I think public discourse has always been 'strategic,' which is to say rhetorical and aimed at ends to do with popularity and power; Plato has Socrates set it out pretty clearly in the Gorgias.
Great piece! I’m drawn to the ideal of truth-aimed speech. I’m less convinced we can get back there by simply urging people to be more sincere.
When speech sits inside institutions that depend on funding, profile and staying on the right side of power, people don’t read statements as neutral. They read them as moves. That isn’t paranoia. It’s pattern recognition.
Inequality matters here. Not because it turns everyone into villains, but because it changes the incentives. When universities, media outlets or research centres rely on patrons or political goodwill, every public statement can look like positioning. That’s not pure cynicism. It’s a reasonable response to how the system is set up.
So, if we want more truth-oriented speech, the real question isn’t only “who’s being sincere?” It’s “what kind of conditions make sincerity possible without punishment?”
A very interesting and thought provoking read! A couple of my thoughts:
First, I think truly effective political speech and speeches, while definitely strategic, also contain some heartfelt truths that the speaker sincerely believes. And it rings through amidst the noise. I believe thoughtful listeners do still have some BS, or anti-BS, detector, and a true, heartfelt belief, expressed eloquently, can still ring through loud and clear.
Second, Trump presents what feels like a unique case in this distinction. He seems to blurt out a lot of what he really thinks, much to the chagrin of his handlers, even when on its face it is almost undeniably bad strategically. But then on the other hand it's hard to believe the guy sincerely believes in anything, at least in a durable fashion! As a counterpoint, in retrospect it sometimes seems to circle back and those spontaneous blurted utterances in fact wind up being some sort of brilliant strategy (in terms of getting enough people to keep supporting him).
Enjoyed this, thanks, and I share the dismay. A few considerations to add. In games, poker obviously and even baseball where we (who can remain awake) see fake bunts, there is strategic communication (sometimes spoken). In politics, even the small-p politics of a dinner table or other "community together", the common knowledge among realists is that people may be "aiming to speak truly to each other" or may be handling an issue - per the example given and that of any neighborhood. Perhaps strategic speech is not the nub, but sincerity is, because strategy can be sincere or not: giving Mildred some space, duping the unaware, or (the really tricky one) anticipating strategic listening by either the biased who hear only to what they want to hear or the knaves who twist words to make traps for fools. Perhaps the measure is whether circumspection is collapsing into cynicism.
Love this. Really fascinated by the closely related critique that non-politicians who post about politics on social media aren't sufficiently "strategic" in what they say online--endorsing what are seen as unpopular views on trans women playing sports, immigration enforcement, and the like. It attaches a level of importance to these utterances that would seem arrogant and hubristic if the person making them viewed their online activity in that way.
These kind of cases are what motivated me to write the piece. I’ve also gotten criticism, like when I say something that I think on a social or political issue which I was uttering purely as the content of my thought, that I’m some kind of monster for saying it in this environment in a way that will fuel more crackdowns by Trump. What I said was about the funding of public broadcasting of all things.
This distinction between assertion-as-expression and assertion-as-strategy feels painfully accurate, and clarifies why so much public discourse now feels hollow and exhausting: when everything is read as maneuvering, sincerity becomes unintelligible and truth collapses into optics. Lam’s insistence on recovering alethic speech names what many of us sense but can’t quite articulate—that trust isn’t rebuilt by better tactics, but by refusing to let strategy become the primary grammar of our speech. If this tension between truth, sincerity, performance, and public life resonates with you, you might genuinely enjoy this related reflection as a companion piece: https://substack.com/@theeternalnowmm/note/c-206881698?r=71z4jh&utm_source=notes-share-action&utm_medium=web
I remember noticing the difference in how people talked about news, using terms like "campaign surrogate" for a talk-show guest, which implies that everything the guest says is taken to be strategic assertion in favor of the campaign, not necessarily what they actually think. And there was the rise of the word "optics," implying that appearances are everything.
I do think that people who can make sincere assertions will beat people who can only make strategic assertions. At the end of the day, people really can tell. But the people capable of making sincere assertions have to show up.
Ironically, it’s a confirmation of the argument that I mostly just think “sure, that’s what they pay academic philosophers to say they believe.” There’s truth to the argument, but there’ll be a lot of hard work to do to really turn things around and rebuild trust. It won’t just be a matter of argument, but also rediscovery of the legitimate bases for moral standing as truth tellers, and those bases may require living differently than academics currently do.
