Living in a Post-truth World

I grew up in the 1960s and 70s, at a time when fundamental physics was making huge dramatic progress and Western democracies were changing in equally dramatic ways, mostly for the better. It truly did seem that the Age of Aquarius was upon us, and that human societies were on a consistent route to progress, however uneven. By the late 1970s and early 1980s things had started to change, but that humanity and my chosen field of science were sooner or later moving forward still seemed self-evident.

By the late 1990s the situation started getting more disturbing. The likes of Newt Gingrich started taking over the Republican party, with a highly successful propaganda arm called Fox News running 24 hours a day, pushing lies about the Democrats, especially the Clintons (remember Whitewater?). For some mysterious reason, even the New York Times joined in. In theoretical physics, proponents of a failed theory dominated the subject, putting out endless propaganda to the public such as Michio Kaku’s Hyperspace.

Around this time I started spending a lot of time trying to understand how these things could be happening. If someone is saying obviously untrue things, logically there are only two possibilities: they’re ignorant and believe what they’re saying, or they’re dishonest, know very well that they are lying. Watching this kind of thing for many years, I started to realize that a better way of thinking about what was going on is that for many people (mathematicians being somewhat of an exception) the issue of truth just isn’t very relevant. Newt Gingrich and Michio Kaku likely weren’t thinking at all about whether what they were saying was true, they were thinking about what would get votes, sell books, or otherwise further their goals in life. Gingrich was doing what he was doing to save the republic, Kaku to pursue the dreams of Einstein, but both had enthusiastically entered a post-truth environment.

Over the last decade or two, things have gotten much, much worse. Those with a lot of influence in fundamental theoretical physics have driven the field to intellectual collapse by continuing to heavily promote failed ideas. The scientific method is based on abandoning failed ideas and moving on to better ones. As an undergraduate at Harvard I watched Glashow, Coleman, Weinberg, Witten and others quickly abandoning that which didn’t work and moving on to impressive new ideas, with more of the same at Princeton during my graduate years. These days Harvard Physics features a group of people devoted mainly to propping up the failed string theory program (Vafa with the “swampland”, Strominger with “A+++” and Jafferis with the wormhole publicity stunt). The situation at the IAS/Princeton isn’t a lot better.

On the American democracy front, the Trump phenomenon embodies post-truth in its purest form, with the full triumph now of a movement devoted to saying whatever will get them to power, with less than no interest in whether any of it is true. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to understand why voters in the US voted the way they did in this latest and recent elections. Taking a look at last night’s exit polling, the answer is pretty simple. Rich and poor voted much the same way, but those with the least education voted for Trump by a 28% margin, those with the most education voted for Harris by a 21% margin. The polite term for the first group seems to be “low information voters”, but what’s going on is that education is exactly what gives you the tools to look for the truth and not get taken in by lies.

The situation has gotten dramatically worse in recent years, as people get their information from social media, with the rise of powerful algorithms designed to generate outrage and “engagement” (sometimes designed and funded by bad actors). These send even some of the smartest people around deep into rabbit holes of lies.

So, given all this, how does one live a fulfilling life in a post-truth world? I’m 67 years old, now see little chance I’ll be around to see a return to the sort of world I once knew where what was true mattered. On the citizen in a democracy front, over the last few days I’ve adopted a new policy. When I’m reading anything, at the word “Trump” I stop and move on to something else. Other terms will get added to that algorithm as needed. What’s going on is all too clear, there’s nothing I can do about it, and I need to stop wasting time and energy thinking about it more. I’ve deleted the Twitter account I was using (@peterwoit, not the @notevenwrong blog post announcement account) and won’t anymore waste time in that sewer. I’ll miss stringking42069, but one has to make sacrifices.

On the theoretical physics front, I’ll give up wasting time paying attention to what string theorists are up to, and try to concentrate on more worthwhile intellectual activities. The blog will continue though, since it’s one of the main positive things I can do to make a small dent in the post-truth information environment. I’ve always benefited greatly from the many readers who write to me to tell me about things I may not have seen. Keep those cards and letters coming, especially since I’ll be spending less time looking for something new on the physics side of many of the usual topics I’ve covered.

