Post-Truth by Lee McIntyre

Post-Truth Reviews

• 
  Yücel

  Yaşadığımız dünyayı anlamak açısından, özellikle de siyaset dilini anlamlandırabilmek açısından çok önemli şeyler söylüyor kitap. Post-truth kavramını sadece basit bir kavram olarak değil öncesini, gelişimini, neden-sonuç etkilerini ve muhtemelen evrileceği boyutuyla ele alıyor. Anlatı sadece felsefi bir bakış açısı değil, son derece ilginç psikolojik ve sosyolojik deney sonuçları ile de gerekçelendirilmiş. Kitap her ne kadar Amerika halkının gündemi üzerinden konuyu tartışsa da (özellikle de Trump, Küresel ısınma, aşı karşıtlığı vs gibi konular) benzer konuların bizim hayatımızda da yeri olması sebebiyle kitabın bizler için de gayet geçerli olduğunu düşünüyorum.
  
• 
  MJ Nicholls

  Those with a working internet connection or tangential link to the outside world will notice that we are spiralling into a new realm of inhuman misunderstanding that scholars and tweeters have labelled “post-truth”. This informative primer into this unpalatable phenomenon examines the culprits, from innate cognitive biases, to the manipulations of the media moguls, to the scheming influence of career politicians, to the mainstream and upmarket medias, to bubblebound retweeters, to the postmodern theorists—no one is innocent when it comes to indulging or furthering a “post-truth” world. The chapter on postmodern theory, in its questioning of objective truth (“no such thing” said the Derrideans), presents an interesting slant on the affair, most left-wing liberals and academics placing the blame on the right-wingers (although the bulk of McIntyre’s book makes clear powercrazed moneymen are the problem), and the argument that popular satirists who have become reporters by proxy are shirking responsibility is also explored. The solution is, as DFW already knew, to pay a helluva
  lot more attention.
• 
  Pavol Hardos

  [Review published in Organon F 2019, 26(2): 311–316]
  
  Lee McIntyre’s book Post-Truth (2018), part of the MIT Press’ Essential Knowledge series, attempts the unenviable task of pinning down a vague, but very popular concept in our discourse. He settles on the understanding that post-truth denotes the notion of feelings being more accurate than facts, of believing something because it feels right. This also implies the potential for ideological domination by politically subverting the possibility of gathering facts about the real world. Interestingly, the implications of this latter half of his definition do not receive as much attention. Instead McIntyre focuses on the personal responsibility of epistemic agents to discover truth and the confluence of developments that made it so much harder for them.
  
  The book’s primary audience are lay people curious about the ongoing discursive practice of labeling lies and disinformation as post-truth. The book correctly reminds us that politically motivated denial of facts is not a creature of the current American electoral cycle. It offers a sweeping overview of why the phenomenon occurs – and why it appears to be everywhere today. McIntyre makes some very good points about the history and toxicity of science denialism, the nature of our motivated thinking, the development of the prestige press, the idea of objectivity in media, the fragmentary effects of social media information silos, and so on – though these are hardly novel, it is commendable to have them explained briefly and accessibly.
  
  The book is ultimately unconvincing, however, not just because it appears to suffer with symptoms of what it diagnoses – post-truth errors of both fact and interpretation (more on that later) – but because for a work that seeks to tackle an epistemological issue – even if in a popular vein – it does not really engage with the relevant literature on social epistemology. The book neglects the very essential epistemological questions any treatment of truth (post- or otherwise) needs tackling: what truth is and how do we come to believe it in the first place. Neither do we get a convincing account of why post-truth is a distinct phenomenon (for a recent skeptical take, see Habgood-Coote 2018), and not a moral panic, a conceptual muddle of lies, propaganda, and bullshit (in the Frankurtian sense), or merely a discursive shortcut for numerous disquieting social, political, and technological developments. Instead we get the by-now somewhat tired chapters on science denialism, cognitive biases, the decline of traditional media, the rise of social media and – with a surprising twist – the blameworthiness of post-modernism.
  
  The errors of fact can be illustrated by the following examples. The chapter on cognitive biases discusses the backfire effect, the notion that corrective information can not only fail to register but make the recipient of the correction double down on the falsehood and believe it even more strongly. This effect, however, has famously failed to replicate (Wood & Porter 2016) – with the study’s original authors co-authoring a further replicating study with a similar lack of results (Nyhan et al. 2017). This problem was known for almost a year before this book went to print yet is not acknowledged anywhere. It was almost as if this fact failed to register.
  
  Another curious error can be found in the final chapter on combating post-truth and the need to strongly challenge lies and deceptions in a timely manner. Here the lesson starts with a parable that John Kerry failed to react strongly to lies during the 2004 presidential campaign and consequently “lost the election by a few thousand votes in Ohio” (p. 155). A cursory search for the results quickly reveals those ‘few thousand’ votes to be 118 thousand, or a margin of slightly more than 2%. (George W. Bush also won the popular vote by about 3 million, but let’s not get inconvenient facts in the way of a good narrative.)
  
  The errors of interpretation require a bit more space. Here his chapter about post-modernism is emblematic of the books’ weaknesses. McIntyre’s basic argument is that post-truth as a modern phenomenon was enabled by the developments in post-modern philosophy, which problematized the notion of objective truth as unideological and apolitical, wholly disconnected from the world of human power, interpretation, and values.
  
  The chapter makes valid points about incongruous pronouncements from certain science and technology studies scholars. McIntyre shows many to have gone beyond circumspect critiques of the ways scientific findings or concepts come to be treated as facts into outright denial of facts: it is all ideology anyway. McIntyre makes a great deal out of the famous, heart-felt mea culpas from Bruno Latour (2004), one of the most famous scholars who talked about social construction of scientific facts, but who now wishes to restore the idea of scientific fact as something objectively true.
  
