The truth is out there. Defend it.
Journalism was conceived in an era when the means of transmitting information was scarce, and audience attention was abundant. Today, anyone can tell anything to a global audience for free, but attention has become scarce and expensive.
When transmission was scarce and attention was abundant, lies were a bad investment. It was expensive to get a lie into the information channel, and once there it would receive attention (and criticism) from a broad audience. In this environment, journalists and audiences developed an axiomatic belief that "the truth lies somewhere in the middle".
Now that attention has become scarce and information abundant, telling a lie and supporting it with a large body of manufactured evidence is a great investment. The lie is cheap to build, and expensive to dismantle.
The scarcity of attention and abundance of information aren't just the new normal, they are accelerating. These trends will not reverse. If we can't find a way for reality to outcompete manufactured reality, then we're all going to live in somebody else's Disneyworld, worshipping the heroes and fighting the villains of their choosing. Failure isn't just an option, it is where we are now, and it is the default trajectory for the future.
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past. George Orwell, 1984
Luckily, we can put history on the blockchain, where it will be safe! Hahahahahahahaha
The hard part is trust. Bootstrapping trust. Bootstrapping trust in a large audience which has trained itself to trust nothing but the median of two "extremes". Here's how we're going to do it.
We are building a small library of facts, where every fact must meet all of the following criteria:
- must be a primary source (because primary sources aren't subjective opinions, they really happened)
- must be official (because it's easy to verify that they are authentic and not forged)
- complete and unedited (to make sure it can't be taken out of context)
- part of a large and complete set (to counter selection bias)
- which goes back at least 20 years (to counter recency bias)
Here's what we have in our library so far:
We're making these facts searchable and viral, in a way which preserves historical context. We're also building a platform for authors to write the most persuasive editorials they've ever written. It's boring to read someone you disagree with who also lies. Much more interesting to read someone you disagree with who is telling the truth.
The MyTake.org website deploys from the prod branch of this git repository.
- MyTake.org needs pull requests, see
DEV_QUICKSTART.mdto get started. - MyTake.org needs more facts, see
factset-templatefor the technical basis, meta.mytake.org/c/our-foundation to coordinate our efforts. - MyTake.org needs you, plain and simple. Your ideas, your word-of-mouth, your help. Explore the website, explore the code, and get involved on our forum.