THE descent into a post-truth world continues at a depressing rate. The latest winner of the pants-on-fire award is former US presidential candidate Newt Gingrich. In an with CNN after a speech in which Donald Trump wrongly claimed that violent crime was rising, Gingrich cherry-picked the facts 鈥� then abandoned them altogether. 鈥淭he average American does not think crime is down,鈥� he said. 鈥淎s a political candidate, I鈥檒l go with what people feel.鈥�
For those trained in critical thinking, this dismissal of a simple fact is baffling, cynical and scary. How and when did facts lose their currency in public debate? And, more importantly, what we can do about it?
The answer to the first question is, in part, technological change. Social media allows people with fringe opinions to hook up with the like-minded, filter out all competing sources of information and let half-truths, lies and conspiracy theories run riot. Even the mainstream is not immune to this 鈥渆cho chamber鈥� effect.
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This is a well-documented phenomenon, and there is plenty of pushback. Organisations such as employ legions of human fact-checkers to rate political statements for their truthfulness. Tech start-ups are designing web browser extensions to automatically check internet pages for their veracity.
But all this isn鈥檛 working; the forces that have set post-truth politics on the march are too powerful to be halted by mere facts. As , an astute commentator on the impact of internet technologies, tweeted after watching his social media feed during Trump鈥檚 acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention: 鈥渨e鈥檝e brought fact-checkers to a culture war鈥�.
The weakness of the factual approach is that it tackles only part of the problem. Winning a political argument is about much more than who鈥檚 telling the truth. Emotion and authority count just as much if not more.
Surprisingly, technology may also be our saviour. AI researchers are working on software that can do much more than check facts: it can also formulate an argument (see 鈥�Computers that can argue will be satnav for the moral maze鈥�), and dissect bad ones to expose the holes. If nothing else such 鈥渁utomated reasoning support鈥� promises a new way to hold powerful people to account, and help people make well-informed choices. Watch this space for a politician with their pants on fire, spluttering 鈥淚 think the people of this country have had enough of artificial intelligence鈥︹��
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淩hetorical devices鈥�
