single form of irrefutable proof is the historical exception, not the rule.
Regarding that last panel, why would multiple people go through the trouble of carving lies about Ea-Nasir's shitty copper? And even if they did, why would he keep them? No, his copper definitely sucked.
The obvious conjecture is that they were trying to commit fraud and get free copper
interesting thought. we haven't had photos in history, and people didn't need them. also, we've been able to produce text deepfakes all throughout history (and people actually did that - a lot) and somehow, humanity still survived and made progress. maybe we should question our assumptions whether we really need a medium to communicate absolute truth.
If you're getting your truth from somewhere you don't trust, you've already lost the plot. Having a medium to convey absolute truth is NOT the exception, because it never existed. Not with first hand accounts, not with photos, not with videos. Anything, from its inception, has been able to be faked by someone motivated enough.
What we need is an industry of independent ethically driven individuals to investigate and be a trusted source of truth on the world's important events. Then they can release journals about their findings. We can call them journalers or something, I don't know, I don't have all the answers. Too bad nothing like that exists when we need it most 🥲
What we need is distribution of power. Power acts upon information. There was that weird idea that with solid information there's no need to distribute power. When people say "due process", they usually mean that. This wasn't true anyway.
Information is still fine, people lie and have always lied, humanity has always relied upon chains and webs of trust.
The issue is centralized power forcing you to walk their paths.
Humanity never needed truth, for all of that. Only a good enough illusion.
It's just that, most of the times the illusions are not good enough and the truth comes out.