  But McIntyre’s argument is far from smooth. His primary argument follows the one in a paper by philosopher of science Robert Pennock (2010) about Phillip Johnson, the god-father of the Intelligent Design (ID) movement. Johnson consciously cited critical theory and relativism he had read about in law school as his operating principles for advancing his preferred creationist version of biological explanations. From here McIntyre makes a jump to other instances of science denial, such as climate science denialism, or anti-vaccination movements, for which the ID movement served as a blueprint. But the said blueprint consisted of examples of funding ‘counter-research’ and pushing their own ‘experts’ to create the illusion of controversy and debate, not from a relativistic deconstruction of scientific practices, a point McIntyre elides.
  
  McIntyre further credits the Sokal hoax for bringing post-modern posturing into the mainstream but is unwilling to extend the blame for the fallout of this wider awareness, even though this is crucial for his argument elsewhere. Earlier he laments that these post-modern notions ‘leaked’ into wider consciousness and have been used unscrupulously beyond obscure academic journals. I am not saying we should be blaming Sokal too, for popularizing post-modern intellectual posturing, only that for McIntyre to be consistent in his belief that people are blameworthy for how their ideas are used (never mind what were their intentions), he must also lay blame at the feet of those who propagate such ideas, whatever their intentions.
  
  But most of all, his treatment of ‘post-modernism’ as one of the sources of our current post-truth predicament seems more ideological than anything else. It is far too easy to blame an ill-defined, elusive concept such as post-modernism for post-truth. McIntyre echoes long-standing conservative obsessions with post-modernism (or “cultural Marxism” or “critical theory” in other, similar iterations) as a scourge of truth and beauty instead of what it really is: a set of divergent, theoretical propositions about knowledge in our society. Here he joins the narrative of the likes of Dennett, Pinker, Dawkins et al. who are at the forefront of the discursive efforts to straw-men all post-modern criticism of how science is done into a belief system committed to radical skepticism at best, or a relativizing incoherence, at worst.
  
  No privileged elder statesmen of science and objective truth probably like vexing inquiries about their potential biases or about why their intellectual pronouncements go beyond their immediate expertise. Though to point out this vested interest would probably already reveal one as a post-modernist, too. Any recognition of the plurality of discourses and perspectives about the world would do that, yet this post-modern reflection on the lack of a monopolized control over meta-narratives does not commit one to a full-blown relativist standpoint.
  
  Indeed, not all post-modernist constructivism in science is the enemy of the quest for truth – on the contrary, one cannot get to truth without realizing the extent of subjectivity when we ask research questions, build concepts, choose the tools, & model the world and how this – often unconscious – dealing with the world around us can color our perceptions of the world.
  
  According to McIntyre’s veritably post-factual treatment of Derrida and Foucault, they are radical sceptics, nihilists claiming it is all only about the text and/or power. However, they did not really deny the possibility of objective reality (cf. Prado 2006). Contrary to McIntyre’s (especially) unfair portrayal of him, Foucault would probably not agree that professions of truth are “nothing more than a reflection of the political ideology of the person” making them (p. 126). Knowledge claims are not “just” assertions of authority, a “bullying tactic” used by the powerful (p. 126) – but it is important to realize that they can be. In search for truth we must be aware of this possibility and add this warning into our calculus of trust over particular claimants and their claims to authority. This is a profound insight that we credit Foucault and other scholars with. Without it our understanding of objective reality would be much poorer. We cannot be blind to the truth that knowledge claims are potentially also ideological. This is not necessarily a rejection of objective reality, this is a reminder of the warranted distrust towards those who have historically claimed to own the truth.
  
  Claims to truth must be interrogated with an eye to the context in which they were made to spot any potential biases or alternative explanations. This is no truth-denying relativism but sound epistemic practice, one which is still far from being the norm. Espousing such commitment to skepticism over knowledge claims does not commit one to denialism. Only very uncircumspect or naïve people would make that conceptual jump, but McIntyre seems only too willing to push his readers to precisely such somersaults about post-modernism.
  
  In the final analysis, McIntyre also offers advice on how to fight post-truth, but it is equally un-inspiring. He admonishes us to take responsibility over our personal epistemic practices: be skeptical, buy a quality newspaper now and then, fight the instinct for partisanship and confirmation bias – we can do it, it is our decision how we react to the world. There is no accounting of structural issues, institutions and their epistemic effects (cf. Rini 2017), or simply of how ridiculous it is to epistemically pull yourself by your bootstraps out of bullshit in the information environment he described in the previous chapters.
  
  Thus, the biggest missed opportunity of the book is that, in our current environment ripe for educating the lay public about how we come to know and trust things as factual, it does not take social epistemology seriously enough – it completely neglects the discussion of testimony (e.g., Lackey 2008), reputation (e.g., Origgi 2017), and the individual and social norms, as well as institutions (e.g., Goldman 1999), that make knowing and believing the truth possible. Instead, apart from offering pop-science explanations, it seems intent on waging a clandestine ideological proxy war – right in the spirit of the times it purports to diagnose.
  
  References:
  GOLDMAN, A. (1999). Knowledge in a Social World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  HABGOOD-COOTE, J. (2018). Stop talking about fake news! Inquiry [pre-print online],
  available at: DOI:
  10.1080/0020174X.2018.1508363 (1.9.2018).
  LACKEY, J. (2008). Learning from Words: Testimony as a Source of Knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  LATOUR, B. (2004). Why has critique run out of steam? From matters of fact to matters of concern. Critical Inquiry, 30 (2), 225-248.
  NYHAN, B., PORTER, E., REIFLER, J., WOOD, T. (2017). Taking Corrections Literally But Not Seriously? The Effects of Information on Factual Beliefs and Candidate Favorability. SSRN [online], available at:
  https://ssrn.com/abstract=2995128 (1.9.2018).
  ORIGGI, G. (2017). Reputation: What It Is and Why It Matters. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
  PENNOCK, R. (2010). The postmodern sin of intelligent design creationism. Science & Education, 19 (6-8), 757-778.
  PRADO, C.G. (2006). Searle and Foucault on Truth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  RINI, R. (2017). Fake News and Partisan Epistemology. Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, 27 (S2), 43–64.
  WOOD, T., PORTER, E., (2016). The Elusive Backfire Effect: Mass Attitudes' Steadfast Factual Adherence. SSRN [online], available at:
  http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2819073 (1.9.2018).
• 
  robin friedman

  Post-Truth And The Trump Presidency
  
  With the lying and disregard for truth shown in the presidential campaign and presidency of Donald Trump, many books have been examining what they fear is a "post-truth" culture and offer ways of reversing it. Among these books is "Post Truth" by Lee Mcintyre, Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University and an Instructor in Ethics at Harvard Extension School. The book is part of the "Essential Knowledge Series" published by MIT which aims to offer "accessible, concise, beautifully produced pocket-sized books on topics of current interest."
  
