Twitteretter

Donald Trump has uttered over twenty thousand lies during his presidency, without losing his support. This is difficult to fathom, until you understand that his supporters believe those lies to be true. And therein lies the problem. Truth, such an apparently easy idea to understand, one of the first morality concepts we teach children, is, in fact, extremely complex. We often distinguish objective and subjective truth, but we do not know for sure whether the former exists. Even physical laws or fundamental mathematical relationships only exist, only appear, when they are observed, so they may not objectively exist. Trump supporters choose to believe Trump’s utterances, Trump’s ‘truths’, to our shock and horror. But, alas, even those of us who believe (note the word) that the scientific method, proof by experiment and verifiable facts are the only sources and tools of truth are, ultimately, choosing that belief. This is the realisation at the heart of nihilism, Trump’s most potent weapo...

I have read with interest news that Exxon Mobil, API and Koch Industries are being taken to court in Minnesota for misleading the public on climate change. These organisations, amongst others, sought to protect their oil businesses by engaging in a 35 year campaign to sew doubt in public debate about the reality of climate change, following what has been known as the ‘tobacco industry playbook’. The objective is not to state facts proving climate change doesn’t exist, which could be challenged and disproven, but to introduce doubt in the public debate, combined with targeting of specific demographics with bespoke advertising. The practice is immoral, but highly profitable. Even if they ultimately lose an eventual lawsuit, as happened with tobacco, the penalties imposed will be negligible compared with the monies made while engaging in these practices. We need much graver penalties, if they are to be prevented in future, and maybe the largest class action ever, humanity vs oil industry?...

I think it was Mark Twain who said something like: ‘Never argue with an idiot, they will drag you to their level and beat you with experience’. I can imagine this quote was coined at a moment of exasperation after one such argument. We could adapt it, today, to something like: ‘Never challenge misinformation in social media. It will fight you with continuous, mindless repetition and beat you using your good intentions to help its spread’. This is a tough problem. Social media, particularly short form one such as Twitter, is not designed as a forum for reasoned thoughts and exhaustive information, which should be the weapons deployed in this particular battle. This is a problem, because social media provides a more suitable voice for agitation and deceit than it does for reason. We must find other media, but it is true today that the length of content is inversely proportional to the numbers that consume it, and only if we can buck that trend the truth will out, as the old adage says Le...