Honestly

The End of Truth. Or, a Walk on the Dark Side.

Hello Friends,

I’m nothing if not a radical subjectivist—I believe we are constantly creating our own reality. Because of this, my truth will necessarily be different from yours.

What we do share is proximity. We all live in this world, and generally, in a free society, are entitled to our opinions (mine is more than a little dark today).

There is a famous experiment involving a person in a gorilla costume walking onto a stage where a group of people are doing something. It’s called the invisible gorilla.

Half the observers never notice the gorilla.

Here’s an example:

There was also the famous blue / gold dress incident. If you remember, we spent months comparing what we saw.

My point today is not about illusions, but about the condition of honesty in the context of a subjective worldview. Or, maybe it is about illusions.

This has come to mind lately, because I’ve been feeling that there is nothing I can trust as true. We have the obvious “misinformation” and deepfakes, intentionally untrue to serve some kind of purpose.

Don’t believe half of what you see and none of what you hear.

It’s like what my painter friend Donald said to me, “Stick a fork in their ass and turn them over, they’re done.”

Last Great American Whale - Lou Reed, 1989

Recently, I have been struggling with this idea of truth. I’ve gotten to the point where I feel I can’t believe in anything.

And this comes from a guy who, just a little while ago, liked to believe in everything.

It was easier that way. Ghosts, aliens, bacon is vegan—anything. That way, I didn’t have to think about things that didn’t really matter.

If you believe you saw a ghost, you did. Your brain, your reality.

If I believe I saw a sheet blowing in the wind, I saw a sheet. My world.

But now, there are too many ghosts. So, I believe nothing. The world is too haunted.

I simply start with uninformed disbelief.

Then, if it’s something I am curious about, that might actually matter (if anything matters any more), I try to find collaboration. If I can find enough sources to report similar things, I can feel relatively certain that something is at least partially true, on a subjective level.

Or, mainly true enough in spirit.

This, I think, is one side effect of having our lives mediated by AI.

When using AI tools, it is a common suggestion to “check the sources,” since users can never be certain if the AI has actually given correct information.

The implication of this is that anything that AI produces could be a hallucination, which is just an acceptable word for a lie. Anything—even the results you know to be true—is inherently suspect.

This is the state of existing at a time when the sand under our feet is constantly being shifted.

These days, I consider everything to be a hallucination.

I mean, if you think about it, there is no difference between subjectivity (where anyone’s personal experience of the world is their reality) and hallucinations (where a person’s projections onto the world are their reality).

It’s not pessimism. I see it as self-preservation.

It’s easier to keep myself sane when I hope it’s not true that people in our government are making money betting on and manipulating the war (and people’s lives), and I choose to search for verification.

The alternative is to walk around being angry all day, thinking all of this awful stuff is true.

Healthy scepticism is one thing. But I think we’re living in an imaginary time, orchestrated so we tune out and don’t look behind the curtain (where the piles of money keep getting higher).

This is our story—at least until our society starts to privilege honesty (and humanity) over personal gain. And honestly, the truth might unfortunately be stranger than fiction.

But then, who knows? That could just be my extreme subjectivity talking.

Your reality could be filled with rainbows and unicorns and honest politicians. No one could blame you. Certainly not me.

Happy reading and happy writing,

David