Comment by rdevilla
3 hours ago
> The reality in the way information is used, I believe, is the opposite from what we think of. We believe that if there is sufficient information, we can use it to form an accurate model of reality.
You should read Yuval Noah Harari's Nexus. He calls this "the naive view of information," which is ignorant of the existence of what he astutely identifies as "intersubjective" realities (see also Angela Cooper-White's entry on "intersubjectivism" in The Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion):
[...] its deepest and most complex
usage is related to the postmodern
philosophical concept of
constructivism or, in social
psychology, social constructionism –
the notion that reality is co-
constructed by participants in a
relationship and in society.
This is the endgame of postmodernist and constructivist thinking that exalts narrative and story as the ground source of truth. In some ways what we are seeing is a return to religious and superstitious thinking where sufficient belief in a dogma or a pantheon is enough to reify those narratives into consensus reality.
Historically Jungian psychology and indeed religion (a form of proto-psychology, from which Jung inherits by way of the alchemical tradition; see Jung's Psychology and Alchemy) was humanity's collective storehouse of wisdom and techniques for managing intersubjective realities and group "information hygiene." Such techniques are now being lost to antiquity with the late 20th and 21st century focus on only objectively verifiable, quantitative measurements (as opposed to the private subjective, qualitative phenomena experienced as the inner ruminations, contemplations, and dream life of the individual).
White Rose: Do you ever think
that if you imagined or
believed in something, it
could come true... Simply by
will?
Angela: Yes. Actually, I did
believe that. But I'm slowly
having to admit that's just
not the real world... Even if
I want it to be.
White Rose: Well, I guess it
all depends on what your
definition of real is.
> This is the endgame of postmodernist and constructivist thinking that exalts narrative and story as the ground source of truth. In some ways what we are seeing is a return to religious and superstitious thinking where sufficient belief in a dogma or a pantheon is enough to reify those narratives into consensus reality.
I suspect the mistake here is imagining a past era in which humanity formed "consensus reality" out of evidence and reason. It can certainly appear that way to us today due to some super-strong publication bias effects since the Enlightenment era. But I think we can add this to the list of our poorly-grounded narratives.
There has never been a prior time in which a greater percentage of humanity had the means and the inclination to build a well-founded knowledge base and use it to critically assess incoming information.