  Mcintyre has written a short, well-written book on the nature of post-truth and its causes. The book explores issues in history, philosophy, and current events to understand post-truth, which Mcintyre describes in his opening chapter as "a form of ideological supremacy, whereby its practitioners are trying to compel someone to believe in something whether there is good evidence for it nor not." It involves the ignoring of facts in favor of feelings and preconceptions. In its broadest sense, for Mcintyre, post-truth denies the existence of objective reality.
  
  In the Acknowledgement section of his book, Mcintyre speaks simply and truly of his "love for philosophy", and this love shows. There is much to be learned from this book, and the search and love for truth never goes out of date. Mcintryre has a background and understanding in the sciences and approaches truth and reality from a scientific perspective. This is invaluable. The other focus of his book is Donald Trump whom he criticizes sharply. His discussion about Trump is valuable and troubling, but the broader, stronger message of his book is about the nature of objectivity.
  
  In seeking to understand post-truth, Mcintyre intermixes a variety of subjects. He begins with a discussion of the efforts in the 1950s of the tobacco industry to present an alternative story to the already overwhelming scientific evidence about the health danger of smoking. He carries the analogy forward to climate change deniers. Mcintyre finds the efforts of some politicians and putative researchers to deny climate change and its cause by the activities of humans is equivalent to the attempt by the tobacco industry to cause unfounded doubt in the public about the dangers of smoking.
  
  In the middle chapters of his book, Mcintyre discusses the decline of objective news reporting in a morass of media and fake news. The material is well and succinctly presented, but this phenomenon has been endlessly discussed elsewhere.
  
  The heart of this book lies in its scientific and philosophical chapters. In a chapter titled "the roots of cognitive bias" Mcintyre discusses the results of several psychological investigations which tend to show in Mcintyre's words that "we are not quite as rational as we think." This chapter includes much fascinating information and suggests the circumstances under which individuals will disregard evidence in favor of psychic well-being, group-think, or other non-rational considerations.
  
  In the most philosophical chapter of the book, "Did postmodernism lead to post-truth"? (which he answers in the affirmative) Mcintyre explores the difficult modern philosophy, with long historical roots, of postmodernism, which broadly denies the existence of any objective truth free from the perspective of the group. Claims for objectivity involve one group imposing its values on others. Postmodernism in this sense has been applied to science and it properly draws Mcintyre's criticism Although created in part to support the weak and voiceless parts of the political spectrum, postmodernism has been used as a way to critique science and revitalize certain religious claims. And its claims about the denial of objective truth have moved from the left to the right in politics and have coalesced in the post-truth world of Trump and his supporters.
  
  There is much of value in both the critique of postmodernism and in the psychology of this book. There is also much of value in the attack on Trump although I find it overdone. Here is something I learned from the psychology section of this book that seems to me valuable.
  
  A group of college students were given the following number series, 2, 4,6 and asked to come up with series of their own following the rule of this series and to articulate the rule. To simplify, most of the students came up with a series such as 8,10,12 and said the appropriate rule was the sequence of even numbers. A little reflection shows that this response was jumping to a conclusion. For those students probing a bit deeper, the sequence 1,2,3 was within the rule the investigator sought as was the sequence 25, 356, 1084. The rule simply was that each of the three numbers in the sequence had to be of increasing value.
  
  The lesson I drew from this example is that one needs to be careful in assessing the cause of an event or the form of a series that one has considered all the possibilities. And as applied to post-truth and Trump, I find them worth discussing and Mcintyres' discussion insightful. I also find the discussion overly partisan, perhaps, and bloated as an explanation. Other explanations that a philosophical denial of the existence of truth and of the objective character of reality may be possible. The fact that Trump lies and that he was elected and enjoys a degree of support does not, in my opinion, necessarily lead to the conclusion that we live in a "post-truth" culture.
  
  Robin Friedman
• 
  Burak

  Kötü değil ama bana göre yetersiz bir kitap Hakikat-Sonrası. Beklentim daha çok "hakikat nedir ve farklı kişiler tarafından nasıl farklı algılanır, yorumlanır" üzerine bir beyin fırtınası okumakken McIntyre konuya tamamen pozitif bilimler odaklı bir noktadan yaklaşıp post-truth'u gerçeklere -yani facts'e- karşı çıkan bir akım olarak konuşlandırmayı tercih etmiş. Yanlış bir yaklaşım değil belki bu ama eksik. Literatüre azıcık bakınca "gerçeklerin yaratıcı kullanımıyla" nasıl farklı hakikatler oluşturulabileceğinden ta 1986'da bahsedildiğini görmek mümkün (
  https://doi.org/10.1177/0891241686015...). Yazarın bu fikri benimsemesini beklemiyordum ama üzerine bu kadar yazılıp çizilmiş, tartışılmış bir konuyu kısaca "Trump dönemi siyasetinde hakikat-sonrası" şeklinde çok dar kapsamla ele alıp bir de post-truthla mücadele için New York Times abonesi olalım şeklinde tavsiyeler vermesi beni hayal kırklığına uğrattı. Oysa hakikat-sonrası çok daha eskiye giden ve uzun zamandır hayatımızda büyük etkisi olan bir olgu. Kitapta da çok kısaca bahsedilen ve post-truth'la aşağı yukarı aynı anlama gelen Stephen Colbert icadı kelime truthiness (hakikatimsi) ta 2005'te The American Dialect Society ve 2006'da Merriam-Webster tarafından yılın kelimesi olarak seçilmişti zaten.
  