Due to massive increases in the volume and sophistication of trolling, blog comments are now all moderated. If you want to argue that it’s all the Democrats fault (yes, I know that they have their own post-truth problem with identity politics), or that theoretical physics is doing just fine, please go away. If you have an insightful and constructive suggestion about how to live in the post-truth world, I’m willing to listen.

Update: Violated my own new policy by reading the following two analyses of where we are, which are better informed than my own:

https://newrepublic.com/post/188197/trump-media-information-landscape-fox
https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/commentary/trust-mainstream-media-2024-election-20241110.html

Now shutting off comments and attempting to stick to more productive activity.

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58 Responses to Living in a Post-truth World

  1. Quasiparticular says:

    Hi Dr. Woit,

    Longtime reader: found the blog in undergrad with your article on ‘The Principle,’ that pro-geocentrism movie. I was a budding scientific skeptic and your blog was a sort of anchor to reality. It helped prepare me for the road ahead. Poetic that a mathematician is responsible for this: I’ll let G.H. Hardy’s writing from ‘A Mathematician’s Apology’ explain:

    ‘When the world is mad, a mathematician may find in mathematics an incomparable anodyne. For mathematics is, of all the arts and sciences, the most austere and the most remote, and a mathematician should be of all men the one who can most easily take refuge where, as Bertrand Russell says, “one at least of our nobler impulses can best escape from the dreary exile of the actual world.”‘

  2. Alessandro+Strumia says:

    Hi Peter and Georg,

    Yes, I am happy that, as expected, “the indefensible” was preferred by the majority. Because I think that the woke problem is way bigger than the disinformation problem. Actually, disinformation can spread because “sources optimized for truth” (I think Peter means media and academic institutions) failed and lost the trust of common-sense people, by promoting political nonsense. So toxic that best people from the political side you prefer had to move to the opposite side, leading to the current situation.

    What you call post-truth is the rejection of a top-down authoritarian attempt of replacing the old liberalism with a new consensus. In the chaotic rejection process, some unscientific beliefs circulate. That’s not optimal, but it’s needed.

    As next needed step, political power will try fixing the shame of academic institutions that went political and started cancelling science. Your future president announced that universities engaging in censorship will face cuts to their federal funding.

    I privately warned about these issues years before I decided that being mistreated is better than keeping silently accepting the forced consensus. The official institutional position of HEP is doubly wrong: everything is perfect and adding quotas will make it better.

  3. Peter Woit says:

    Alessandro,
    I think your point of view that having the US overrun by disinformation is worth it to deal with the excesses of the woke in science is a serious mistake. It’s the same serious mistake Cumrun Vafa has made in deciding that having fundamental theoretical physics overrun by non-science like the Swampland program is worth it as a tactic in his battle with anti-string forces.

    In both cases, signing up for post-truth is a short-term tactic with dangerous long-term consequences. In Vafa’s case, the collateral damage to physics and science in general from what he is doing will overwhelm anything helpful to string theory.

    In the case of the excesses at universities, from what I see in the US, that situation was already getting better, but for the last year we’ve already been in a new environment where power has moved from the woke uninterested in the truth to Elise Stefanik and the like, who are even less interested. The new world led by Trump/Putin/Xi will be less woke, but it will be a place profoundly hostile to truths incompatible with their interests.

    While you’re worrying about a “top-down authoritarian attempt of replacing the old liberalism” with a new woke ideology, I think you should also be concerned about top-down authoritarian attempts to replace the old liberalism with the old fascism. Instead of signing up for that with Trump, why not stick to defending both truth and the old liberalism?

  4. Marshall Eubanks says:

    Here is a suggestion:

    Experience and history suggests that you should make sure your affairs are in order, while we are still in the ancien regime. For example, if you need to renew your passport, do it now.

