Post-Truth by Lee Mcintyre

Post-Truth by Lee Mcintyre

How we arrived in a post-truth era, when "alternative facts" replace actual facts, and feelings have more weight than evidence.

Are we living in a post-truth world, where "alternative facts" replace actual facts and feelings have more weight than evidence? How did we get here? In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Lee McIntyre traces the development of the post-truth phenomenon from science denial through the rise of "fake news," from our psychological blind spots to the public's retreat into "information silos."

What, exactly, is post-truth? Is it wishful thinking, political spin, mass delusion, bold-faced lying? McIntyre analyzes recent examples-claims about inauguration crowd size, crime statistics, and the popular vote-and finds that post-truth is an assertion of ideological supremacy by which its practitioners try to compel someone to believe something regardless of the evidence. Yet post-truth didn't begin with the 2016 election; the denial of scientific facts about smoking, evolution, vaccines, and climate change offers a road map for more widespread fact denial. Add to this the wired-in cognitive biases that make us feel that our conclusions are based on good reasoning even when they are not, the decline of traditional media and the rise of social media, and the emergence of fake news as a political tool, and we have the ideal conditions for post-truth. McIntyre also argues provocatively that the right wing borrowed from postmodernism-specifically, the idea that there is no such thing as objective truth-in its attacks on science and facts.

McIntyre argues that we can fight post-truth, and that the first step in fighting post-truth is to understand it.

Lee McIntyre is a Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University and an Instructor in Ethics at Harvard Extension School. He is the author of Dark Ages: The Case for a Science of Human Behavior (MIT Press).

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780262535045
ISBN 10	0262535041
Title	Post-Truth
Author	Lee Mcintyre
Series	Post-Truth
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	MIT Press Ltd
Year published	2018-02-16
Number of pages	240
Prizes	Winner of Winner of the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Titles for 2018 2018
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.