Everything is a lie, including this video.

this this moment right now this feels real but is it [Music] they are the fake fake disgusting news people look like they have a much better life than they really do we can't reliably distinguish true memories from false memories i'm not sure you've ever experienced anything real your entire life [Music] there's a famous quote that says a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on this quote is widely attributed to winston churchill which is a lie ironically there's no evidence he ever said that but it seems

the quote itself has some truth as an mit study found fake news spread six times faster than true news an online in particular where anyone can post anything with virtually no consequences it's no wonder that the media we consume is infested with lies however the actual term fake news is believed to have originated in just 2016 from a small town in macedonia where teenagers were creating websites that claimed to be news sources but were actually just filled with fabricated and sensationalized stories why ad revenue the more clicks the more money they made and of course

it's a lot easier to get clicks when you can just make up whatever tantalizing story you want the thing is was these were just teenagers looking to make a quick buck media conglomerates are coming to a similar realization as printed news died out and they lost their loyal subscribers they faced a new sea of competition online and so the clickbait arms race began after all the business model of the news and the media is selling your attention to advertisers you are the product and they have to keep you watching reading clicking keep you consumed their

primary goal is not to deliver the most accurate news it's to attract more attention and make more money and it's been proven that polarizing stories perform best so no wonder we are more divided than ever when it's in the media's best interest to manufacture fear and outrage it is better for them that you are scared and angry and that's just when the goal is money what about when powerful groups plan fake news stories to deliberately pitters against each other and create a certain narrative or countries who plan fake stories to influence elections it's no wonder

fake news is so prevalent when there is so much money and power to be gained from manipulating us like this and even when these false stories get debunked the damage is already done because enough people will have already read and believed the lies and the truth just isn't as exciting so it doesn't spread as widely of course fake news is a whole spectrum yes there still are stories that are totally made up and just blatant lies and propaganda but if we're talking about mainstream news there's actually something more subtle going on at the other end

of the spectrum that's perhaps even more worrying half truths are statements that are partially true but not fully true or not the whole story for example if someone's pulled over for drunk driving they may tell the officer i only had one beer which is true but doesn't mention they also drank a bottle of wine in the media half truths allow you to make something seem believable and avoid libel but remove all the context and nuance so you can distort reality to suit the narrative you want and so this is why two news stations can talk

about the same issue but have such worldly different arguments you're always just seeing a carefully constructed snapshot of what someone wants you to see never the full picture with all the details and at least with fox and cnn you know they have clear biases towards certain political parties and ideologies the real problem is half truths are inescapable everywhere there is infinite information out there that can fit almost any narrative and so when it's a human decision of which stories to report and which stats and details to include there will always be bias even pictures and

videos can be so easily edited or taken out of context to imply something totally different that fits the narrative someone wants like how an obvious joke can be edited out of context to demonize someone and we're not just talking about news here six companies own almost all of the world's media disney owned all of this news corp on all of this and comcast on all of this so you essentially have a very small and powerful group owning and controlling most of the media and quite literally being able to pull the strings of what we hear

and what we don't putting whatever spin on information they want that fits their agenda after all controlling our media is the closest thing there is to controlling how we think how we vote how we act how we feel just like inception they can plant an idea in your mind without you really being aware of it and it can spread like a virus a light hold a thousand times becomes the truth but it gets worse if we're honest we all know that there's malicious forces out there planting fake news stories and we all know that the

media only give us half truths that suit their agenda but we still like to pretend that we don't fall for that we get our information from unbiased sources but we don't because unbiased doesn't exist even if it's the most honest journalist trying to be fair and impartial they've been indoctrinated just like the rest of us and have their own subconscious biases even if it's not intentional their choice of wording and what to include is unavoidably going to have bias their worldview will always influence what they show you and how they say it it's the same

with sites that claim to deliver impartial balanced news it's still down to a small group of people who have their own biases who decide what to show and subconsciously they will want to focus on the issues important to them and they'll want to discredit the views and ideas they don't agree with and pick stories that show them in a less favorable light we're not just battling fake news we're battling human psychology it's like a game of chinese whispers or telephone by the time you hear any information it's been passed through multiple other biased sources who've

distorted it whether intentionally or not and so you start to realize to a certain extent all news is fake news because 100 true and objective news is impossible whether it's fake news half truths or simply just a subconscious bias in one way or another you're being lied to and when you think about it this isn't surprising what is surprising is we don't really seem to care [Music] confirmation bias is the tendency to process information in a way that supports the ideas and beliefs we already have in other words we want our worldview to make sense

and so we instinctively seek out and believe the information that aligns with our views and disregard the rest and this is just one of many cognitive biases we all have that makes us care less about the accuracy of information and care more about us being right it's why two people will hear the same information and both will interpret it to fit their current beliefs for example two people with opposing views can hear about a mass shooting and the one who believes in tighter gun control will see as evidence of why their opinion is right and

the one who believes civilians need guns to defend against attackers will see it as evidence of why their opinion is right or another example is how if you hear something bad about someone you don't like you believe it immediately whereas if it's something bad about someone you do like you are much more skeptical of it biases like these are why nobody ever really changes their opinion in a debate or argument they just become even more entrenched in their original views our minds simplify things to try and make sense of the world and just like with

