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What is true

Denny — Sun, 31 May 2026 15:06:27 GMT

The Future of Truth

Denny — Sun, 31 May 2026 13:50:16 GMT

Created page with "{{pubdate|{{subst:CURRENTDAY}}|{{subst:CURRENTMONTHNAME}}|{{subst:CURRENTYEAR}}}} What a mind boggling and raw article by Wired: Steve Rosenbaum has a book out, "The Future o..."

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{{pubdate|31|May|2026}}

What a mind boggling and raw article by Wired: Steve Rosenbaum has a book out, "The Future of Truth", on the effect of AI chatbots on the understanding of truth. Rosenbaum has a master's degree in "truth" from New York University (what does that even mean?) and has decades of experience in this field: creating news programs for MTV and reporting on the aftermath of 9/11 in New York and much more.

But the New York Times reported that Rosenbaum's book is heavily relying on AI, for example containing made up quotes. Wired had previously published an excerpt from the book, but given its strict no AI policy for content and the reporting by the Times, it pulled the excerpt.

Instead, Wired interviewed Rosenbaum. Here's one quote:

"I do not understand why it's my job as an author to play whack-a-mole with a multibillion-dollar company who puts hallucinations into their feed as a business practice”

Because it's your book! It's your name on the cover. This text is your responsibility.

And he's not alone:

“I talked to another author this morning who's literally got a book coming out going to the publisher in a month, and she's fucking terrified.” I asked if that was because she used AI in the process of writing the book. “Of course"

There's a silver lining:

"I asked him whether he would rather stop writing than stop using AI in his writing process. “Yeah,” he answered."

That's a good idea. I sure have little interest to read anything from a person with this attitude.

* [https://www.wired.com/story/future-of-truth-ai-interview/ Kate Knibbs: We Asked the Future of Truth Author to Explain How He Used AI. It Didn’t Go Well (Wired)]

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Logos sind log

Denny — Sat, 30 May 2026 08:33:43 GMT

Denny deleted page Logos sind log content was: "#REDIRECT Logos and logs", and the only contributor was "Denny" (talk)

Logos sind log

Denny — Sat, 30 May 2026 08:33:20 GMT

Denny moved page Logos sind log to Logos and logs

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{{pubdate|30|May|2026}}

About the Greek word logos, λόγος. It is usually translated as "word", but a lot is lost in translation when doing so. Wiktionary says "speech, oration, discourse, quote, story, study, ratio, word, calculation, reason". The etymology is from proto-Indo-European "leǵ-", meaning to collect, to gather.

Philologist Erik Ellis has thought a lot about logos, and he says that the best English translation he has found so far for logos is "account". Both a bank account and to give an account of last night is about recounting the events that led to the current situation, to tell a story, and that meaning of account captures logos best.

Amusingly the way Ellis was describing "account" made me think of the word "log", the way it is used in computing and on ships, and it took me an embarrassing moment to notice the similarity between "logos" and "log", but etymologically they're entirely unrelated as the latter comes from tree log, which has old Norse roots.

It's just another funny, accidental etymological convergence.

* [https://pca.st/episode/011dbfec-85b5-4767-8bd0-77445869d11f Classical Education podcast with Erik Ellis]

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 A new study shows that there is much, much less agreement on the answer to this question than I would have expected. Even after reading about the study, I still expect my friends to have the same answer as I do. Let's see. But this probably means that the meaning of truth, in the general population, is simply different from what I would have assumed. And explains a number of public discourses.
-* [https://reason.com/2026/05/15/the-surprising-divide-over-what-counts-as-true/ The Surprising Divide Over What Counts as True
+* [https://reason.com/2026/05/15/the-surprising-divide-over-what-counts-as-true/ The Surprising Divide Over What Counts as True by Ronald Bailey in Reason]
 * [https://mas.to/@vrandecic/116607696355063502 Mastodon poll (to run until 27 May 2026]