I, by the way, cribbed that title from French philosopher Jean Baudrillard. I used to teach that idea as a kind of fascinating thought experiment, but emerging from prison into the world today I find myself taking it as an axiom rather than a conjecture.
Here is a limerick from incarceration:
Lord help me and Lord help this nation. We're drowning in misinformation. Into our teaching Much foolishness's creeping. Fact checking is not obligation.
I no longer think, when I look at the world with post-prison eyes, that we can make distinctions between “information” and “misinformation.” This doesn’t mean that there are no facts. I’m not claiming that it’s impossible to be rational. I’m saying that we seem to have moved with frightening speed, to living in a culture in every piece of information is treated as being equivated to every other piece of information. This is how people can possibly “argue,” say, about vaccines. We seem no longer inclined to interact with people via a process of claims, evidence, and reasoning; rather, we find a piece of information we like and “let it speak for itself” as if any fact had self-evident meaning.
It jars me to come out of prison where people regularly think something is true because it satisfies some particular world-view they have, and emerge into a world where this sort of “criminal thinking” is a pervasive practice. I’m astonished that people believe things about vaccines and elections and criminal justice simply because they choose some information that suits them. The quality of information makes no difference. In a world of equivalencies, everything comes down to choice. It’s the fallacy of capitalism run wild. There is no meaning to brushing your teeth; it’s only a choice between Crest and Colgate.
I don’t know how we begin to change this except for education, but this requires the cultivation of critical thinking skills at the earliest moments of life. If your educators are caught into the fetishized choice among all bits of “equal” information, then there is no place to start. It’s as if we are trying to climb on water.
Some people still stay on the fence When looking at clear evidence. They'd rather stand pat With prejudice that Just don't make any reasonable sense.
More on the fetish of false choices another time…