But your approach results in someone who can't even conceive of the truth being identifiable. It doesn't seem like a great way to run a society.

Having the power to determine truth does not seem like a great way to run a society even if it gets you some easy wins on other fronts.

It might work at first and be effective for some time in the same way that a dictator can "get things done" but there is no free lunch.

Eventually you will get evil dictators, power hungry arbitrators of truth. It will bite you. It is only a question of when. It might be years or generations. The only winning move is not to play. Don't concentrate the power in the first place.

I am unable to connect your sentence to what I said.

> I have no faith that there is some authoritative entity that could objectively determine what is a lie and what is the truth.

I read this as "it is impossible to determine truth". If there exists a well resourced entity who's entire purpose in life is to determine objective truth and they are unable to do so what chance do I have?

You just have to use your best judgement like everybody else.

That's the problem though. Your judgement gets warped by the constant stream of lies. That's the fundamental concept behind propaganda. If you repeat a lie enough times it will be believed. Everybody thinks they're too smart to be taken in by propaganda, that's one of the reasons it works so well.

That's true, and it works both ways.

> Consumers can assess the credibility of each.

Assuming intelligence is normally distributed, then what's the plan for the bottom 50% here?

As stated.

Understood. It's an interesting long-term strategy to revive Feudalism.

More a strategy to avoid totalitarianism.

By leaving the bottom 50% to be propagandized by populists?

If we were still living in the time of thirteen channels and Walter Cronkite on the CBS Evening News, I'd be inclined to agree with you.

An elite thinking that they know the truth and should suppress falsehoods is much more dangerous, so yes.