Authenticity: Truth and Trust in a post-Covid-19 digitally connected world
By: Jack Goldingham Newsom
Tags: Truth, Trust, Authenticity, Digital

If many of our connections move online, what does it mean to be digitally connected in an authentic way? Why do truth and trust matter now more than ever?

Published on the Objektion Project here.

Scientific studies begin with a hypothesis. This statement or question is intended to guide the researchers towards answering a question or confirming a suspicion about the world. Following the scientific method, one would then design a method to test this hypothesis, perform some measurements and make note of some observations under the certain conditions, analyse and transform these observations into results, and make a conclusion. This method, most of us now believe, is a way for us to get at the truth about what we call reality.

I will begin with a hypothesis. And I will try to adhere to the scientific method as far as possible to lead me to conclusions about the questions and hypotheses I pose. Why take this approach in an article about authenticity, truth and trust? I hope that by the end of the article, this approach will make more sense, and the article itself will serve to be an example of the very conclusions I reach.

My hypothesis is this: during the COVID-19 pandemic, when almost all forms of work and connection have moved online, we are worried about authenticity and connectedness. It seems as if we will not be able to reach the same level of trust with people when we are speaking to them solely online, and we will not be so easily able to discern the truth in the communications we receive. This leads to quite a simple question: why?

To begin answering this, we must address some of the presuppositions that are being made in the questioning line that we are taking. These are like background conditions that could influence the outcome of the results, if we don’t think about them before we proceed with the question itself.

The first is the idea that there is a difference between the digital world, and the world that is not digital, which we often call the ‘real world,’ but I will call the offline world. This difference causes the problem in the first place, because we feel an unease when using the internet. We suppose that we could be duped, deceived, and manipulated at any moment. To start, it must be evident that the same can happen ‘in reality.’ In everyday life outside of the internet, newspapers and magazines can lie, people can lie, signs can lie, governments can lie, leaders can lie, your family can deceive you, your friends can prank you… the possibility of being deceived is thus no different when we are participating in the digital world compared to when we are participating in other interactions with people in person.

Further, the digital world is in fact part of the ‘real world.’ It is a subsection, albeit with different rules and conventions, like an avocado stone is part of the avocado: it has a different texture and different properties: you normally don’t eat it for one, yet it is still part of what we call an avocado. The digital world is the same. When we are participating in the digital world, we are participating in the stone of the whole avocado which is the ‘real world.’ The green fleshy bit of the avocado is the offline world, and together these two parts make up the whole avocado.

In both the digital world and the offline world, the possibility of being deceived exists. As Professor of Philosophy at KU Leuven Roland Breeur, and author of Lies, Imposture, Stupidity notes, the distinction between true and false has been blown up in the whole of reality, because of the actions of the imposter; the liar, the one who claims to be something he is not for the purpose of removing the very value of the truth itself. It no longer matters what is true and what is false, when we realise that political leaders can lie to our faces knowing that we know what they are saying is completely false. They are harnessing the ability of the lie to demonstrate their power over us and over our desire to protect and maintain the truth. With the use of social media to convey these messages, it becomes difficult to discern true from false, opinion from fact. The value of the truth is lost: with heuristics like confirmation bias resulting in us often believing false claims that fit with our current beliefs, being a protector and a safeguarder of the truth begins to look folly, ridiculous, stupid. This occurs in real life: finding some evidence and observations in our scientific investigation here is not difficult. We need only look to what the President of the United States, or Russia even, says in his speeches; or to the last person, likely to be a friend of yours, who told you ‘that’s just my opinion.” Comments such as these end discussion, by removing the value of the truth and making it seem pointless to argue for it. The same happens in the digital space: we end discussion before it begins by pointing out our seemingly evident right to have and express our opinion.

Deception is thus rampant in real life, and in the digital world which is part of the whole which is reality. What is it therefore that is different about these two worlds, that is one of the causes of that uneasy feeling about being deceived, about a lack of authenticity?

In the offline world, one of the ways (albeit non-exclusive and not always usable nor useful ways) that we can validate and verify the truth is to perform a test against what appears to be the case for us, to see if there is a corroboration between the statement and reality. If I tell you that John is eating an apple, you will look over at John on the other side of the room, and if he is indeed eating an apple, we have an established a truth about the world and you have verified it. In the digital realm, this test is no longer as useful as it is in the offline world. If I tell you John is eating an apple, you could text him, video call him, and ask him, and he could lie to you. Your call or message alerts him to the fact that you will see his offline world, and this means he has time to hide what he is really doing and do something different. He has a greater ability to deceive you, and the way that you normally verify the truth is no longer going to be as useful as it was. He could even send you a photoshopped image of himself and an apple, to make you believe that he is in fact eating one.

What does this difference between the two worlds thus amount to? I think it is a difference of spontaneity and generation. The offline world is spontaneous and immediate: it flows and occurs without delays and is always open to the possibility of interruption, of the lie being found out and the deception uncovered. I can interrupt you in outside the office building when you’re having a cigarette after claiming to quit smoking. I cannot do that in the online world. I cannot verify your words conform to your actions precisely because you choose, you generate your online world, and the only way to connect to that world is through my alerting you to my desire to connect, and you accepting this desire to connect and choosing what to share with me.

