A conversation about AI, doubt, and the quiet instability of truth
Yesterday I had a conversation with my son about the fact that everyone at his workplace talks about AI all day. He uses AI occasionally himself, but for him it is not a topic that should replace all other office conversation.
I do not work in an office environment, but I can imagine how irritating that must be, especially when you have deadlines to meet and you wonder where your colleagues find the time for such long reflections. As a senior designer, my son is expected above all to produce.
He is also concerned about a society in which you constantly have to question whether something is true. In that respect we think differently. My background is in journalism, and I am sober enough to know that almost nothing withstands the test of true or false. Often not at first glance, and certainly not when you begin to explore the nuances.
Instinctively I wanted to comfort him with my philosophy that it does not really matter whether something is true or false, and that you should always keep thinking critically anyway. I even tried to introduce some humor by mentioning someone who had used different forms of AI to “prove” that images of the most recent journey to the moon had been created by artificial intelligence.
“Yes, but that is obviously not true,” was his response. That may be so, and it may not be so. Things can exist side by side. That has always been one of the many mottos in my long life, and something I have tried to live by.
Almost naturally our conversation drifted toward conspiracy theories, and there we disagree.
I find conspiracy theories extremely entertaining. I can thoroughly enjoy watching an old documentary that “proves” the real Paul McCartney died in a car accident and that the current Paul McCartney is an actor who replaced him after extensive plastic surgery. At the end of such a documentary I look at my partner and conclude that there is not a single flaw in the argument.
Why? Because as a twelve year old boy I admired the Beatles enormously, and Paul McCartney in particular made a deep impression on me. Now, at seventy, I find the man rather dull, and that makes the conspiracy theory quite convenient. It allows me to remain exactly the same, while Paul McCartney has simply been replaced. A rather charming line of thought.
What I find harder to accept today is that all untruths, no matter how small, are quickly labeled as conspiracy theories. For me, a conspiracy theory is above all a very democratic way of protesting against imposed truths from governments and corporations.
I am not saying these theories are true. But the moment governments in particular begin to present “truths” that many people sense are opportunistic, truths that primarily serve to consolidate power, a part of the population will almost automatically create its own versions of truth as a kind of antidote, often in the form of a conspiracy theory.
This is quickly dismissed by those who prefer clear dogmas as foolish or short sighted, but in reality it is often intuitive and, above all, creative. That last aspect is what I find so appealing. Apparently there is still a residue of creativity in people who have been connected for too long to the systems of governments and corporations.
It is not surprising that a conspiracy theory will occasionally come a little closer to the truth than the imposed, opportunistic narratives of larger interests.
The imposed truth and the intuitive truth have one thing in common: they rarely meet the expectations we as humans project onto what truth should be.
A rational mind will object that there is still such a thing as scientific truth. That is true to a certain extent, but at its core science is a dialogue between people who each search for facts in their own way. Over the centuries we have burned quite a few people at the stake for scientific theories that we now consider self evident, but which were once dismissed as error or even blasphemy.