  Bir bilim tarihçisinin post-truth kitabında bilim savaşları ve Alan Sokal'a birkaç sayfa, Latour'a ise birkaç paragraf ayırıp kitabın büyük bir kısmını son 5-6 senenin konusu olan Trump'la harcaması, sürekli basılı medyayı övmesi ve özellikle belli medya kuruluşlarının reklamını yapması benim için popüler kültüre sırtını yaslamaktan fazlası değil. Post-truth'u postmodernizme bağlama çabası da bunun bir parçası. Ben bile konuya oldukça uzak bir STS öğrencisi olarak daha geniş bir perspektiften bakabilirim gibi hissediyorum. İyimser bir yaklaşımla en azından farklı açılardan kısaca da olsa bahsetmiş diyerek orta bir puan verdim fakat bu kitaptan "hakikat-sonrası nedir ve Trump döneminde nasıl bir etki yaratmıştır"ın ötesinde bir şey beklemeyin bence.
  
  Şimdi gidip birileri Trump sonrası Amerika'da sosyal bilimler literatürü konulu bir makale falan yazmış mı diye bakınacağım, çünkü son 5 senede bir Amerikalı tarafından yazılıp da büyük kısmı Trump'a ayrılmamış bir sosyal bilimler makalesi/kitabı görmedim galiba. Bizim sosyal bilimler akademisinin önümüzdeki dönem için ellerini nasıl ovuşturduğunu görüyor gibiyim.
  
  Güncelleme: Bitirmemin üzerinden geçen birkaç haftanın ardından verdiğim puanı 2'ye düşürüyorum. Bir kurgudışı kitabın okura yeni şeyler öğretmesini ya da farklı bir bakış açısı kazandırmasını beklerim ben ancak Hakikat-Sonrası'nın bana iki konuda da faydası olmadığını fark ettim.
• 
  Shaikha Alkhaldi

  ما بعد الحقيقة هو التشكيك، ليس في فكرة معرفة الواقع، بل في وجود الواقع نفسه. فعندما يكون الشخص مُضلَّلًا أو مُخطئًا، فمن المحتمل أن يدفع الثمن لكن عندما ينكر قادتنا أو أغلبية مجتمعنا الحقائق الأساسية، فإن العواقب يمكن أن تكون كارثية وتدميرية للعالم.
  
  كتاب جميل وشرحه سلس ويخلو من العقد الفلسفية.
• 
  Maria Zbroy

  Якщо брехні подарувати нове ім‘я, чи перестане вона бути брехнею?
  
  �� переконана, що ні.
  
  Як на мене, термін «постправда» - це не стільки означення певних маніпуляцій із істиною, скільки спроба пом’якшити слово «брехня», коли йдеться про впливових осіб.
  
  Не можна ж називати усіх без розбору брехунами, надто - коли йдеться про учасників передвиборчої гонки у США (а саме цій темі й присвячена левова частка книги Лі Макінтайра). Саме тому Трамп, який спирається на свою «чуйку» - він провадить політику постправди. Путін, який розповідає байки - керується постправдою.
  
  Лі Макінтайр навіть розбирає різницю між постправдою, пропагандою та іншими явищами одного ланцюга.
  
  Але давайте чесно, по правді:
  
  йдеться все одно про брехню.
  
  Книга Лі Макінтайра може стати в нагоді студентам-медійникам, можливо - соціологам, напевно - тим, кого цікавить політичне життя США. Але брак інформації про решту світу і фокус на Америці справді суттєво звужує аудиторію (ну бо чи багато ви знаєте про консерваторів та республіканців, про лівих і правих?), а дивна форма оповіді з «підвішеними» кінцівками розділів мені здалась недоречною. Мене автор не переконав у тому, що постправда - це щось варте окремого слова. Особливо - коли зазначив, що велика частка відповідальності за подібне явище лежить на... постмодерністах!
  
  Тому для мене «Постправда» не стала ані відкриттям, ані настільною книгою, ані захопливою мандрівкою у світ соціальних комунікацій. Як на мене, українському читачеві набагато ближча книга «Бачити, щоб бути побаченим» @mykhed, і я справді була б вдячна, якби @art.huss видали щось про маніпуляції на українському медіаполі. І мені чомусь видається, що ще видадуть.
  
  А доки постправда і далі лишатиметься для мене брехнею (нехай із примітками, якщо того бажають дослідники).
• 
  Tomq

  This is published by The MIT Press, which ought to be a guarantee of quality; but I was disappointed. To be sure, this book is easy to read and at times informative. However, it suffers from numerous departures from impartiality and academic rigour, which are especially difficult to forgive in a book about post-truth.
  
  Let me give four examples of such flaws.
  
  First, the book criticises postmodern ideas as one of the sources of post-truth. This is controversial in the humanities but it is (in my opinion) correct. However, while rejecting postmodernism McIntyre often adopts postmodern manners of speaking. For instance: "when we become untethered from truth we become untethered from reality" (p169); "when a political leader is really powerful, he or she can defy reality" (p113). In context, it is clear enough what the author intends to say with these statements... But decode these sentences literally, and you realize they make sense only in a post-truth paradigm. What does it mean to say that a leader can "defy reality" (not a socially accepted description of reality, but reality itself)? Leaders can sometimes successfully lie, or they may be rich or powerful enough to afford the price incurred by embracing a falsehood... but they are part of reality, and there is no meaningful sense in which they can literally "defy" it. Likewise, we cannot become "untethered" from reality: where would we go?! We are embedded in it, and we remain that way whether or not we accept it. Instead what we lose, when we abandon the truth, is our collective ability to understand, predict, adapt to, or manipulate the world... It may seem that I am nitpicking, but the defense of truth in philosophy begins with clear and precise language. It's essential to avoid misleading ways of speaking which conflate reality with the description of reality, facts with reports of facts (as when Latour confusedly writes about "the construction of scientific facts"), etc., which sneakily and repeatedly misuse established concepts, and which are bound to become mistaken ways of thinking.
  
