Lies, the disease, and the cure? Golden State, by Ben Winters

 For all the griping I do about books that bother me, one might wonder why I bother.  Yet, the gripes give a distorted perspective, as one might reasonably infer.  I do, obviously, enjoy a good book, and I would not bother were it not for all the good books out there.  It just isn't always as fun to post about them, since I have no rant that needs to be ranted.  Observations, perhaps, but a rant that is bubbling to the surface is something else entirely.  Yet a good book is a glorious thing.  The best kind?  Books that challenge.  The worst thing you can do for your brain is expose yourself only to those who reinforce your predispositions and pre-existing beliefs.  For today, I shall blather about a novel that challenges me.  Intelligently.  That's why I love it.

Ben Winters.  I have mentioned him before, in passing.  The "Last Policeman" trilogy was an interesting series about a cop who still believed in solving cases even though an asteroid was on a collision course with the Earth, and that all life on Earth was doomed anyway.  Good books.  Great?  Not quite.  Interesting world, interesting ideas, and I do recommend them, but they didn't blow me away, so to speak.  If I can write that about books where the hook is an asteroid coming to wipe out all life on Earth.

Where was I?  Oh, yeah.  Ben Winters.  This time, he wrote a book that you really should read.  Flawed?  Yes.  There are plot holes galore, I'm not sure how tied the book is to this particular moment in cultural time, and generally speaking, one can make the case that a book so dependent on being a response to the classics-- 1984, in this case-- winds up being less "shark" than "remora."  At the end of the day, though, does a book raise interesting questions?  Does it make you think?

And this is a different standard for evaluating books than the standard within the "Golden State" of the novel.  We'll get to that.  But it's my standard.  I want books that make me think.  And Golden State does that.

So let's have ourselves a chat about lies.  Or at least, lemme shout at the void about lies, because this is an obscure, pretentious, little blog that nobody reads.  The conventional informational dystopia is the 1984-style dystopia.  Nobody knows anything because the state controls all sources of information, and it lies to suit its own ends.  And the lies keep changing as the state's needs change.  We're at war with either Eastasia or Eurasia, as the needs of the state change, and whatever the current status is, it always was, and the population engages in doublethink to go along.  The information dystopia.  The state-controlled information dystopia has been replaced, in many ways, by the internet information dystopia, best portrayed, I have argued, by Neal Stephenson in Fall; or, Dodge in Hell.  Conspiracy theories taken to their logical, or illogical conclusion.  The reductio ad absurdum of reality, if reality weren't already the reductio ad absurdum of the principle.  The only law of the modern era is Poe's law.

This brings me to a core tension, clear throughout my ramblin's.  I detest lies.  Yet, I am also a free speech absolutist, or as close to one as you will find.  There are a few places where "speech" ceases to be merely "speech."  Even hate speech, as odious as it is, is constitutionally protected.  "Incitement" is tricky, because the legal standard is pretty high, but the law needs to be slanted in favor of speech.  As I have written, this is why as bad as Trump is, and as bad as his behavior was leading up to January 6, prosecuting him for "incitement" isn't going to work.

Lies?  "Defamation" is a specific category of lie, and there are a couple of high-profile defamation suits going on right now because of the "Big Lie"-- the false claim that the election was "stolen" from Trump by "rigged" voting machines, and other such insanity.  Defamation requires that the statement be false, known to be false, and cause monetary damage.  There's lots of stuff in defamation law.  As a juror, would I vote in favor of Dominion's suit against Fox News?  Fuck yeah.  Those motherfuckers are liars, and they caused monetary damage.  Defamation seems right to me.  I think they crossed over the broad protections that news organizations get.  They ain't news.  They're fuckin' liars.

Most lies, though?  They're legal.  Even political lies.

So let's consider a stupid, innocuous lie.  In yesterday's blog post, I included a music clip from Gary Lucas.  Suppose I make the following statement:  "I am a more skilled guitarist than Gary Lucas."  From your perspective, can you assess the veracity of this statement, directly?  Almost certainly not.  The probability that you, dear reader, have ever heard me play guitar is very close to zero.  I don't think there are any recordings of me playing guitar.  Is there subjectivity in the assessment of guitar skill?  To some degree.  I don't know how to compare Gary Lucas to Djelimady Tounkara, arguably the greatest guitarist ever to emerge from the Malian music scene, and yeah, that means a lot.  That is a comparison that simply makes no sense, and there is a level of virtuosity at which these comparisons make no sense anymore anyway.  Both musicians are superhuman.  On the other hand, it is objectively true that both instrumentalists are superior to the names that will be prattled off when fans of popular music are asked to list the "GREATEST GUITARISTS EVAAAAR!"  In the 1990s, pop fans listed Kurt Cobain on greatest-guitarist lists.  Seriously.

