Post-truth spans a spectrum from bullshit and spin to self-deception and delusion

Evidence

In his delightfully brash yet rigorous book On Bullshit, philosopher Harry Frankfurt makes the case that when one is bullshitting, one is not necessarily lying but instead may just be demonstrating a careless indifference toward what is true. Is that what Trump is doing? And there are other, more partisan, attitudes that one can have toward truth as well. When Gingrich claims that how we feel about the murder rate is more important than FBI statistics, one suspects he is just being cynical; he is a kind of enabler for post-truth. Those political shills who “spin” the truth most favorably to their advantage, knowing full well (along with most everyone else) that this is what they are doing, are not just bullshitting, for there is clear intent to influence others. Yet post-truth also exists in an even more virulent form. This is when self-deception and delusion are involved and someone actually believes an untruth that virtually all credible sources would dispute. In its purest form, post-truth is when one thinks that the crowd’s reaction actually does change the facts about a lie. — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 46

Categorization

• DEFINE: McIntyre maps Frankfurt’s bullshit onto political truth-relations and reserves post-truth in purest form for believing the crowd’s reaction changes the facts.
• XREF: Connects to Frankfurt’s On Bullshit concept and to the Orwell 1984 allusions elsewhere in this chapter. — connects to: Some post-truth speech is magical thinking rather than mere lying — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 343; Shared belief renders delusion indistinguishable from truth — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of…, 497; Bad faith collapses the deceiver and deceived into one consciousness — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 280 (+10 more)
• recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source

Broader Connections

• Genuine self-deception and intentional social deception are distinct phenomena #expands (0.80)
• Sincerity can be an active ingredient of self-deception rather than its opposite #expands (0.78) — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1405
• Shared belief renders delusion indistinguishable from truth #expands (0.75) — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 497
• Genuine self-deception works by staying willfully uninformed, not by believing falsehoods #expands (0.75) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 704
• Self-deception is a stable life-style punctuated by abrupt awakenings #expands (0.75)
• Bad faith collapses the deceiver and deceived into one consciousness #expands (0.72) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 280
• Psychoanalysis explains self-deception as a lie without a liar #expands (0.72) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 283
• Claiming total self-honesty itself signals defensive self-deception #expands (0.72) — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 1813
• Self-deception requires precise knowledge of the truth being concealed, not ignorance #complicates (0.70) — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1397