the media accuracy is not the priority even our own memories can't be trusted our minds want to fill in the gaps which leads us to inventing or removing details without being aware of it which is why two people can remember the same story differently we think of our brain like a database but it's not it looks for patterns and generalizations and rather than remembering exact details it remembers fragments of memories so when you recall a memory your brain is just trying to piece together some of those fragments and can easily be distorted in ways we

don't even realize just look at the mandela effect where huge groups of people remembered nelson mandela dying in prison in the 80s even though he didn't die until 2013. same way that one of the most iconic lines in film is remembered as luke i am your father but it was actually no i am your father both collectively and individually our memories fail us constantly and as if that wasn't bad enough then something came along that made the truth even harder to decipher [Music] just like the media conglomerates social media platforms profit from sucking you in

the more addicted you are the better for them and the more money they make and we already know about how they exploit human vulnerabilities as they call it because they've publicly talked about how they created the endless scroll effect the dopamine hits and an algorithm designed to continually keep you on the platform just like with the media these social platforms know the polarizing and controversial content performs the best the stuff that triggers an emotional reaction in people reliability is not a factor the algorithm cares about and this helps fuel the huge divide between us all

everyone's feed is different and tailored to them and their beliefs you essentially get put in an echo chamber that shows you the articles that align with your views and articles that dismiss the alternatives because these social platforms are tracking everything you click read and see the algorithm very quickly learns exactly how to keep you there longer which in turn makes you become more and more entrenched in your beliefs leaving you to wonder how can the other side be so stupid how are they not seeing the information i'm seeing but they're often not being shown it

it's difficult to have empathy when you literally cannot see where the other side are coming from we all think we're smarter than average so most people are wrong the reality is that it's easier to believe that we're on the smart side and that the others who disagree with us must be idiots and often we're just consuming different media and none of us are seeing the full picture in fact some scholars have argued that because there's so many media sources to choose from we now have selective exposure and can just follow the sources that align with

the views we want to hear which may be why the divide between the right and left grows wider and why there's a reported increase in extremist views this is only compounded by the fact that social media is designed for sound bites not details we are living in an age where information is distilled into 280 characters or less and where most people just read the exaggerated headlines anyway and whilst it's easy to blame the media blame the platforms at some point we have to blame ourselves too the reason fake news spreads so fast on social media

is because we share it without questioning how valid or true it really is if it aligns with our views we rarely question the bias or lack of context it may have after all the world is incredibly complicated and almost every issue is nuanced and intricate so we simplify things to such basic two-dimensional versions we pretend things are more black and white than they ever are we look to tear down or ignore people with opposing views not to try and understand where they're coming from and then we contribute to the fakeness further by presenting our own

lives to look the way we want them to look rather than reality we fill our social media with filtered photos and fake friends until the sites that promise to connect the world have left us more disconnected than ever it's hardly surprising certain influencers exploit this concept for profit by showing you a glimpse of their seemingly perfect life so that you buy the products they allegedly recommend it's only when you start to look deeper does the illusion start to crumble in fact when you start to question what's actually real everything starts to unravel [Applause] [Music] we're

entering an era in which our enemies can make it look like anyone is saying anything at any point in time as you may know that was not obama really saying that that was a deep fake video that was artificially created several years ago so just imagine how accurate this technology will be in a few more years when video can be created depicting anyone saying or doing anything without their consent and it will be entirely indistinguishable from the real thing it won't be long until recordings won't be considered evidence in a court of law so again

you start to question what can we trust how about documentaries the very definition of a documentary is to provide a factual report on a particular subject but if you look at some of the most popular documentaries in recent time you'll see they are filled with the same half-truths as everything else they need views to be successful and what better way to get views than making them as sensationalized as possible yes they may still have a lot of truth in them but they're still never going to give you a full balanced perspective they're still designed to

grab your attention and create an emotional response entertainment is the priority not accuracy okay so how about statistics we think of them as being very factual but of course they're so often twisted and wildly extrapolated to sue a specific agenda as well like i can tell you that statistically the safest place in the world to be born is antarctica because the stats show they have the lowest infant mortality rate zero babies have ever died there but i won't mention that only 11 babies have ever been born there it's the same with studies how often does

someone quote the result of the study but has never looked into what the sample size was or who paid for it and whether they have vested interests in the results it's for this reason every other week we hear this thing is bad for you then the next week it's supposedly good for you for example there was a study that found women are more attracted to men who don't smile except did they find that what actually happened is in a one-off experiment that was not repeated 1000 people from a specific region rated the attractiveness of certain

photographs if the experiment was repeated with different people or photos there's definitely no guarantee of the same results because there's so many variables involved and so can you conclude from that small study that universally women are more attracted to men who don't smile no not at all but that's what was reported very widely by places like business insider and psychology today because that made for a better headline and once one source starts sharing it others share it too and then people start citing it in conversation and just like with the media all context and detail

