What does ‘True’ mean and why is that important to TrueNews?

How do you know something is true? It’s not as easy to define as you might think. Objective definition:

• Existing independent of or external to the mind; actual or real.
• Based on observable phenomena; empirical.
• Uninfluenced by emotions or personal prejudices:

“True” is Subjective

Even empirical/measured truth can be questioned. If something is measurable, like the temperature, based on scientific principles, it’s easy to get most people to agree that number displayed on the thermometer is true.

Having multiple thermometers, purchased by different people, taking the same measurement on the same day, time and location would offer evidence that could be corroborated.  If we wanted to eliminate as much doubt as possible about the temperature being accurate, then having documentation, such as a video of each thermometer being purchased and taken to the experiment site without a cut in the video, would leave few questioning the temperature.

Bottom line, truth is Subjective, and even ‘objective’ (measurable) truth can be subjective depending on how far you want to go on the things that lead to that truth.

It’s critical in our world today that we can all establish some baselines of truth that we can agree on. There are many forces trying to distract us from that, for their own purposes. One example of this is Deep Fakes. These are images, video and/or audio that are synthetic, and are often difficult to distinguish from real or, well, fake.  Using a computer, deep fakers can insert people or voices into scenes where they don’t belong. Super hard to detect and getting better all the time (another ‘arms race’ in the security world).

Establishing a Baseline

At TrueNews we support corroboration, where multiple people independently verify a piece of evidence. Say I get an interview with a local politician, and I record it on my phone. If you’re there as well, you might also film the same interview, or you may just input that you were there and physically watched the interview (you corroborate that the video evidence is real). And since your reputation is on the line, if it’s proven to be false, your reputation score for ‘Corroboration’ will be affected (basically showing that you’re a liar).

It’s critical in our world today that we can all establish some baselines of truth that we can agree on. There are many forces trying to distract us from that, for their own purposes. One example of this is Deep Fakes. These are images, video and/or audio that are synthetic, and are often difficult to distinguish from real or, well, fake.  Using a computer, deep fakers can insert people or voices into scenes where they don’t belong. Super hard to detect and getting better all the time (another ‘arms race’ in the security world).

Corroborate Everything

For all you news creators out there, journalists, politicians, companies, civic leaders, etc. – you MUST build in corroboration to whatever you’re producing. If you’re doing an interview, be sure there are multiple independent people there that can film/record and corroborate what happened. If you’re researching a document, get others to join you, or get bystanders to corroborate the evidence that you’re submitting to TrueNews. By doing this, we can avoid deep fakes further polluting our news and everyday lives.

My wish is that TrueNews be THE place where you can figure out what your truth is, by having visibility to all sides of a topic, and easily assessing the Facts and evidence. And vote on it, and reward it and comment on it.