Now... would you know that my claim to superiority over Gary Lucas is objectively false?  Without hearing me play?  You could infer it, to a high degree of certainty, but you'd be making a Bayesian inference.  I'd probably be lyin'.  And... um...

Anyway, could Gary Lucas sue me for defamation?  No.  Because I wouldn't be causing him any monetary damage.  Nobody cares what I write on this cockamamie blog, because I'm fucking nobody, and nobody reads this thing.  I'm passing my Sunday morning, drinking my coffee, prattling about Gary Lucas, Ben Winters, and musing on the legal systems we have constructed around lies.  Who the fuck does that except for a pathetic loser whose time is worthless?  I demonstrate why Gary wouldn't bother precisely by writing this shit.

Are there consequential lies without monetary damage?  Um... yeah.  Donald Trump told a fuckload of them.  And that's where everything gets really, really messy.  The only place in the law where lies become judicable is when they run into defamation law.

So here's the problem.  Lies can do a lot of damage.  Whether we are talking about all of the conspiracy theories floating around the country, COVID lies, or just every fucking thing Donald Trump has ever said, lies matter.  And they can kill.  But what should be done about them?  Remember the irony of Donald J. Trump, the lying-est liar who ever lied a lie, saying that we should revise defamation law, because he was supposedly such a victim of so much lying?  Yeah.  OK, let's run with that.

Here comes Ben Winters, with the funhouse mirror version of 1984.  You think there's too much lying?  Too much bullshit?  Too many conspiracy theories, too much lunacy?  Let's do something about that.  Let's not just tighten up defamation law, but outlaw lying altogether!  OK, so as a free speech devotee, this is most definitely not what I want, even before you conduct the thought experiment, via literature, that turns the idea into a weird dystopia.  But it is a great premise for a book that should get all of us who proclaim ourselves to be part of the "reality-based community," in that wonderful phrase, to think about what that means.  Particularly those of us who detest postmodernism.  And I do detest postmodernism.

Alright.  With my typically roundabout and long-winded lead-in, we finally come to the premise of Golden State.  Holy shit, that took me a long time, even by my standards.  I suck.  I will try to do this with as few spoilers as possible, but whatever.  Here's the deal.  At some point in the future-- we learn about this from a notebook, consisting largely of guesswork and hypothesization-- there is an attack on the power grid, which shuts the country down.  That, combined with distrust in the government, the media, institutions in general, and people, lead to social breakdown.  What happens in the world?  Mostly, you see a place called, "the Golden State," which is the LA area, having been rebuilt around the premise of 1984-in-reverse.  Instead of the state lying about everything, the state not only tells the truth, but prohibits essentially all forms of lying.  Exceptions include minor, friendly social teasing, and stuff like that, but otherwise, tell a lie, and you are committing the most heinous crime in the Golden State.  Surveillance everywhere.  Citizens keep records of everything, collected by the state, for "the Record."  And everything is, "On the Record."

Since lying of any kind is the worst crime, there is a special government agency charged with addressing it.  The Speculative Service.  Its agents are basically psychic cops, who can detect falsehood.

Side-note:  I don't like the doubling up here of sci-fi premises that depend on each other.  Winters creates a world in which lying is a crime, and then separately creates psychics who detect lies.  Too coincidental.  A simple writing trick could have solved this-- the founding of the Golden State occurred when this particular kind of psychic emerged.  Instead of these being independent phenomena, one premise caused the other.  That way, we require less suspension of disbelief.  The sudden appearance of psychics in the future is a hard thing to handle.  The only time I have really seen it done well was in Babylon 5, where they were created for a purpose by the Vorlons, and you find that out later in the series, but here, they are necessary for the construction of the plot device, so they're just there...  Um, I have a problem with this.  Am I nitpicking?  Probably.  Whatever.  My blog, I can nitpick if I want.  Moving on.

Anyway, the book follows Laszlo Ratesic, Agent of the Speculative Service.  You're thinking, what's with that agency name?  Well... think about that prohibition on lying.  The Golden State really, really doesn't like any kind of falsehood.  Even unintentional falsehood.  So, you aren't allowed to say anything that you don't know to be true.  You can't... hypothesize.

The only ones allowed to speculate or hypothesize are the agents of the Speculative Service, when they investigate crimes against the "Objectively So," which are the highest crimes in the Golden State.  Murder?  Eh.  People die every day.  Blatantly lying?  Speaking a thing that you know is objectively "Not So?"  Now, that's unforgivable.  That's how it all went wrong.  So only the agents are even allowed to hypothesize, because a hypothesis could be "not so."  Can't let one of those get out!

How... do you have science without hypothesization?

Literature?  There's "literature," of a kind, in the Golden State.  There is a "novel."  The historical novel of the founding of the Golden State.  Novels, as they are understood within the Golden State, are factual.  Fiction?  Disallowed.  People read the fuckin' dictionary for fun.  OK, I'd rather read the dictionary than that shitty Kim Stanley Robinson book, about which I ranted last week, but... no.  No.