To take a further example, one can look to common conspiracy theories. When one looks into these, there are whole systems of links, evidence, webpages, opinions, experts, that appear to corroborate the same conclusion, which very often is not in fact the truth. But for rigour, let’s also look to something undoubtedly true: the negative effects of smoking cigarettes on people’s health. As Breeur notes in his book, cigarette companies, when this evidence began being propagated, decided together that they would form their own set of experts whose sole goal would be to plant doubt in the minds of the public as to whether these studies were in fact true. They did not in fact have to lie, and they did not have to produce a large amount of false evidence: they merely had to convince the media that there was still a debate in scientific circles as to the negative effects of smoking cigarettes on people’s health. They could create a website, a mirage, a deceptive fronting behind which lay nothing but emptiness, and in turn plant a seed of doubt which lead to the continued purchase of cigarettes by large proportions of the population. This was, and is, possible without the digital world: but what the digital world does do is make it so much easier to create and spread this confusion, and to create ‘fake evidence’ to ‘support’ the claims being made.

The problem is thus more detailed now than just a worry of a lack of authenticity: we cannot, I suggest, rely on one of the key methods to validate the truth and expose deception in the digital world. We have thus reasoned through some evidence and observations about the world, and transformed these into a new conclusion, an answer to our original thought about the world. Through the lack of spontaneity to expose the lie, and the ability to generate a whole closed community of supporters of something, who are not at risk of their deception being exposed due to their choice of community and the lack of spontaneity, the digital world has provided the space for the imposter to thrive. He thrives there, he disrupts the value of truth itself, and he causes us to worry about a lack of authenticity in the digital world.

The digital world has illuminated such a problem of truth, it has brought it to our attention in a magnified way, but this problem pervades all of the ‘real world,’ the offline world as well — it is not solely in the digital realm that we can be deceived. It is however in the digital world that we can choose to not be confronted with situations for the truth to show itself — and for the lie, the deception — to be exposed. We have thus learned something important, which is about the difference between the digital and the offline worlds: the online world is chosen and generated, which means it is much easier to be an imposter, a fraud, a liar; and the offline world is spontaneous, which itself brings out and exposes the liars and imposters.

Scientific studies that are performed for a certain purpose often end with recommendations for the users of the research, and further questions for research. I thus have two recommendations, because the situation that we are in regarding our level of connectivity in the digital world is, in fact, unprecedented. These recommendations are aimed at subjecting the generated digital world to a more rigorous standard, making it more spontaneous, and in turn trying to eliminate, or somewhat lessen, the worry we have about only using the online world to make and maintain connections throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

The first is to try to submit the truth to a different test than the corroboration test you may be used to. Though it may be in vain, since the work of the imposter blows up the value of the truth and the distinction between truth and falsity, this suggestion is not unuseful to be able to be, and to feel, as if you are on more solid ground, without such a large worry for finding a lack of authenticity, and not being able to trust the connections you have in the digital world. Use a test of value, instead. Never remove the value of the truth in your discussions, always seek to distinguish what you think about something from what its objective qualities are. If you submit the truth to the test of value, you are not allowing the imposter to remove its value and shut down the discussion for you: you do not have to accept the statement “that’s my opinion.”

This may seem a little strange or incomprehensible. You might be wondering how this seemingly highly conceptual and lofty way of thinking could possibly be applied in real life. Imagine that you’ve just given your friend one of Garage Project’s new beers: a new invention they’ve recently come up with that has changed the landscape of beers in New Zealand and beginning to change the idea of craft beer overseas as well. It is a phenomenal beer. But you ask your friend what he thinks of this beer, and he says “I don’t know, I just don’t like it, it’s a bit grainy and taste a little bit odd.” Your other friend, a beer connoisseur, jumps to the rescue, and tells the group about the hops content, the fermentation process of the beer, and about how the beer has been received both globally and locally. It is, he concludes, whether you like it or not, a great beer. But your friend still doesn’t like the beer. He tells the group: “It’s the hops content, it must be, and it’s just not great, that’s what I think.” He’s shut off the possibility of discussion about the greatness of the beer — an objective greatness, historically, scientifically, and in the beer community, by discussing something he knows little about — the graininess and the hops content — to cover for his lack of knowledge. He’s also removed the value of the truth by making these comments. It no longer matters that this is in fact a great beer. It is all now reduced to a matter of opinion, including the scientific and historical acclaim that the beer has received. Thus, when we think about subjecting the truth to the idea of value, what we are doing is asking the question, “does the truth still matter here?” “Is it still important that there is a truth?”

The second suggestion I wish to put forward in regards to how we engage in the digital world, and how we are able to subject the generatedness of this world to a greater level of scrutiny is this: retain, as much as possible, the spontaneity, the variety, and the extended distribution of your connectedness in the offline world, when you participate in the online world. Facebook may try to serve you up a dish of different varieties of potato after you have demonstrated a fervour for your first French fry, but remember that there is also broccoli and carrots and beans and aubergines to provide you with nutrients and nourishment.

You may have to seek them out, these other vegetables. How does one go about doing that? For many, their Facebook news feed, one or two news sites, and a smattering of other, domain-specific sites, form their information ‘inbox.’ Their generated world consists of inputs from these sources, and these sources alone. Now, we should all know that Facebook is not suddenly going to show you media from France in English, or pro-Trump media if you don’t indicate that your preferences would support his policies. You are not going to automatically be able to get outside of this generated bubble without actually doing something. This could take the form of choosing to look into other news sites for other information, other perspectives. It could be that you join groups on Facebook that go directly against your beliefs, to see what their arguments are: you might feel uncomfortable reading this content, but this is not a bad thing if the truth still matters to you. And if it in fact does not matter, then why not?

Reference:

Breeur, R. Lies — Imposture — Stupidity. Vilnius, Lithuania: Jonas ir Jokübas, 2019.