Los Angeles is burning — or is it?

"Oranges on Fire," by Larry Sultan (Los Angeles County Museum of Art)

     "What is truth?" Pontius Pilate asks the crowd, after Jesus tells him that he is not a king, but a man whose task is to bear witness to the truth.

     In the "Jesus Christ Superstar" version of the above, the governor of Judea continues, "Is truth unchanging law? We both have truths. Are mine the same as yours?"
     Certainly not. Not for the two millennia since — actually, longer. Plato, four centuries before the Crucifixion, spent much time arguing what we know and how we know it.
     So as the United States of America prepares to inaugurate, once again, a man with a proven proclivity for telling lies — easily, continually, and without consequence — we can take a bit of cold comfort that at least we didn't invent this conversation.
     Mark Zuckerberg just gave up Tuesday and announced that Facebook will cease third-party fact-checking, and instead count on community notes after posts.
     How will that work?
     Take an indisputable fact: Los Angeles is on fire. Which leads to the obvious follow-up question: Why is Los Angeles on fire? I would point to the 99 mile-an-hour winds and tinder-dry landscape. Prodded to dig deeper, I might remind readers how climate change is making ecological disasters more severe and more frequent.

     But a member of the community could attach a note saying: no, Elon Musk claims on his private megaphone, X, that the fires were fanned by racial inclusivity.
     "They prioritized DEI over saving lives and homes," Musk wrote, retweeting a notorious troll's assessment about the L.A. Fire Department's "racial equality plan."
     In the past, Facebook might remove that odious piece of racism. Now it won't, but is counting on community members to, perhaps, point out that it is a classic post hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy to suggest that because the disastrous fire followed efforts to combat racism, it was therefore caused by them. You could just as easily, and just as inaccurately, argue that the department's Taco Tuesday caused the escalation of the fires Wednesday, since it happened first.
     Plato — spoiler alert — concluded that the truth is whatever he can convince others is true, though that could take some doing, even then, long before the advent of social media.
     "Could you persuade men who do not listen?" one of his associates asks, in the beginning of "The Republic," sounding a central question of our time.

To continue reading, click here.