PREFERENCE AND KNOWLEDGE FALSIFICATION: WHAT IS IT AND HOW DOES IT DESTROY US

Sorry for the delayed blog. Last week, I returned from a two-week vacation to the Far East spending a couple of days in South Korea and the island of Jeju and ended the vacation with twelve days in Japan starting in Sasebo and finishing north in Tokyo stopping at many cities and tourist locations on the way. Over the next month, I will post about this trip in either a two or three-part blog especially related to the contrasts between Asian and European cultures based off continual reflections from my Southern European trip last October in comparison to this recent vacation.

But before this, I was recently introduced to the idea of “Preference Falsification” through a historian on Substack, David Roman. So much of what is wrong with our present-day society can be blamed on this theoretical concept. If you analyze history, this idea goes back centuries to probably around the time that human beings first scurried out of their caves. Per the definition found on Wikipedia,

Preference falsification is the act of misrepresenting a preference under perceived public pressure. It involves the selection of a publicly expressed preference that differs from the underlying privately held preference (or simply, a public preference at odds with one’s own private preference).

This concept is based on a famous article written by Turkish American Ivy League professor Timur Kiran in 1987 that evolved into his 1995 book, Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification. Thinking about this psychological concept on a basic level, it really explains so much about our American society. For those who believe that our culture is artificial, preference falsification proves that it is. The idea of someone being “two-faced” where publicly, they smile and act “proper and appropriate” while if you engaged with the person privately, it is likely you would see the individual’s true personality. You can also make a theoretical argument that the artificiality of our culture IS THE TRUTH of our civilization. Humans choose to live the lie due to our mental craving to be creatures that socialize amongst themselves. Acceptance among your peers is a powerful psychological tool.

Preference falsification is a form of lying. Per Kiran’s 1987 article, “Preference falsification aims specifically at molding the perceptions others hold about one’s motivations.” Preference falsification has a twin brother called knowledge falsification. The concept is the same.

Knowledge falsification is the deliberate misrepresentation of what one knows under perceived social pressures.

While preference falsification is based more on social behavior, knowledge falsification is the more dangerous theory. Because corporations use knowledge falsification willingly to propagandize or brainwash people into purchasing their product. This can also result in media manipulation or the creation of “fake knowledge passed on as the truth” to control the debate about a political or controversial product like the COVID-19 vaccines.

The problem with knowledge falsification is the negative impact it has on the whole of society. It distorts, corrupts, and manipulates public information leading to many people believing the lie. For people who embrace the lie, when confronted with the truth, they will engage in self-deception to protect their own ego and self-interest. From a nation that practices the idea of “democracy”, it is very easy to understand how these dual concepts can lead to false perceptions of candidates and the political truths that they promote. Kiran believed that these dual concepts led to three major problems with our society.

The first is the distortion of social decisions. Have you ever asked yourself how people can continue to vote against their own personal interests? This is preference falsification in its worst form. As Orwell famously said in his classic novel 1984 coining the term “doublethink” to explain this process.

“Doublethink is the ability to simultaneously hold two contradictory beliefs and accept both as true.”

With preference falsification, this means holding one belief in public (The approved narrative amongst your fellow citizens and the government) while secretly believing in private that this truth is questionable and likely false. But your need to be socially accepted allows you to accept the deception as an underlying truth in your mind.

As explained above, the second is the falsification of public knowledge where falsifications can be intentionally created and used to manipulate a society for an entity or individual’s personal interests.

Finally, this falsification can generate societal surprise. Basically, when we vote in private, the truth of what people believe is revealed. This can lead to surprise elections (Like Trump in 2016) where the decisions of private individuals went against the government narrative that was created inside the media of Hillary Clinton’s dominance. There have been many examples in history where public opinion often strays from the actual truth. And sometimes when trust in the public opinion is frayed, it can lead to a snowballing effect where the private opinion based on the truth becomes the public opinion. These moments can often be violent and lead to devastating wars.
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Back next week with my first blog on the Far East. I hope you enjoyed this.