  5. Peter Orland says:

    Peter, I understand if you don’t want to engage in argument with the comment-
    “As next needed step, political power will try fixing the shame of academic institutions that went political and started cancelling science. Your future president announced that universities engaging in censorship will face cuts to their federal funding.” – but this calls out for a response.

    This provocative statement is typical of authoritarians. It assumes things not in evidence. Whatever cancelling and censorship is done by the “woke”, it is laughably tiny in comparison to that of dictators and oligarchs. In evidence, I offer the enormous damage done to science in 20th Century Italy, Germany, the Soviet Union and other countries by repressive regimes. Once these regimes were fully established, the quality of science in their countries – except for that of a few insulated bright minds – took a nosedive.

    Our emerging overlords in the US could not care less about the quality of science – or anything else. They want loyalty, not facts.

  6. GS says:

    I’m not sure that I understand the argument that wokism is so toxic that widespread disinformation and fascism is an acceptable alternative. Even in the most extreme “woke” system, what is the state of the world? Scientific progress is hampered slightly by quota systems that prioritize social equality over merit? A few people lose their jobs or are denied tenure because they speak out against the politics of academia? A handful of trans athletes gain an unfair advantage in sports? How many people’s lives would truly be made worse by the injustices of this extreme version of wokeness?

    It seems like lunacy to claim that those injustices are so great that they justify deporting/interring millions, using the military to eliminate/silence political opponents, stripping women of their bodily autonomy, abandoning Ukraine and Gaza, gutting public healthcare, rolling back environmental protections, and deregulating crypto/banking markets and tech companies in a manner that will certainly increase wealth inequality.

    Because I fear that I have gone off topic from the original post and because I don’t want my comment to be condemned to the aether, I’ll suggest that the way to live in a post-truth world is to spend more time talking in-person with your neighbors. Have a beer, watch some sports, play a game of chess. Share your point of view and listen to theirs. You won’t always agree, and it’s almost certain that they won’t understand your complaints about the state of theoretical physics, but maybe you’ll just care about each other and enjoy being in each other’s company. In the end, that’s all we can really hope for.

  7. Alessandro Strumia says:

    Peter: as you mix swamp and woke, let me tell a story and next its moral. This year I wanted to present a good paper at a small workshop about modular invariance. Despite that the situation got better, workshops still need a gender quota, who happened to be a US DEI coordinator, who did not allow me, and no physicist dared to defend scientific standards. So I went instead to a big conference where the organisers could write: «this is a purely academic event. It does not promote any political opinion». At this big excellent multidisciplinary conference in China, Vafa gave an interesting talk about swampland. He also said that the universe is about to end and dark matter must be a 5th dimension. Many good string theorist were in the audience, but nobody said that this “conjecture” has obvious exceptions.

    The moral is that Woits and Trumps who dare to question the consensus are needed. But they don’t need to be fully right, because more free speech allows to correct the correction. We don’t need to cancel Woit because he spreads immoral stringphobic disinformation. It’s enough to keep free speech. That’s why the woke are an important problem.

    Peter Orland writes that political power fixing academia is authoritarian. No, it’s democracy: the woke annoyed so many people that enough approve politicians acting on how public money is used by academia. This is unusual, because the goal of academia used to be truth, so better not be managed by politicians with different goals. But now part of academia abandoned its mission.

    GS: the main reason why the woke problem needs to be fixed is that false academic scholarship lead to bad mayor political decisions. Better avoiding entering in the issues. To hear them, follow Elon Musk. He understands the issues as well as he lands innovative rockets. Unlike progressives lost in resentment, he shows that real progress can be achieved. Monuments can be built instead of vandalised.

  8. Peter Woit says:

    All,
    I’m shutting off comments here after this. For one thing, it’s too often interfering with my plan of trying to concentrate on productive activity.

    Alessandro,
    What you write just makes it clear to me that you are looking at everything through the lens of the DEI/woke issue in science. While this explains why you became an obsessive supporter of the much worse awfulness we now live with, I don’t think this situation is of general interest, since the fraction of the electorate that cares even slightly about this is vanishingly small.

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