  Perhaps even more concerning is the apparent adoption not only of certain postmodern concepts, but also some postmodern values that are directly opposed to truth. In "Post-Truth", McIntyre rejects some postmodern positions on the grounds that they had negative consequences for society, rather than because they are wrong (false): "this is the cost of playing with ideas as if they had no consequences" (p145). Should we have rejected Darwinism because of its social consequences, namely its part in constructing many of the nationalist and then racist ideas that led to both World Wars, or in social darwinism? No! We should accept the Darwinian theory of evolution because it is true, and fight its negative consequences because they derive from wrong interpretations. Likewise, postmodern ideas should be combatted because they are wrong, because they have very limited explanatory power, because their proponents do not adhere to elementary academic good practices of discourse (clarity, simplicity), because their views ignore or contradict well-established facts. Indeed, postmodernism by and large subscribes to the belief that ideology trumps truth, and that is wrong even when your ideology is otherwise generous and honorable. It was wrong of certain academics to use the weapon of truth-denial in the first place, regardless of whether they were "liberals" or "conservatives"!
  
  This brings me to my third criticism: McIntyre's "Post-Truth" is shockingly US-centric. It is as if this was written in a universe where human civilization was born fully formed out of the primordial clay on July 4th 1776, and has, since then, existed on the sole nation on planet Earth: the USA. Post-truth in the UK (Brexit), in Western Europe, in Eastern Europe, in Russia, in China, in the Islamic world, etc., is almost entirely ignored. Thus politics is reduced to the good American liberals versus the bad American conservatives. The appearance of objectivity is dated back to 1850 and the birth of the Associated Press (what about the enlightenment, for instance?)... Much could have been gained from even a minimal openness to what's going on in the "rest of the world".
  
  A fourth problem is the author's general lack of rigour in drawing conclusions. For McIntyre, a single scientific study is sometimes enough to establish a complicated fact (namely that liberals are immune to the backfire effect). Elsewhere, the author takes for granted Kahneman's approach that we are irrationally biased, even though this is now being challenged on the basis of bounded optimality (it looks like we are in fact excellent at making the best use of limited cognitive resources). To be sure, these are quibbles - such small departures from academic precision are found even in scientific papers. But one would be justified in expecting higher standards from a book about post-truth.
  
  So, there are a lot of problems in that book. But do not get me wrong. None of these problems is critical, and most could be fixed by careful editing - I suspect the book was a bit rushed because it dealt with such urgent issues. And if I needed so much space to describe these issues in this review, it is mostly because they are rather subtle and require substantial argumentation to be properly conveyed. "Post-Truth" has other merits - it is pleasantly readable and entertaining, while offering much food for thought.
  
  Still, I rate it a little under 3 stars, because this is too serious a problem to be treated so lightly.
• 
  Mikael Raihhelgauz

  Lühikokkuvõte: Trump on väga paha, sest ta valetab palju; tõde on kõik, mida iganes CIA ütleb; libauudised on halvad – hakake juba ometi NYT tellijateks!!
  
  Pmts järjekordse tsentristliku intellektuaali TM põlve otsas kirjutatud teos päevakajalisel teemal TM. Lugesin lõpuni ainult sp, et pidin sellest arvustuse kirjutama. Muide eestikeelne tõlge on ka täiesti kohutav.
• 
  عبدالرحمن عقاب

  هذا الكتاب قصير قليل الحمولة، يشبه مقالا استطال وتضخم بالأمثلة.
  "ما بعد الحقيقة" عالم تضيع فيه الحقائق بفعل الأكاذيب التي تنافسها. وبفعل النفوس التي تتشوف إلى أن تعيش الواقع كما تريده لا كما هو. وهو عالم تفقد فيه الحقيقة ألقها ووقعها وإن لم تختف تماما.
  عالم يكون فيه الكذب هو المنافس للحقيقة حتى على مستوى الواقع! ويلعب فيه الإعلام باسم الحياد والموضوعية دورا كبيرا في تشكيل عالم بلا ملامح ولا حقيقة!
  
  يشكل "ترامب" وعصره المثال الغالب في الكتاب.
  ويربط الكاتب في فصلين منفصلين بين "ما بعد الحقيقة" وأصولها النفسية والمعرفية. كما يربط بينها وبين (ما بعد الحداثة) التي شكلت بابا واسعا تدخل منه (ما بعد الحقيقة) باسم العلم والفكر!
• 
  James Murphy

  Lee McIntyre's book explains how we're now in a post-truth age. He tells us what it is and how it came to be part of our lives. Post-truth is the "contention that feelings are more accurate than facts, for the purpose of the political subordination of reality." Using such developments--new or old--of our times as information silos, confirmation bias, fake news, and cognitive dissonance he discusses how science or climate denial, the decline of traditional media and the rise of social media, and postmodernism has contributed to it all. And, of course, the effect of the high priest who stands behind the pulpit of post-truth, Donald Trump. McIntyre shows we're in a pickle. But he offers solutions and hope. A fascinating explanation of all this that, in my opinion, should be read by everybody.
• 
  Maryna Ponomaryova

  Все логічно-доступно і легко (і, як мені здається, і так зрозуміло) описано у всіх розділах, крім одного, який стосується зв’язку постправди і постмодернізму, звинувачує цю течію у творенні світу постправди. Дивний розділ, який наче вставили звідкись ще, і не зрозуміло яку роль він грає у книзі. Поради в кінці книги слушні, і гарно, що вони підлаштовані під наші реалії. Загалом, очікувала чогось більшого.
• 
  Jhosy

  Oh only after I realized I'm reviewing the paperback version ... lol
  Although I took the time to read this, it was an interesting and educational read.
  I believe that even out of the academy, this is a reading that is worth being made. When is it so current for the problem we face in today's society
• 
  Fares

  Short and sweet. Very well written. Highly recommended.
• 
  Oleska Tys

  Будьмо чесні, таке поняття як "постправда" виникло не вчора, і навіть не за часів створення інтернету чи взагалі створення медіа. Відколи є л��дина, відтоді "неправда" стає на шальку терезів. От тільки ще 30 років тому поняття "правди" так яскраво не стояло.
  
