Book review - "Facts and other lies" by Ed Coper

April 10, 2025

This is a rather scary book for reasons that will be outlined below.

The author Ed Coper was a founder of GetUp!, so he knows a bit about challenging misinformation and disinformation, and that's what this book is about - the things that people say that just ain't so.

It's worth looking at the difference between misinformation and disinformation - misinformation is something that is wrong, possibly because of accident, ignorance or misunderstanding (the white trails behind high-flying aircraft could be chemical sprays), but disinformation is something that is deliberately wrong (vaccines cause autism, the climate isn't changing and if it is there's nothing we can do about it, ivermectin cures COVID). Philosopher Harry Frankfurt made a similar distinction in 1986 between lies and bullshit - a liar knows that what he says isn't true but justifies the action, a bullshitter doesn't care about the truth of a statement as long as it supports his agenda. An awful lot of disinformation fits both but generally bullshit wins out.

The regular sources of disinformation get a good run in the book - the vaccine opponents, climate change deniers (never "skeptics"), the anti-medicine crowd and the political deceivers who will say black is white to get your vote (racist politicians never say that or white is black, of course), but mainly the book uses example drawn from the first Trump presidency and its aftermath. This means the QAnon idiocy and the "Fight the Steal" conspiracies about who won the 2020 presidential election. (Spoiler - Biden won.)

The amount of disinformation spread about the result of the 2020 US presidential election surprised everyone. What was really surprising, though, was the ease with which people could be converted to believing nonsense.

Part of the problem is the growth of social media, where anybody can have their say and can block anything they don't like. It's horrifying to read about people getting all their news about the world from Facebook or Xwitter, and being referred to YouTube videos as evidence of something is a daily (hourly?) occurrence.

A useful part of the book is some thinking about how to combat misinformation, with the really good advice that it is almost impossible to change the minds of people committed to disinformation by showing them the truth. It will just be dismissed as "fake news" or "wokeness" and won't even get into the target's brain for consideration. (This has become to be known as "Morton's Demon".)

So what can you do? Be polite, point out inconsistencies and inaccuracies, hope that you might be able to convince someone that truth is true and lies are not. And when the disinformation spreaders are rude to you or insult you (and they will), respond with good grace and humour. This generally upsets them, but who cares what they think about you?

And the scary aspect of the book mentioned above - it was written in 2021 and couldn't predict the tsunami of idiocy, misinformation, disinformation and, yes, bullshit that putting Trump back into the White House in 2024 launched upon the world.

This book is highly recommended. You can borrow a copy from Oberon Library, but get in quick before someone else gets it.

---