Maybe we are living in a partial simulation with the parts we sense indirectly only through the media and the network consisting of complete fakes.
I am fairly sure the keyboard under my fingers is real, but how do I know whether Elizabeth Warren is tribal, George Santos matriculated from Baruch or Nancy Pelosi’s ice cream freezer truly exists? I know. I’ll check the papers! If it’s on TV it must be true.
To gain any situational awareness advantage the big guys must have protected access to a True Newspaper, some app which will tell whether Elizabeth Warren is tribal, George Santos from Baruch or Nancy Pelosi’s ice cream freezer is real. Q: Does the True Newspaper exist?
You could argue the True Newspaper must exist, else the big guys would also eat the swill. But where is the True Newspaper located, who staff it? Surely it has a physical basis? If classified briefings are the only intended TN then even the elite actually get mostly fake news.
Suppose the TN were designed to concern only N important facts, the unimportant being fair game to fakery. But the filter which determines N must itself be a function of time. Herein lies the problem: how do you determine which are the important facts in advance?
So here’s my guess. A comprehensive True Newspaper **does not** exist. Once the process of data corruption begins even the big guys are eventually potential victims of self-deception. I think history suggests this happens. Interestingly John 8:44 speaks of the devil as something that has lost track of the truth: “there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, because he is a liar and the father of lies”. The image is of someone lost who cannot find his way back.
If you were trying to break out of hell, or Nazi Germany, the Stalinist USSR or … then the first task is to find the truth and to stop speaking the native language of deception.
The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human by Siddhartha Mukherjee. The book tells the story of how scientists discovered cells, began to understand them, and are now using that knowledge to create new humans. Told in six parts, it is panoramic but is also intimate, laced with Mukherjee’s own experience as a researcher, doctor and prolific reader.
The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power by Daniel Yergin. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, The Prize recounts the panoramic history of the world’s most important resource – oil, the struggle for wealth and power that has surrounded it for decades and that continues to fuel global rivalries, shake the world economy, and transform the destiny of men and nations.