Feelings, Facts, and Our Crisis of Truth

An outbreak of measles has hospitalised 91 people in Texas , killing two unvaccinated school-aged children.

Douglas Murray challenged Joe Rogan over his penchant for hosting armchair experts’ who promote ideas outside of the mainstream.

Murray brought his norms of journalistic rigour into a largely postliterate culture, where information is consumed via aural and visual formats as opposed to the written word.

Since the mid-20th century , many elite institutions have rejected the philosophical orientation of empiricism in favour of a faddish postmodern view of the world.

Postmodernism rejects the notion that humans are able to discern what is true through data collection and experimentation.

The marketplace of ideas has been subsumed by a marketplace of emotions, where incentives reward those with the sloppiest procedures.

The United States , founded on Enlightenment ideals, is at a crossroads: Trade policy is conducted according to vibes, anti-vaccine propaganda is spread by the highest health officials.

While podcasts and videos are entertaining, their ability to transmit knowledge is time-consuming and inefficient.

They are the equivalent of the fireside yarn—what humans did before we emerged from our caves.

Text remains the form of knowledge most likely to be accessed by future generations.