Truth, Lies, and the Internet

Two things compete for control over our beliefs: facts and falsehoods. That is, people form beliefs sometimes as a result of facts—in which case their beliefs are true—and sometimes as a result of lies they have been told—in which case their beliefs are false. The factual falsehood of lies is no impediment to their being believed; indeed, it sometimes seems that the efficacy of lies in producing beliefs is at least the equal of the efficacy of facts. Why is this—what accounts for the efficacy of lies in the formation of human belief? Why are lies such efficient shapers of belief? The main reason is surely that lies are commonly designed so as to conform to human psychology: the liar constructs his lie so as to fit the emotions, prejudices, tribal loyalties, and wishes of the recipient of the lie. Facts, on the other hand, enjoy no such power: the world is not designed so as to accommodate human psychology. Facts are what they are independently of human psychology or individual preference. They are not agents at all; they don’t set out to generate beliefs intentionally. They are not a type of propaganda. So, they don’t have the advantage of catering to what people want to believe, or can’t help believing, or are amused to believe. But the lie can be calibrated and calculated to reflect the vagaries of the human mind; so it enjoys a power not possessed by facts. Facts can easily produce cognitive dissonance in the human mind, but lies can readily be constructed so as to soothe and satisfy the mind. We can be reluctant to accept the facts, given our antecedent state of mind, but the skilled liar knows how to make his falsehoods welcome. Thus, lies have an inbuilt advantage over facts as belief generators. Facts are not even trying to convince you of anything, but liars use every resource to get you to accept their assertions.

            In addition to this, there is an asymmetry in the consequences of challenging facts and challenging lies. No fact is insulted if you challenge it: the equal lines in the Muller-Lyer illusion are not affronted when you claim they are unequal, but the liar will take umbrage if you suggest that he is purveying a falsehood. There is a social cost in challenging the liar that does not exist in the case of facts. If you call someone a liar, expect them to take offence (or pretend to): for it is generally regarded as wrong to lie (but it is not wrong of physical objects to mislead you by their appearance). This is because (as Kant insisted) lying takes place against a background of generally accepted testimony: we hear what people say and we generally accept it as truthful. Society depends on such a practice (which is why the habitual liar is abhorred). The liar is parasitic on the truth-teller. And the lie is inherently indistinguishable from the true statement: there is no mark or sound to signal that a lie is being told. The lie takes place within a respectable social context, it carries no sign of its status as a lie, and it is designed so as to accommodate human psychology. But the fact enjoys no such privileges: facts don’t care about the social costs of disbelief, or about whether we trust them or not. Lies, on the other hand, carry heavy psychological baggage: it is difficult to recognize them as such, and there are social costs to calling them by their proper name. Then too, lies can be targeted toward susceptible groups, whereas facts don’t do any targeting at all (though truth-tellers may select which facts to convey to recipients). Nor can facts avail themselves of the devices of rhetoric, not being linguistic items at all, while lies can dress themselves in rhetorical finery. The fact is on its own, so speak, in generating belief, and it is indifferent as to what beliefs it generates. It is underpowered compared to the lie, lacking in belief-generating resources. Nor is it always accessible to our cognitive faculties: many facts are completely unobservable and can only be known by shaky inference. It can be a laborious process to discover the facts, whereas the lie promises to give us the truth with no effort at all—just believe what you are told! Thus, lies seem to have a distinct advantage when it comes to belief formation: facts can’t compete with their inherent power to persuade. And, of course, we are fallible about facts, so we can’t guarantee that truth will be the result of seeking them out; the lie, by contrast, is presented immediately to the mind, inviting belief. No wonder lies are so widely believed and facts regularly ignored or denied.

