(2022-03-07) Troynikov Reality Crash

Anton Troynikov: Reality Crash. I am here from the past but also your future to warn you about what happens when, to quote Mike Solana, "the fusion of a country’s media [and] government, ..., all adherent to a single politics and governed by a social monoculture" falls apart. I am the product of that natural experiment.

In 1991, on Soviet Union national television, it was explained in precise detail that Vladimir Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich to his friends), leader of the Bolshevik revolution, was in fact a mushroom. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenin_was_a_mushroom

The broadcast, intended to be a humorous hoax in case that needs to be spelled out, left viewers "perplexed, shaken, and uncertain about what to make of it". In other words, it held enough truth that they were forced to decide whether to believe it or not.

To understand this, one must understand what was happening to the Soviet people in 1991.

State control of the media was not incidental to Soviet power, it was essential both ideologically and pragmatically

Pravda was the Paper of Record for the Soviet state and its people. It was beyond prestigious, it was fundamental.

However, perhaps contrary to what some in the west believe, the average Soviet citizen was not an idiot.

There were always things one could see with one's own eyes which did not match the official narrative.

This tension between the public and private information spheres held for decades.

as the background economic and material conditions of the Soviet people stagnated, then began to deteriorate, the tension grew

In 1985 Gorbachev (Mikhail Sergeyevich to his friends) became leader of the Soviet state, after a succession of geriatrics assumed the mantle and then promptly died

His reforms came in three named flavors; Perestroika (restructuring), Uskoreniye (acceleration), and Glasnost (openness).

By being open, finally, the state hoped to regain legitimacy and the trust of its people. Instead it unleashed bedlam.

To the soviet people, this was epistemically apocalyptic

The people thought; yes the state had made mistakes, had had excesses, many of which they'd covered up, but after all the foundation must be solid

But the revelations, sensational and overwhelming, came almost daily in an endless flood. Here were Stalin's mass graves. There was the Nazi-Soviet nonagression pact. And outside, the bread lines; not just here but everywhere

Things the state had said were lies planted by enemies, or had omitted entirely, were now being aired as the truth. Even foundational ideological illusions were thoroughly shattered.

nothing that was said could ever be true again

How do you recognize the truth when all you've ever been told are lies? Can you?

By 1991 the epistemic collapse was complete. In the absence of any trusted, or even authoritative source of common reality, reality entrepreneurs both foreign and domestic plied their trade.

In effect by the time it was discovered that Lenin was a mushroom, the Soviet people were deep into a new-age speedrun.

Of course the Soviet Age of Aquarius did not last, because it could not. There is, ultimately, one final arbiter of truth - cold material reality. The material reality of the Soviet people was not so good.

all that was left was to believe in nothing. Lenin is now not even a mushroom

I don't write here in order to eulogize the Soviet Union, and certainly not to excuse the crimes of its government. I write to warn you.

The United States in particular, and the west more broadly, today is in a crisis. It is primarily a crisis of epistemology

We have seen the mainstream media fail to tell the truth, disguise opinion as fact, censor, and outright lie. It has done so about themes as diverse as covid-19 and covid policy, about popular demonstrations, about technology and technology companies

As the narrative continues to diverge, trust in any official consensus will continue to erode.

We are seeing the rise of ever more reality entrepreneurs alongside critical searching for the real truth

Reality entrepreneurs, like all entrepreneurs, will listen for what the market wants and eagerly supply it.

Unlike the Soviet Union’s limited cultural reach, the U.S is the cultural hegemon in the west and beyond. What happens to the culture here will happen to the culture everywhere. The splintering that begins with the U.S will spread

No amount of "independent fact checking", of "balanced reporting", or "non-partisanship" will arrest this slide. From where will the fact checkers derive their legitimacy?

Unless prevented, this process will continue to accelerate to the inevitable conclusion: cultural collapse, social collapse, economic collapse, and reality reasserting itself in the coldest, most bitter possible way. I don't know if you can picture what a five year drop in life expectancy in five years really looks like - maybe if you live in opioid overrun states you can - but it's not pretty. Except to our enemies, of course.

The only chance is to create new institutions, especially new media institutions, which the ordinary person can and will trust.

It is necessary to create institutions which thoroughly dominate the ‘marketplace of ideas’.