Are we reading fake news or just living in a fake universe? The facts can't really be different from the way we want them to be, can they? Imagine: in the Old Phoenix, you describe a timeline that you have visited. Another guest says, "That was a fake universe! A demon or a malign deity kept your body in stasis between universes while he fed your brain a virtual reality!" You disagree. An argument ensues. Taverner has to intervene.
Within a single universe, there are different versions of history, news and the truth whereas, in the multiverse, there are different histories and truths. World War III happens in the Psychotechnic History but not in the Technic History and not on Earth Real yet so the criterion of fakery has to be different.
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I would have thought that simply being PRESENT as a guest in the Old Phoenix inn proves the existence of alternate worlds, universes, timelines, etc., with different histories! That it would be difficult for the second guest to object to what the first had said. It would have been more plausible for the second guest to say: "Based on what you told us, I would not like that timeline."
Ad astra! Sean
In terms of human meaning, "Facts" as the word is commonly used don't exist. There's -data-, but that's a different matter.
Data only becomes "fact" through interpretation, a subjective and social process. Truth is a product of power.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I'm not sure that is always the case. That is, the data that two plus two equals four is surely always and forever the fact of being FOUR.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I don't think that arithmetical proposition are "data." The latter are "given," empirical, contingent, could have been otherwise.
Paul.
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