Facts!

Imlisanen Jamir

What has happened to facts? Facts aren’t what they once were.

In this bewildering internet age, every fact, however apparently undeniable, has the potential to become a subject for debate. The internet has seen to it. 

Essentially we can’t tell truth from lies. They both look perfectly nicely typeset and they’re both on websites. The discerning thinker disbelieves everything and then makes up his or her own mind on the basis of evidence from credible sources. Not so anymore.  

From government conspiracies to ignoring proven scientific facts, and physical evidence of events and consequences, you can’t take anybody’s word for anything. 

The fact that people think that is extremely worrying. One of the terrible effects of the internet is that while the truth is out there, but it may never again be discerned. People are so contrarian, and so willing to believe unsubstantiated things.

It has also become terribly easy for people to get sucked into that rabbit hole of internet conspiracies. Just look into something called ‘Tartaria’ or ‘Qanon’ and see how deranged things have become. Careful though. As stated earlier it is way too easy to fall down that tunnel.  

What makes things even worse is that those roped into believing unsubstantiated conspiracies find themselves stuck in a bubble of ignorance. The disdain for the mainstream, the romance of being outsiders and rebels, and now social media algorithms designed to shackle us to only what we are ‘interested’ in see to that. 

Then there is the endless barrage of voices saying that mainstream media is all lies. Well, it is not all lies now, is it? In fact, there is a lot more recourse if there is a specific lie in mainstream media than there is in a random website that someone has just put up.

The recent explosion of weirdly unfocused skepticism is perhaps a natural response to this nasty internet-contaminated era.

Unfortunately, this boundless doubting could take us right back to the stone-age – and not in a time machine we’ve invented. The accumulation and advance of human learning, and therefore of civilisation, relies on things being written down and subsequently believed. It’s built on trust.

Skepticism is healthy, and much required for the mental processes involved in gaining knowledge and comprehension. But running amok with an unwillingness to acknowledge any evidence about absolutely everything could lead to the thoughtless discrediting, and chucking out, of huge swaths of our collective achievements.

Comments can be sent to imlisanenjamir@gmail.com