Truth cavity

Do you believe that Walt Disney cryopreserved himself before he died, and that Disney created the film Frozen so that it would not show up in search results? Or that strange art at Denver International Airport carries warnings of the apocalypse?

Some people do. And there are concerns that this kind of popular conspiracy theory is undermining the very basis of truth.

Former US President Barack ObamaThe Democrat US president between 2008 and 2016. argues that we are currently suffering from "truth decay", a process in which people increasingly come to disagree over the most basic facts, and no longer trust institutionalised sources of information.

Truth decay has been evident this year. Donald Trump has spread unfounded rumours about voter fraud in the recent election. Fake news about the Covid-19 pandemic, claiming that it is linked with the rolling out of the 5G network, has also been disseminated widely.

Obama's fear is that such a breakdown of truth is harmful to democracy - if people do not agree on basic principles, then they start to treat political opponents as enemies. Disagreement over facts can block compromise and sow mistrust.

But we have not always treated "fact" and "truth" as one and the same.

Literary historian Richard Firth Green suggests that our belief in truth as fact can be traced back to the later Middle Ages. Before this, truth was thought to reside in people: hence we can still describe a loyal, trustworthy person as "true".

After the Scientific RevolutionA period lasting from the mid-1500s to the late 1700s, in which modern science - and the scientific method - emerged. The scientific method is based on close observation and scepticism about what is being observed., European thinkers came to believe that "truth" meant "backed up with empiricalThrough observation or experience, rather than just theory.  evidence".

But in the 20th Century, some philosophers began to criticise this idea. French thinker Michel Foucault argued that truth is not discovered by human beings, but rather it is produced by them. "Truth" has no objective existence, he says; it is a word that we apply to a certain way of understanding the world.

This implies that the growing complexity of truth could be a positive thing. Many think that young people today are more capable of navigating the pitfalls of online misinformation and can present truth in interesting new ways.

The situation could encourage creative use of the interplay between truth and falsehood. It lends people the opportunity to construct elaborate theories that have a whiff of truth about them, even though they are, to many, outlandish.

For example, last year some started to claim that the world had actually ended in 2012, due to a fault in the Large Hadron ColliderThe world's most powerful machine for smashing high-energy particles together. . The theory claims that, to save humanity, scientists moved our collective consciousness into a parallel universe that was almost identical, but with some small differences.

The theory points to shared false memories as "evidence" that we used to inhabit a different world. Some people are convinced that they remember the Statue of LibertyA joint French-American project, finished in 1886, the statue celebrates the abolition of slavery and international friendship. Its original name was Liberty Enlightening the World. being on Ellis Island rather than Liberty Island, and that Nelson MandelaA South African anti-apartheid activist who spent 27 years in jail before becoming president.  died in the late 1980s. According to the theory, these are residual memories from our old, slightly different world.

Of course, this is not "true". But it can be fun and interesting to arrange flawed evidence so as to create the impression of truth.

So, is truth decaying?

Yes, say some. They argue that democracy can only function if everyone agrees on what is true and what is false; otherwise we cannot convince others that our approach is right. They suggest that conspiracy theories are not a more creative form of truth, but simply a means of avoiding complex and urgent problems with overly simplistic or delusional explanations.

No, say others. They think that truth has always been a complicated and multifaceted thing. "Facts" are not synonymous with "truth"; they are the products of interpretation. Philosophers have argued over the nature of truth for millennia, and have still not found a common answer. The meaning of truth changes according to time and place, and "true" and "false" are never black and white.