FACT-CHECKING UNTRUTHS WITH UNTRUTHS

I wondered when this day would come. Having spent three plus years tolerating the growing number of untruths — up to now, “fact checked” almost continuously against objective events by the fourth estate — I’ve finally witnessed in my lifetime “fact checking” against subjective populist opinions by the fifth estate. That is fact-checking untruths with untruths. And it now has a name: QAnon. The name itself, “…Anon” speaks to the inability to trace the source of what QAnon says beyond itself. Drawing instead on religious, conspiratorial or cult aphorisms as “proof,” it represents the closing of the circle of untruth and it’s “selling” of those untruths to anxious Americans who don’t want to see the Emperor’s new clothes for what they really are: Pure illusion. There’s a reason why people “selling” untruths are often call “con men.” Circles of untruths, especially when they become opaque — sometimes called “occult” — are, in my mind, one of the most heinous of human behaviors.

In my recently released SCI-FU (science-based futuring) novel, THE EDGE OF MADNESS (Aignos 2020) by Raymond Gaynor, there are few assumptions carried over from our contemporary world; however, there is no room for untruths justified by unjustifiable untruths. For civilization to exist and hopefully flourish, there can only be four possible “proofs:” Proof by authority; scientific (repeatable, objective) proof; statistical proof and, I suggest, proof through M-superstring theory. The former three, each with its own inherent limitations, have been around for some time. the fourth, M-superstring theory, is a recent and yet to be fully tested way of proving truth. It’s hard enough to deal with “truth” and “truth value” using these limited methods of proof, without falling back into another Dark Age in which proof is accomplished via one or more logical fallacies.

The Edge of Madness

What keeps THE EDGE OF MADNESS “honest” is that it appeals more to logic and reason than hearsay and pure fantasy. Walk up to the edge of madness, curl your toes around the edge and peer beyond. I think you may find something other than irrational dystopia. I think, instead, you may discover one of a number of enjoyably plausible futures.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Je6CC...