Would You Rather Live in a Democracy or an Autocracy?

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i think very few human beings would trade the environment we have now for one where, for example, the bubonic plage killed a third of europe. I'd rather not be slaved enslaved. I'd rather be free id ather have food than be hungry. It's as basic as that. If you don't care about those things, you know, if you'r a socio path god bless you. But if you're one of the people who do care, there's an surer way to get those things than any other way. That's this liberal system that we have, this reality base community.

Disinformation. Trolling. Conspiracies. Social media pile-ons. Campus intolerance. On the surface, these recent additions to our daily vocabulary appear to have little in common. But together, they are driving an epistemic crisis: a multi-front challenge to America’s ability to distinguish fact from fiction and elevate truth above falsehood.

In episode 190, Michael Shermer speaks with Jonathan Rauch as he reaches back to the parallel eighteenth-century developments of liberal democracy and science to explain what he calls the “Constitution of Knowledge” — our social system for turning disagreement into truth. His book is a sweeping and readable description of how every American can help defend objective truth and free inquiry from threats as far away as Russia and as close as the cellphone.