            The Internet is well designed to capitalize on these properties of lies. For it allows lies to be spread with all the resources of propaganda; it allows for targeting of susceptible recipients; and it promotes lies without the possibility of cross-examination. This last point is important: one disadvantage of the lie is that an audience can challenge the liar by asking questions; but on the Internet, there is no such confrontation. The liar can be anonymous, and he is not face to face with the person he is trying to mislead and thus open to cross-examination. Couple this with judicious targeting and you remove the possibility of exposing the lie. What the Internet has added to traditional lying is distant lying: lying with minimal risk of embarrassing exposure. The Internet liar is spared the problem of defending his lie in the face of skeptical listeners, or at least this problem can be more easily deferred and deflected than in a face-to-face encounter. The Internet has greatly empowered the liar, given him greater scope and immunity to correction. What we now call “social media” is the perfect environment for the propagation of lies. The lying meme survives and spreads in this digital ecosystem. Facts are remote from it; words are the medium in which belief is formed. The virtual world is thus a world of lies, or can easily become so. One wonders whether facts can retain their old hold on belief in this new world, or whether lies will maintain their grip on belief, even strengthening it. We must not underestimate the power of lies given the right environment. Lies are actively opposed to facts, but facts are not actively opposed to anything, and don’t have the best PR.

Colin McGinn

I went to see the film the other day. It is commendable in many ways. I liked the moment, surely lost on most viewers, when Einstein says to someone visiting the Institute in Princeton, “Have you met Dr Godel?”–who then disappears for the rest of the movie. But it irritated me that Oppenheimer was depicted as smoking in nearly every scene–when no one else was. Okay, he smoked a lot, but so did everyone else, so why only him doing it in the film? In general I disapprove of depicting smoking in movies, but presumably Christopher Nolan was making some sort of artistic point–but what point exactly? It gave the scientist a sleazy, obsessive appearance, but since heavy smoking was common in those days I’m not seeing that it has verisimilitude. It seemed like a lazy cheap way to suggest insight into character. Much better the high waistbands and western belt buckles.

I Feel So Weak

Well, I feel so weak

There’s nothing I can do

I can’t even speak

Or come right over to you

I’m a-laying in my bed

Can’t stand on my own two feet

I feel half dead

It’s hard for me to breathe

Coz I’m weak

In my physique

Yeah, it’s bleak

I can’t play hide and seek

It’s been like this all week

I feel like a freak

I’m balsawood not teak

What happened to wear me down?

What entered my blood stream?

All I do is moan and frown

And cry in my dreams

Coz I’m weak

In my physique

Yeah, it’s bleak

So weak

In my physique

You know it’s bleak

Higher-Order Desire

As we know from the work of Frankfurt, it is possible to have second-order desires directed at first-order desires. For example, the prudent alcoholic may decide, upon reflection, to reject or moderate his desire for alcohol: he desires not to desire alcohol, or to act on that desire. He thinks about his first-order desires and assesses their desirability, coming to the conclusion that they are not, all things considered, desirable desires to have. He might succeed in suppressing them, or at least reducing their hold over him. In this he exercises one kind of freedom (freedom from first-order desires). Apparently such higher-order reflection is not available to animals or young children—they are slaves to their first-order desires (for food, sex, aggression, etc.). They can’t distance themselves from their given first-order desires by reflecting critically on them.

            But that is not the end of the story. We can also reflect on our second-order desires: we might decide that too much second-order regulation of first-order desires leads to an unspontaneous and wizened life-style. We might think we need more Rousseau and less Kant in our lives, more D.H. Lawrence and less Saint Augustine. We might even decide that W.C. Fields would be a good role model (more fun, less gloom). We therefore undertake to lessen the impact of our puritan self and adopt a more childlike persona. That is, we have a third-order desire to modify the power of our second-order desire to exercise more control over our first-order desires. We decide to “let it all hang out”, or at any rate more of it. Wouldn’t it be nice to live the life of a carefree unreflective beast? Better than some uptight cardinal or moral philosopher who has read too much Kant! So, we adopt the first-order life-style and enjoy it for a while, but then we tire of the hangovers and general lack of moral seriousness. After a period of reflection, we decide to let our second-order desires have freer rein; this requires us to suppress our previous third-order desire to inhibit our second-order desire to have more control over our first-order desires. That is, we now have a fourth-order desire, occasioned by reflection on our previous higher-order desires. And so on. There seems to be no end, in principle, to this ascension of levels, though no doubt it gets more cognitively cumbersome the higher it goes. Perhaps in the end the agent assumes a position indistinguishable from that of the child or animal but only after a long series of reflective higher-level desire formations. Evidently things are much more complex than the simple binary distinction of first- and second-order desires. It isn’t just that humans can ascend from first-order desires to second-order desires; they can also scale a whole hierarchy of desires directed at other desires.