  Лі Макінтайр у своїй книзі "Постправда" дає таке визначення "постправда - це твердження, нібито почуття вірогідніші за факти, заради політичного підкорення реальності". Дискутувати не буду, бо визначення мені подобається (привіт, підтверджувальне упередження). Та і немає про що?
  
  Хіба вас не тригерить на тему вакцинації, COVID19 чи політики? Ні? А ви впевнені? Бо мене тригерить на ці і не тільки теми, от тільки на різні сторони різна реакція. Я досить скептична людина, наука і підтверджені факти становлять основу мого світогляду. А навчання в медичному довело скептицизм до найвищого рівня. Так-так, я та людина, яка читає новини на офіційних сайтах, переглядає передвиборчі програми і закон України перед виборами та проти безцільного використання антибіотиків. Принеприємна.
  
  Дл мене книга не відкрила абсолютно нового світу. Але я люблю книжки на дану тематику, тому пройти повз не змогла. Та ще й з такою приємною знижкою на Книжковому Арсеналі. О, а ще я дуже хотіла книгу від @art.huss бо їхні книги - це неймовірна естетика.
  
  Книга проста, цікава і доступно написана(ну і вітання гарному перекладачеві). Структуровано та обґрунтовано підходить до питання фейкових новин, постправди та маніпуляцій дійсністю. В кінці книги є використана література та відповіді на всі посилання. Плюс оформлення від видавництва неймовірне. Рекомендую ознайомитись для загального розвитку кожному, без вказівки на вік.
• 
  Hestia Istiviani

  I read in English but this review is in Bahasa Indonesia
  
  

  "In this, they underline that the prefix "post" is meant to indicate not so much the idea that we are "past" truth in a temporal sense (as in "postwar") but in the sense that truth has been eclipsed -- that it is irrelevant."

  
  
  Buku Post-Truth yang merupakan tulisan Lee McIntyre ini berbeda dengan tulisan
  Matthew d'Anconna yang pernah aku baca beberapa waktu lalu. Dalam Post-Truth, McIntyre memperkenalkan terlebih dahulu apa itu "post-truth" dan bagaimana manusia di era sekarang memaknai kata tersebut.
  
  McIntyre sering sekali menggunakan kisah Trump yang berhasil menjadi presiden Amerika Serikat sebagai studi kasusnya. Narasinya menuturkan betapa Trump dan tim suksesnya bisa menjalankan "post-truth" hingga memengaruhi orang lain dan memenangkan pemilu di Amerika Serikat sana. Hingga akhirnya, kata "post-truth" pun menjadi Word of the Year di tahun 2016 oleh Oxford Dictionary.
  
  Dari situ, McIntyre menuliskan bagaimana bisa ada yang namanya "post-truth". Ia pun memilih untuk membahasnya ke dalam beberapa bagian dan secara bertahap. Ada bagian dimana McIntyre mengatakan bahwa "post-truth" ini sebenarnya sudah ada sejak di dalam otak kita. Bahwa manusia tidak serasional yang kita bayangkan (atau harapkan) selama ini. Ada yang namanya "cognitive bias" yang membuat kita merasa bahwa informasi yang kita dapatkan adalah tidak/kurang benar. Padahal itu semua hanyalah sangkalan pribadi tanpa ada landasan data/teori.
  
  

  "Some of this is based on a straightforward misunderstanding (or cynical exploitation) of how science works, based on the mistaken idea that if scientist would just gather enough evidence they could prove a theory."

  
  
  Eits, namun jangan salah. McIntyre juga mengatakan bahwa adanya "post-truth" adalah hasil dari pemikiran "post-modern" dimana mereka menjadi lebih skeptis dan kritis terhadap informasi yang diterima. McIntyre juga menyuplik dari teori-teori milik Lyotard, Foucault, dan Derrida. Bahwa teks dan wacana diindikasi memiliki relasi kuasa dan dominasi. Dan dari situlah, "post-truth" berasal.
  
  Tidak hanya itu saja, McIntyre punya 2 bab sendiri yang membahas tentang "information silo". Yakni dimana media dan bahkan kita pun sebagai konsumen informasi bisa memilih sendiri kanal-kanal mana yang ingin dibaca/didengar/ditonton. Itulah yang juga memperbesar ruang berkembangkanya "post-truth." Diperkuat pula dengan kehadiran media sosial yang lagi-lagi mempermudah pengguna untuk memilih siapa saja yang ingin diikuti.
  
  Post-Truth karya Lee McIntryre berisi lebih banyak referensi. Pada setiap bab, pasti ada catatan yang bisa ditelusur lebih jauh oleh pembaca. Bahkan di akhir buku, McIntyre juga memberikan rekomendasi bacaan lebih lanjut untuk mereka yang ingin mendalami topik ini.
  
