The wonderful as well as worrying thing about credulity is that it’s truly truth-agnostic. It is as immune and susceptible to falsities as it is to facts – the truth being whatever one ends up believing. One is as susceptible to believing in the world being round as being a flat Earth believer. What makes the big difference is who is telling us to believe, not necessarily what one is being told to believe.
Although believing in nice things (real or not) – such as there is something called a free lunch, entry into a golden era, mobile phones now available to all – is easier than being believing bad ones (truthful or not), like if you don’t graduate, you won’t get a decent job.
Generative AI, deep fake and other nifty new propaganda tools, like nifty old propaganda tools like advertising and news with Anil Kumble-level spin, need attention, expenditure and upgrading. Keeping people dupable is simpler. This entails valorising ignorance as being ‘more honest’ and treating the pursuit of facts as an ‘elite’ undertaking. Hawking hokum is the best.
