Monday’s blog was about paradigm shifts in the 7 Belief systems. Yesterday’s blog was about a paradigm shift in Politics, a belief system in its Power domain. Today’s blog is about a paradigm shift in the Truth, a belief system in its Knowledge domain.
Essentially, the Truth is about data and/or information and our opinion on their righteousness. We believe in our own truths, regardless of (historical/scientific) facts and/or expert opinions. People are even willing to sacrifice their own life for defending their truths. Hence, the Truth qualifies as a Belief system within my concept of the 7 Belief systems.
In a future High-Tech society, data and information must be unequivocal. There is no leeway for alternative truths as this could and thus would – once again – polarise society. Data quality will be closely monitored, especially its 6th core dimension: consistency. Alternative truths will be deleted, which comes at the expense of another core dimension: completeness.
This future High-Tech society is closer than we might assume. China is already actively demanding foreign companies to stop calling Taiwan as an independent country (eg, BI, Forbes, Guardian, News). There can only be one truth in a High-Tech society (eg, Blockchain, my blog).
Liberal democracies are also heading for this High-Tech society. The constitutional right of free speech has created (highly) polarised Western societies. The absence of government moderators (eg, China, Russia, Turkey) has given domestic and foreign private and/or state sponsored trolls leeway to increase domestic polarisation.
Allegedly, Socrates once stated: “The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms”. Definition of terms in liberal democracies is, however, dependent on anyone’s belief system (eg, climate change, vaccination). Hence, liberal democracies and High-Tech societies are about to collide and liberal democracy will be forced to retreat. See yesterday’s part 2.
In future societies, the (unequivocal) Truth will depend on Who controls Date and/or Information, the future new Belief system in the 7 Belief systems (part 1). People who tell alternative truths will be treated as subversive individuals. Also see my recent blog: You don’t have a right to believe whatever you want to (Aeon).
A glimpse of this – and our – future society is in today’s Social Credit System in China. Also see my 2017 blog: China – from Hukou to Social Credit. Some recent articles: Big data meets Big Brother as China moves to rate its citizens (Wired), China’s Dystopian Tech Could Be Contagious (Atlantic), China’s terrifying surveillance state looks a lot like America’s future (VF), and Inside China’s Dystopian Dreams: A.I., Shame and Lots of Cameras (NYT).
Recently, a Guardian article concluded that we are not that far away from China: The tyranny of algorithms is part of our lives: soon they could rate everything we do. When we point our finger (eg, to China) then we should realise that 3 fingers point back to ourselves.
Singularity (2015) by New Order – artists, lyrics, meaning, video, Wiki-1, Wiki-2
Note LO: all markings (bold, italic, underling) by LO unless stated otherwise
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