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| John Woolman (source); Sarah Paine (source). |
We were taught by renewed experience to labor for an inward stillness; at no time to seek for words, but to live in the spirit of truth, and utter that to the people which truth opened in us.
— John Woolman's Journal.
In the United States, if we continue normalizing lying, and allowing our leaders to just do it flagrantly, it's another sign of precipitous national decline.
— Sarah Paine, "America is repeating the exact mistakes that destroyed the Soviets."
I've spent much of the day thinking about "truth."
Not about every possible aspect of truth, I admit, but one aspect in particular: what we are doing when we are asserting something, and we have a vested interest in being believed.
Back in the seventeenth century, we Quakers sometimes referred to ourselves as "publishers of Truth" with a capital T. Those Friends were in fact eager to publish a particular Truth that they believed they had experienced, that "Christ has come to teach his people himself."
This assertion would be correctly classified by philosophers as objectively "unverifiable," although these early Quakers were simply testifying to their conversion experiences. Furthermore, they believed that their lives needed to be in accord with this experience. Therefore, they rejected violence, hierarchy, luxury, ceremony—in their church lives, in their civic roles, and in their individual lives. In making these assertions about God and about the consequent (verifiable) changes in their lives and practices, they risked ridicule, persecution, even loss of life.
How do you decide whether this or that public assertion is true? In a scientific context, we can ask whether we can make and test predictions based on that assertion. In civil society, we can ask about the credibility of speakers, and whether the promises or predictions they make are verifiable. But probably in all cases, the first thing we test or try to detect is this: are they speaking in good faith?—
- do they have a history of speaking thoughtfully?
- are they open about their motives and agendas?
- are they open to follow-up conversations, to corrections or additional input to consider?
- do they threaten dire consequences if their assertions are challenged?
- who directs and finances their access to the public arena?
As Sarah Paine says, a culture of lying had fatal consequences for the USSR, and we should not tolerate such a culture here.
Just as we are being swamped by daily dumps of lies from the USA's president and his cheerleaders and true believers, our task of discerning and defending truth is becoming even more complicated. Artificial intelligence offers us many services, but among those services is the ability to generate and broadcast believable lies in just about every form of communication, with whatever gradation on the spectrum of lies, and, if so commanded, to do this with fake or stolen personalities and fake locations.
The motives and methods of such lying are not new. Sadly, lying has been part of American politics from the very beginning, despite our claiming to be founded on "self-evident" truths. The difference now might be the scale, with all its consequences: leaving part of our population through waves of ginned-up outrage; driving others into retreat from public involvement; and moving still others into taking up the challenge of, once again, publishing Truth.
One of the AI users in our circle sent us this fake ad for a breakfast cereal. What was interesting to me was his very simple prompts: a box of cereal on a grocery shelf, with a genuine photo of Slavoj Žižek. All of the text on this fake ad was generated by AI.
Take this offhand humorous and harmless little side-project and scale it up to carry serious messages and urgent commands, attractively and believably crafted, to audiences of thousands and millions, scooping up additional technological resources as it goes, blocking warnings and creating a firestorm of confusion. Perhaps this is one of the channels that those warning about possible AI-driven extinction events have in mind.
We do have a history of countering falsehood. Let's invite people into communities where we listen intently for truth, experiencing the power Woolman referred to (and uttering to the people only that "... which truth opened in us...."—truth is active), and speaking that truth in season and out of season accordingly. And when we individually tire, as we inevitably will at times, we can spell each other. We can eagerly extend our quest for truth by having conversations all over the planet with people similarly interested in listening, waiting, testing, and ultimately blessing everyone.
The power of truth-centered community life may not convince the world that Christ has come to teach his people himself, or that we have all our doctrines exactly right, but they may be able to verify a crucial first step: we speak in good faith.
From 17 years ago: Publishers of Truth.
One of the documents I stumbled on in searching for "truth": a glossary of terms useful for describing information disorder.
Phil Gulley on the truth will out. "The longer I live, the more I quote my mother."
Ron Hogan urges us to proclaim the message.
"Vote safe"? Elon Musk is funding a voting information site that sounds helpful, but... there are "hidden dangers." Snopes did some checking of their own.
A Multwood celebration, October 3, in Portland, Oregon: enjoying and honoring a case study of conversation across Quaker lines.
My favorite part of the funeral of King Harald V, yesterday, in Oslo, Norway. "Abide With Me." (Here's full coverage of the event.)
