Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of the podcast. This is being recorded on Diwali night, so if you hear some background noise, that’s the neighborhood celebrating.
Tonight, I want to talk about a shift in how we think of misinformation. Traditionally, we imagine someone actively keeping the truth from us or replacing it with lies. In this scenario, we picture essential information—critical for making informed decisions—not reaching us. Instead, we’re fed propaganda, and as a result, our choices get skewed by falsehoods.
But today, I think we’re in an age of meaninglessness, which has a few layers. Our issue isn’t the lack of information; it’s that we have too much of it. We’re drowning in multiple versions of the same event, endless claims, and interpretations, making it difficult to discern the truth. Picture a fantasy scene where an evil sorcerer multiplies themselves, creating countless versions. Which one is the real sorcerer? By the time you figure it out, the opportunity to act has slipped away.
In this age, meaning isn’t withheld; instead, we're overwhelmed with so many interpretations that identifying the truth becomes nearly impossible. For instance, fact-checkers like Alt News have noted that misinformation has grown so vast, it’s impossible to debunk it all. To bury one truth, you need twenty lies, each similar enough to confuse. In this haze of half-truths and close-but-not-quite-facts, the moment to recognize the truth often vanishes.
This information overload forces us to sift endlessly through a vast pool of misleading narratives. Even with the world at our fingertips, the clarity we once dreamed of has turned into a nightmare. Today, our devices, rather than providing answers, often contribute to our confusion. This issue has grown so pervasive that chatbots like ChatGPT and others even include disclaimers—they might be providing inaccurate information, not out of malice, but because the system itself reflects our fractured landscape of truth and misinformation.
I mention this because I'm currently writing a story that touches on these themes. It’s a sequel to an earlier science fiction piece, and it examines how the dream of an “information superhighway” turned into a trap of misinformation. Once, we thought we’d gain clear access to the world’s knowledge, but now, every search leaves us questioning if what we found is real.
On a side note, I recently explored AI art generators, and I started wondering whether it’s the tool creating art or my imagination filling in the gaps. The generator produces something close to my vision but not quite there. It's a thought I’ll leave you with this weekend.
If you’d like to support the podcast, you can join on patreon at patreon.com/vimoh. Patreon supporters get early access to episodes. This one, recorded tonight, will go live tomorrow morning. As for social media, I’ve officially left Instagram as of today, which I might discuss in an upcoming episode.
Thank you for listening, and see you next time.
The podcast episode was recorded in one take without any script. The transcript was generated by Substack and cleaned up using ChatGPT.