  Terima kasih kelas pertama Philosophy Underground (5 Juli 2019)! Karena kelas tersebut membahas buku ini sebagai pemantik diskusi, aku jadi tertarik untuk membacanya lebih jauh.
• 
  Valentyna Merzhyievska

  Цікава книжечка. Про те, як виникла практика заперечення наукових досліджень. Як емоційне ставлення до фактів витіснило їх достовірність. Про зародження штучного сумніву, коли брехню почали вважати одним з різновидів правди.
  Сподобався момент про приколіста Алана Сокала :)
  Проте, як на мій смак, впродовж книги забагато Трампа. І крейдований папір не люблю.
  Але теза: "просто неможливо, щоб еволюція дозволила нам опиратися правді вічно" - обнадіює :)
• 
  Carlitos Java

  4.5
  Un gran libro que le da un marco teórico al tema de la posverdad.
  Me encantó! Aprendí mucho sobre el tema y trataré de usar los tips o herramientas que da para evitar caer en las garras de la posverdad
• 
  Wright

  3.5
• 
  Yuliia

  Цікаво було читати про історичний контекст появи постправди, особливо роль постмодернізму й ідеї про соціальну сконструйованість реальності і знання.
• 
  Elia

  Great intro to the topic, especially by not only linking it to emotional biases but to post-modern thinking. The Orwellian calls to action at the beginning of each chapter set the seriousness of the task ahead and enhance the credibility of its final chapter. Highly recommend having this book physically on everyone's shelves.
• 
  Joe Kraus

  Soon after the 2016 election, I read Harry Frankfurt’s On Bullshit, and – slim masterpiece that it is – it helped me make some sense of the rise of Donald Trump. It’s still a brilliant argument (it was even before then) suggesting that, beyond lying, the bullshitter consciously undermines the possibility of truth. He or she degrades our mechanisms for communicating and, as a result, makes it difficult to answer clearly false claims with truth.
  
  This book is the closest I’ve seen to Frankfurt’s. Like that one, this is short (though it may be close to twice as long) and it goes for the philosophical jugular. We live in a moment when the term “post-truth” is “trending,” when we recognize widely that the truth is no longer an absolute defense or even an effective counter. We live in a world, as McIntyre puts it, of post-truth, of a condition in which may think that “the crowd’s reaction actually does change the facts about a lie.” We know intuitively much of what Frankfurt laid out, but the question is how this came to pass.
  
  McIntyre begins his study with a fantastic first chapter on the nature of post-truth. He extends what Frankfurt is doing to argue that, where bullshit is generally an annoying phenomenon that occasionally leads to someone taking undue advantage, the situation of post-truth is a calculated political one. As he puts it in one chilling observation, “To say that facts are less important than feelings in shaping our beliefs about empirical matters seems new, at least in American politics…never before have such challenges been so openly embraced as a strategy for the political subordination of reality.”
  
  McIntyre works throughout this book to avoid something like blunt partisanship, but he notes the difficulty of that early on. As he puts it, one side of the political debate sees the status of “post-truth” as a crisis while the other ignores it. Taking a stand that the problem exists is therefore a political statement, one that takes on partisan implications, but it is also a project that grows out of the philosophical tradition. Socrates pondered the problem, so McIntyre feels he has disciplinary standing to take on the question.
  
  This is not quite an historical examination of how we have arrived where we are, but it is rooted in a five distinct historical strands that McIntyre sees coming together. A few are the usual suspects. He has a good chapter on the history of science denial – initially around the link between smoking and cancer and then moving into the vaccine controversy and finally into climate-change denial – as a charade in which lobbying interests create fake “controversy” around legitimate scientific consensus. He has another that reviews various areas of cognitive bias that nudge us toward scientific skepticism. Then he has one on the decline of traditional media and another on the corresponding rise of fake news through clickbait and social media.
  
  The most controversial part of this book – controversial because it’s the only part that’s potentially offensive to anyone who’s likely to read it – is a chapter that traces the rise of post-truth to the postmodern, politically progressive, academics of the 1980s and 1990s. Though he acknowledges Lyotard and Foucault are obscure figures to most of the right-wing that’s employing post-truth as a political instrument, he makes a solid case for a link. He finds a handful of right-wing operatives who openly cite their familiarity with postmodern thought, and then he points as well to mea culpas from some important theorists who worry their approach may have helped undermine ‘truth’ in a way that’s made this subsequent threat possible.
  
  McIntyre’s tone changes in that penultimate chapter; he’s clearly a little more apologetic, and he seems to be anticipating push-back. He won’t get it from me, though. I’m not necessarily convinced that the work of such theorists is necessary to the rise of post-truth as we’re seeing it in Trump’s moment, but I am convinced there’s at least something to the critique. If we embraced epistemological doubt in the theory-crazed 1980s, we may well want to reconsider that today. (I was never that sort of theory head myself, but you couldn’t escape in graduate school of the 1990s.)
  
  McIntyre wraps up with a final chapter on fighting post-truth. I wish he had a more concrete prescription, but, drawing on his fine historical breakdown, he puts some weight behind the obvious: in the face of untruth, we have to assert – and re-assert – truth. In a strangely optimistic moment, he cites the Republican mayor of Coral Gables, Florida who has come to acknowledge that barely-above-sea-level cities simply can’t ignore climate change. It may clash with some Republican party ideology, but accepting the truth of climate change means staying alive. That is, we may deny truth, but that’s not going to keep truth from doing what it wants to us in the end.
  
  Read Frankfurt On Bullshit if you haven’t. If you have, though, and if you’re hungering for someone who takes those ideas a step further, read McIntyre.
  
• 
  AD

  A profound academic analysis of how truth is being eclipsed by post-truth, transforming our world into an Orwellian dystopia. The book aptly starts with a prophetic quote from George Orwell, “The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history.”
  
  Philosopher Lee McIntyre explains why falsehoods and deceits prevail in today’s discourse, wherein psychological mechanisms affect emotion and moral judgement. Relevant case studies are presented, including the 2016 US Presidential elections and the Brexit referendum where some cherry-picked statistics and twisted reality to fit their opinion. Facts can be selected with political context, where one interpretation of the truth is preferred over another.
  
