If you are somehow feeling helpless, uneasy and incomplete about the concluding sentiment in Netflix’s Social Dilemma, you should seriously watch this 2:30 hour condensed lecture on Einstein’s special relative theory for every layman!

Especially the last third of the lecture when Professor Greene explained how Team Barn and Team Pole resolved how their own and the other team could come up with completely “right” yet “conflicting” answers regarding one same “objective” event.

Technologies did not create post-truth. It has always been there. Social media and its personalised recommendation algorithm just accelerate (or lay bare to our eyes) the acceptance that there is hardly anything as single factual truth. In space and time, it depends on your relative velocity. In a less cosmic term (aka every day human world), it depends on what is fed to your senses.

Yes, it’s terrifying. Because it’s one thing to comprehend that there can be two observers galaxies apart who can have entirely different notions of what is happening now, it’s another thing to see real life world events driven by people who have completely different narratives about the “same” thing.

Sure, there are a lot regulations and “user disobedience” can do to raise awareness of this realisation, to buy time and limit the negative impacts on real life events.

But in the end, I believe the ultimate antidote to peacefully resolve this paradox / dilemma or whatever you call it is this:

• We have to train ourselves and our children the ability to be mindful about the limitation of our inputs, our thoughts, and understanding of the world
• Before taking any action, take a step back to ask yourself what inputs I have, what strings of thoughts and decision making mechanism I have relied on to arrive at this conclusion
• In addition, ask the same questions about the others’ process that could lead to entirely different conclusions

Of course, the paradox is still there. But hopefully, the damage is less.