In some ensemble of ways that apparently do not produce public trust. I don’t know the whole ensemble of details or the mechanisms by which they matter, just the coarse result.
I think that's true but not unique to academics. There is lower trust than ever in doctors, journalists, politicians, the tech industry, police and criminal justice, even religion. Maybe its entirely the fault of all of these individual sectors. But usually, if its one particular sector having a problem, its likely to be something they did. If its lots of them at the same time, its likelier to be something about the times we're in.
I never argued that it was unique and don’t think it is. I would bet that many people today would need to live differently to regain lost trust that used to be taken for granted. [I have myself needed to, several times.]
We can start with Larry Summers and the rest of an apparently highly influential circle of well-connected academics who covered for Epstein, then the people who covered for them.
It is “something about the times” no doubt, but probably something about how people are behaving in these times rather than some impersonal astrology or zeitgeist that no one is responsible for.
I think its all traceable to wealth inequality. Academics and medical science needs an inordinate amount of money to conduct what it does, and only some of it comes from the state, a dwindling amount. The result is that fields of research and the arts and journalism need to flock to where the wealth is, which is in the hands of very few people in particular industries like finance and tech. But those people do not just give out their money for the good of it. They want research tied to their interests, or in the case of Epstein, reputation-laundering, which is a lot of what higher, wealthy academia has become. So of course academia is going to looked compromised, because the whole spirit of free an open inquiry is compromised.
Cool, I think that’s a viable thesis and it’s well-fit to some of the sorts of life changes I had in mind: some academics can probably gain trust by eschewing wealth in their lifestyles and production patterns, like old-school monks and friars (so it has a solid historical track record), or by being visibly more careful and less compromising about where and how they accept wealth, like many past political and religious revival leaders (again, many successful examples in the historical record). Systems and individuals both need to change, and in practice, both tend to change together in any case.
Whoa! The host of my favorite defunct podcast wrote a killer article for my favorite extant Substack. Great stuff!
Not defunct, just been on hiatus until this spring, when it will return. Had a couple of books to write! Hope you are still subscribed!
Wow. Fantastic news.
I think public discourse has always been 'strategic,' which is to say rhetorical and aimed at ends to do with popularity and power; Plato has Socrates set it out pretty clearly in the Gorgias.
Great piece! I’m drawn to the ideal of truth-aimed speech. I’m less convinced we can get back there by simply urging people to be more sincere.
When speech sits inside institutions that depend on funding, profile and staying on the right side of power, people don’t read statements as neutral. They read them as moves. That isn’t paranoia. It’s pattern recognition.
Inequality matters here. Not because it turns everyone into villains, but because it changes the incentives. When universities, media outlets or research centres rely on patrons or political goodwill, every public statement can look like positioning. That’s not pure cynicism. It’s a reasonable response to how the system is set up.
So, if we want more truth-oriented speech, the real question isn’t only “who’s being sincere?” It’s “what kind of conditions make sincerity possible without punishment?”
A very interesting and thought provoking read! A couple of my thoughts:
First, I think truly effective political speech and speeches, while definitely strategic, also contain some heartfelt truths that the speaker sincerely believes. And it rings through amidst the noise. I believe thoughtful listeners do still have some BS, or anti-BS, detector, and a true, heartfelt belief, expressed eloquently, can still ring through loud and clear.
Second, Trump presents what feels like a unique case in this distinction. He seems to blurt out a lot of what he really thinks, much to the chagrin of his handlers, even when on its face it is almost undeniably bad strategically. But then on the other hand it's hard to believe the guy sincerely believes in anything, at least in a durable fashion! As a counterpoint, in retrospect it sometimes seems to circle back and those spontaneous blurted utterances in fact wind up being some sort of brilliant strategy (in terms of getting enough people to keep supporting him).
Interested in your thoughts, thanks!
Enjoyed this, thanks, and I share the dismay. A few considerations to add. In games, poker obviously and even baseball where we (who can remain awake) see fake bunts, there is strategic communication (sometimes spoken). In politics, even the small-p politics of a dinner table or other "community together", the common knowledge among realists is that people may be "aiming to speak truly to each other" or may be handling an issue - per the example given and that of any neighborhood. Perhaps strategic speech is not the nub, but sincerity is, because strategy can be sincere or not: giving Mildred some space, duping the unaware, or (the really tricky one) anticipating strategic listening by either the biased who hear only to what they want to hear or the knaves who twist words to make traps for fools. Perhaps the measure is whether circumspection is collapsing into cynicism.