  He cites the concept of truth in philosophy, from Plato to Socrates to Aristotle, and discusses concepts that propel misinformation, such as cognitive dissonance, cognitive irrationality, self-deception, social conformity, confirmation bias, source amnesia, and motivated reasoning.
  
  The media comes under fire for sacrificing its core journalistic values of objectivity and fairness by disseminating partisan news coverage as well as for succumbing to the pressure to achieve balanced reporting by including information provided by partisans who have a stake in pushing the reporter toward something other than the truth, thereby thereby blurring the lines between hard news and partisan options and giving rise to denial discourse. Moreover, the author considers right-wingers to be more prone to falling for conspiracy theories.
  
  Climate change denial is among the crucial issues discussed. Doubt is manufactured by those who have a financial interest in promoting it. They “suggest to the media that there are two sides to the story, push their side through public relations and governmental lobbying, and capitalize on the resulting public confusion to question whatever scientific result they wish to dispute.”
  
  Dr. McIntyre further argues that fake news is not a recent 21st-century phenomenon, and that it is as old as news itself. Going back in time, he reminds us how yellow journalism led to the outbreak of the Spanish American War. In the modern context, the internet has become a powerhouse of misinformation, replete with clickbait. Besides, postmodernism is also criticized for paving way for post-truth in the current era.
  
  Propaganda provides an impetus for politics. Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, in particular, is infamous for such deceptive methods. It’s rather disconcerting to learn that, “The goal of propaganda is not to convince someone that you are right, but to demonstrate that you have authority over the truth itself. When a political leader is really powerful, he or she can defy reality.”
  
  The book warns us that it’s dangerous to ignore reality and that post truth can lead us towards an authoritarian path. Dr. McIntyre encourages readers to avoid falling prey to post-truth by diversifying their newsfeeds and vetting news sources. In the words of Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.”
• 
  Weixiang

  A clear, short, and concise overview m on the culture of post truth. One of the unique parts of this book is the talk of how left liberal academics partially created platform that supplements the rights propaganda, coming out of the post modern researches. However a poignant part is that big tobacco, with the desire for more monetary gains, created a platform that’s now a template to fight against any form of scientific progress (vaccines, global warming, tobacco being not bad etc etc). The most important part is that post truth isn’t a fight against truth but how it’s tactics are used to fight psychological misunderstandings of the world.
• 
  Liz Norell

  I found this slim volume to be captivating, important, and appropriately alarming. Why only four stars, then? The entirety of chapter 6 ("Did Postmodernism Lead to Post-Truth?") annoyed the hell out of me. It's my own bias, naturally, but I have exactly zero patience for endless discussions of philosophy ... never have. Unless you want to get eyeballs deep in a discussion of concepts we can barely define, much less falsify, read ONLY the last sentence of chapter 6 and move on. The rest of the book? Immensely valuable meditation on the current information landscape and why we must fight back against every lie/falsehood we encounter. 🔥
• 
  Aaron Beall

  I picked this book up because I found myself at a loss to explain the current political climate and the seeming disregard for objective truth in public discourse. Alternative facts, gullibility towards fake news, acceptance of blatantly lying political leaders, and overall political tribalism seems to completely overshadow many important issues we face, with opposing sides framing the other as villainous liars.
  
  Lee McIntyre weaves an illuminating thread through several important topics to summarize how we got here, a subject he's been writing about long before Oxford dubbed "post-truth" the word of the year in 2016.
  
  Oxford defines post-truth as "objective facts being less influential than appeals to emotions in shaping public opinion", McIntyre pushes this further as "a form of idealogical supremacy, whereby practitioners are trying to compel someone to believe something whether there is good evidence for it or not."
  
  Post-truth is not entirely new. Lee starts off by showing how the tabacco lobby created an effective template for science denial, by developing psuedoscientic think-tanks and "experts" which used cleverly selective facts to give the illusion that science had not really found that smoking causes cancer. This template for science denialism has been a repeatable strategy for other political issues.
  
  As much as we'd like to think we can easily see through such illusions, Lee summarizes current psychology to show that the roots of cognitive biases and psychological research proves us wrong. Succumbing to our own cognitive biases feels like thinking, especially when we are already emotionally invested (motivated reasoning, confirmation bias). We think we know more than we do (Dunning-Kruger effect) and when presented with counter evidence it often backfires into more dogmatic beliefs (backfire effect, disconfirmation bias).
  
  Particularly interesting was Lee's summary of the history of news media to show how journalistic integrity has eroded. News was once regarded as reliable, limited to truly newsworthy events, unbiased (even to an extent legally required to be), and not profitable. Over time and through several technological sea changes it became a for-profit entertainment-esque endeavor beholden to share holders, niche audiences and advertisers, silently compromising journalistic integrity to remain competitive and lucrative. Social media, of course, accelerated this decline, and quickly puts us in echo chambers and algorithm driven information silos we don't consciously choose. Add to this an intentional and cynical undermining of all news as fake news, at least from any source you don't agree with ("fake news" is intentionally false news, not just news you don't agree with), and the appeal to post-truth is complete.
  
  Finally Lee examines how postmodernism can clearly be connected to post-truth thinking, despite the objections made by postmodern philosophers. A shared objective reality and respect of scientific process is necessary to avoid intellectual implosion.
  
  "Whether we are liberals or conservatives, we are all prone to the sorts of cognitive biases that can lead to post-truth. One should not assume that post-truth arises only from others, or that its results are somebody else's problem." (p.162)
  
  So how do we combat post-truth? Despite a final chapter addressing this I did not come away optimistic. We live in an era where we've never had better tools to think critically, but it doesn't seem that most of humanity is utilizing those tools. Tell the truth, the truth matters and lies should be called out.
• 
  Jana Light

  An interesting quick read, but nothing terribly surprising or new. Disappointingly, it was light on hope or suggestions for how we move past this post-truth era when so many are committed to retaining it, but that could be more a recognition of reality than a failing on McIntyre's part. Humans need to evolve cognitively a whole lot more before I feel confident in our political systems again.