Are you startin' to get it?

Think about a lack of hypothesization.  No science.  The Golden State is remarkably un-advanced, technologically speaking!  More important from a moral perspective, how are people with mental health problems treated?  Gettin' it even more?

They're exiled.  As in, dumped into the desert to die.

The prohibition on lying does things like take private, personal disputes and turn them into major crimes.  Point being, as much as I don't like lying, and as much as those of us who love the phrase, "the reality-based community," dislike lies, this ain't good.  Is it the worst dystopia ever?  No, but it is not heaven on earth.

And who are the villains?  Postmodernists!  Those who reject the concept of objective truth, and seek to bring down the "bulwarks" of society which reinforce belief in objective truth.  The Record, the Speculative Service, and the belief that fact if knowable.

The conflict, then, is between those who adhere only to that which is knowable with absolute certainty and do not even consider the solipsistic retort to be valid, and those who are solipsists.

The book is a murder mystery, that's really a treatise on epistemology set as a conflict between epistemological extremists.  I fucking love it.

The Golden State is a kind of be-careful-what-you-wish-for response to anyone who carries the Joe Friday ethos too far.  Yet just because the Golden State is a creepy surveillance state with no literature, no real science, which criminalizes private behavior and kills the mentally ill based on its adherence to what it considers "provable," that doesn't mean we must accept solipsism.

Because fuck solipsism.

Yet as Winters writes the conflict, he challenges those of us who venerate objectivity.  There is a perhaps too-cute-by-half point made by the book, towards the end about there being a kind of "truth" in fiction, which is Winters saying, "hey, isn't this novel, that you are reading, kinda true?"  Yeah, Ben, we get it.  Just like the forbidden novel within the novel was written by someone with a suspiciously similar name to yours (Benjamin Wish).  Please stop hitting us with that 2-by-meta-4.  Yet it goes beyond that.  And beyond the point about science requiring hypothesization, which requires statements along the way which turn out to be false, eventually to be falsified.  Because science is a method, not a subject.  There is a scene, describing a warehouse that has been cut off from the cameras which surveil everything, so that participants in the grand conspiracy (which also goes by the name, "Golden State") can tell a bunch'o lies.  Or perhaps... role-play/LARP!  Yes, they gather in a warehouse so that they can revel in speaking falsehoods!  Winters doesn't say that they are LARPing, but he describes them as making up stories about themselves, and their lives, and... it all sounds like they're gathering in a warehouse to LARP to me!  The original form of the big conspiracy, found by Laszlo's brother, was a LARPing group!

Me?  I always preferred tabletop, but to each their own.  Regardless, if lies have been forbidden, then the mere act of speaking a lie, not for personal gain, but for the joy, becomes subversive, and whether or not you can understand that will depend on your personality type.  I... kinda get it, contrarian that I am.  As much as I side with "the reality-based community," criminalize lying, and I'm gonna want to make shit up for the sake of making shit up because you told me I can't!  I... kind of get it.

To be sure, the Big Bad in the novel commits murder, and convinces compatriots to do some other bad shit that I won't spoil for you, and the whole thing is a plot to bring down the concept of truth.  I ain't on board with that, but this is the point.  If Winters can get someone who views postmodernism with as much contempt as I do to sympathize with their gatherings...

This is a smart book.  Plot-wise, there are some giant plot holes.  I'll refrain from spoiling them for you, but they did bug me.  A perfect book?  Hell no.  Yet Winters raises some fascinating questions.

You want answers?  You want the truth?  You can't handle the truth!

Or maybe, you can't handle nothing but the truth.

As a free speech near-absolutist, I never would have been on-board with the premise of criminalizing lying, even before Winters ran the thought experiment, but it provides an opportunity to think through a lot, not just about what happens when we reverse 1984, but about the role of truth and lies in social structure.  It's even one of the smarter commentaries on epistemology I have read, keeping in mind that I think solipsism is so pointlessly blinkered that it is hard to write anything intelligent about it.  Yet in the bizarre context of 2021 America, I think this is a vital book.  Strangely nonpartisan.  Throughout the Trump era, the Republican Party was the party of lying, because no human being in history has ever lied more than Donald Trump, and that's a "bone truth," as Laszlo Ratesic would say.  Yet as the left reorganizes around postmodernist ideology, the division becomes liars versus postmodernists.

Where does that leave weirdos like me?  I'm not going to call myself an "objectivist."  That term has been taken by Ayn Rand, who reverse-engineered an excuse for sociopathy, then came up with a clever branding for it.  Yet when the primary dividing line in politics is between liars and postmodernists, those for whom the Golden State is the reductio ad absurdum, those of us who must take it as a cautionary tale-- and we should-- where are we?

Well... 

I have no answers.  No truth.  And I'm not sure I could handle it.

But how about some music?  Eric McFadden, "True Disbeliever," from Delicate Thing.