is stripped away and forgotten even look at one of the most famous psychology studies of all time the stanford prison experiments this was where participants were assigned roles as either inmates or guards in a mock prison and soon after beginning the guards started mistreating the prisoners with the researchers concluding that throwing innocent people into a situation of power would lead them to abuse them this is taught in schools and universities documentaries there's even a movie about it but it was all a sham there's audio showing that the guards were told to act so rough and

one of the prisoners has even admitted that he faked a breakdown because he wanted to leave early for an exam and thought that's what the researchers wanted to see so it's no surprise this experiment's been repeated several times but the results never matched and yet it's often quoted as fact and so again we get to the real heart of the problem which is that just like the media or even our own memories there's greater incentive to twist things to fit the narrative you want because if the experiment doesn't show so new and exciting there's no

story and it's not going to help your career so there is every incentive to make the results more interesting and exciting not accurate but here's the thing if we're saying we can't trust videos and documentaries we can't trust stats and studies suddenly you really do have to start questioning everything quotes almost all wrongly attributed to a small group of famous people reviews it's estimated well over half are totally fake to help sell more products youtube the highest ranked videos are the ones who are best at search engine optimization not the ones who are most accurate

wikipedia literally editable by anyone money isn't real if we all stop believing that this paper or those digits on a screen meant anything then they wouldn't our senses i can tell you this is orange but we could be seeing two totally different things our choices based on emotion and cognitive bias is not logic our feelings manipulated constantly by the media and advertisers a reality this is where things start to get really worrying so here we are divided confused and unsure who or what to believe it's clear that almost everything has some bias even if not

intentional which leads to beliefs that we never actually stop to question for example there are about 10 000 religions worldwide and yet almost everyone follows the one they were born into if they'd been born somewhere else to different parents they'd believe something different and this is not to pick on any singular belief almost all beliefs are based on second-hand information there's a quote that if it weren't for movies the average person would probably have no idea what an elevator shaft looks like we say we know what they look like but actually we've just seen movies

that tell us what they look like the reality is that even things that we think of as being incredibly obvious and unquestionable like terrorists are evil it's always more nuanced to them we're the evil ones it's all just down to the very different experiences and beliefs that have been instilled in us we're all just focused on our own half-truths because even with hard science we're still just trusting that the scientists have got it right how many of us have actually read all the papers on an issue and checked for themselves and i'm not saying we

should doubt science but we do know that science often proves itself wrong and anything can change when new evidence comes to light so if it's been wrong before how do we know it's not wrong right now how do we know that what we've been told about our world won't get disproved in the future let's look at elon musk regarded by many as one of the smartest people alive creating electric cars chips for the brain and reusable rockets he says there's about a one in a billion chance we're even in base reality in other words he

proposes that right now the chances we are just in some kind of simulation is almost certain his argument is that if you think of the progress that has been made in video game technology in just the last 50 years even if that improvement rate slows down it seems inevitable we will get to a point where games are indistinguishable from reality we're not far off with virtual reality at the moment let alone in another 50 years so if we can create a world that's indistinguishable from reality it seems highly likely we are already in some kind

of game or simulation or matrix type world i mean if you magnify anything enough it does become pixelated and yes it may sound far-fetched but how can you prove otherwise and is it really that much harder than believing we're in an infinitely large universe spinning on a giant space rock with around 8.7 million other species all created by a big bang or a god or whatever you want to believe in based on the beliefs you were indoctrinated with when you grew up and suddenly you start to think about a dream you had that just felt

so real and then you woke up and you start to question could you be in some kind of extended dream right now your senses have deceived you before why is this time any different solipsism is the belief that there is nothing outside of one's own mind if you are a brain and a vat you have no way of knowing you're just a brain and a vat you can never rule out the possibility that the entire world you experience including all other people isn't real it's a figment of your imagination all in your mind when you

really start to question the world around you from the news you hear to the reality you experience it's easy to conclude that everything is a lie and i'd like to end this video with solutions i'd like to tell you that you can still hold a strong position on something you just need to be able to argue the other side of the argument first that you should seek out the smartest people on the other side of the debate to get their opinion before jumping to conclusions i'd like to tell you that you can still get a

good idea of the truth you just have to dig a little deeper to get a balanced perspective and not rely on a small pool of media sources but i can't tell you that because of course by now you're starting to see that even this video the very video that's been on your side pointing out the lies is in itself a lie it's all based on my biased point of view i've used stats that you just took at face value and even if i tell you i got them from a reliable source did they did the

person creating the stats have a bias even the title of this video it's a paradox if i'm telling you the truth that everything is a lie then everything isn't a lie which means i was lying the more you think about this whole problem of truth and lies the worse it gets the more confusing and terrifying everything becomes is choice an illusion are we being manipulated by a hidden hand that's choosing our politicians and keeping us divided so we fight each other instead of them are our own minds tricking us into making biased judgments on the

entire world around us so much so that we can't be sure of anything outside of the existence of our own mind eventually you start to wonder if questioning everything is worth it or whether blissful ignorance is better because if you really are going to question anything that you can't prove for certain then you have to accept that you could be in a truman style reality show right now where the world around you isn't real and everyone else but you is in on it which means even i'm in on it and they're probably gonna cut this

video off soon because i've already said too much and over