Love this. Really fascinated by the closely related critique that non-politicians who post about politics on social media aren't sufficiently "strategic" in what they say online--endorsing what are seen as unpopular views on trans women playing sports, immigration enforcement, and the like. It attaches a level of importance to these utterances that would seem arrogant and hubristic if the person making them viewed their online activity in that way.
These kind of cases are what motivated me to write the piece. I’ve also gotten criticism, like when I say something that I think on a social or political issue which I was uttering purely as the content of my thought, that I’m some kind of monster for saying it in this environment in a way that will fuel more crackdowns by Trump. What I said was about the funding of public broadcasting of all things.
Oh yeah the “what you are saying could be weaponised by the other side” charge.
This distinction between assertion-as-expression and assertion-as-strategy feels painfully accurate, and clarifies why so much public discourse now feels hollow and exhausting: when everything is read as maneuvering, sincerity becomes unintelligible and truth collapses into optics. Lam’s insistence on recovering alethic speech names what many of us sense but can’t quite articulate—that trust isn’t rebuilt by better tactics, but by refusing to let strategy become the primary grammar of our speech. If this tension between truth, sincerity, performance, and public life resonates with you, you might genuinely enjoy this related reflection as a companion piece: https://substack.com/@theeternalnowmm/note/c-206881698?r=71z4jh&utm_source=notes-share-action&utm_medium=web
I remember noticing the difference in how people talked about news, using terms like "campaign surrogate" for a talk-show guest, which implies that everything the guest says is taken to be strategic assertion in favor of the campaign, not necessarily what they actually think. And there was the rise of the word "optics," implying that appearances are everything.
I do think that people who can make sincere assertions will beat people who can only make strategic assertions. At the end of the day, people really can tell. But the people capable of making sincere assertions have to show up.
Ironically, it’s a confirmation of the argument that I mostly just think “sure, that’s what they pay academic philosophers to say they believe.” There’s truth to the argument, but there’ll be a lot of hard work to do to really turn things around and rebuild trust. It won’t just be a matter of argument, but also rediscovery of the legitimate bases for moral standing as truth tellers, and those bases may require living differently than academics currently do.
How do academics live?
In some ensemble of ways that apparently do not produce public trust. I don’t know the whole ensemble of details or the mechanisms by which they matter, just the coarse result.
I think that's true but not unique to academics. There is lower trust than ever in doctors, journalists, politicians, the tech industry, police and criminal justice, even religion. Maybe its entirely the fault of all of these individual sectors. But usually, if its one particular sector having a problem, its likely to be something they did. If its lots of them at the same time, its likelier to be something about the times we're in.
I never argued that it was unique and don’t think it is. I would bet that many people today would need to live differently to regain lost trust that used to be taken for granted. [I have myself needed to, several times.]
We can start with Larry Summers and the rest of an apparently highly influential circle of well-connected academics who covered for Epstein, then the people who covered for them.
It is “something about the times” no doubt, but probably something about how people are behaving in these times rather than some impersonal astrology or zeitgeist that no one is responsible for.
I think its all traceable to wealth inequality. Academics and medical science needs an inordinate amount of money to conduct what it does, and only some of it comes from the state, a dwindling amount. The result is that fields of research and the arts and journalism need to flock to where the wealth is, which is in the hands of very few people in particular industries like finance and tech. But those people do not just give out their money for the good of it. They want research tied to their interests, or in the case of Epstein, reputation-laundering, which is a lot of what higher, wealthy academia has become. So of course academia is going to looked compromised, because the whole spirit of free an open inquiry is compromised.
Cool, I think that’s a viable thesis and it’s well-fit to some of the sorts of life changes I had in mind: some academics can probably gain trust by eschewing wealth in their lifestyles and production patterns, like old-school monks and friars (so it has a solid historical track record), or by being visibly more careful and less compromising about where and how they accept wealth, like many past political and religious revival leaders (again, many successful examples in the historical record). Systems and individuals both need to change, and in practice, both tend to change together in any case.