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Oxford Dictionaries has declared "post-truth" as its 2016 international word of the year, reflecting what it called a "highly-charged" political 12 months. It is defined as an adjective relating to circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than emotional appeals. Its selection follows June's Brexit vote [in the UK], and the US presidential election. Post-truth, which has become associated with the phrase "post-truth politics", was chosen ahead of other political terms, including "Brexiteer" and "alt-right".
[...] Oxford Dictionaries says post-truth is thought to have been first used in 1992. However, it says the frequency of its usage increased by 2,000% in 2016 compared with last year.
Mr Grathwohl said: "Fuelled by the rise of social media as a news source and a growing distrust of facts offered up by the establishment, post-truth as a concept has been finding its linguistic footing for some time," he said.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-37995600
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/word-of-the-year/word-of-the-year-2016
Would you have chosen something different?
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday November 17 2016, @09:54PM
That's why critical thinking is important. It is hard. It takes time. Who has that time when they're working two jobs or 60+ hours/wk at the one? Who wants to encourage people to think critically when it's so much easier to train them to react to Pavlovian prompts? Who wants to work through complexity in any form when you can be trained you can get all you need to know in 140 characters or less?
In that environment it is not surprising that people wrap themselves in cognitive bubbles and reflexively shriek at anything that tries to pop them.
It is hard to listen before jumping to conclusions, and to think before speaking. It is hard to consider instead of calling each other names. We all fail at it at least some of the time. But we all need to put in the work.
Washington DC delenda est.