ENG1101-D309 Eng Comp 1, Sp2017

Haafiza Fagan

Cecily Iddings

English 1101

April.9,2017

Distrusting perception or Bold face lying?

Although millennials have technology at their s fingertip many can’t decipher real news from fake news. The internet thrives off of likes’ and view’, many friends wish to go viral even if that means embellishing on certain topics. Susana martinez-Conde and Stephen L.Macknik wrote “Delusion of Alternative Facts” examining whether Donald Trump purposely overstated the amount of people present for his 2017 inauguration speech to be viewed favorably or if he lied. We’ll examine the facts to decide for ourselves.

Sir Isaac Newton stated “no amount of data can verify a hypothesis, a single contradictory observation will refute it, hypothesis cannot be proven true only false. With that being said theirs photographs of 44th president Barack Obama’s first presidential speech showing a considerable larger crowd. Donald Trump’s vantage point may have served as a bias to how large the crowd was but “a hypothesis can only survive as long as the data supports them”. Public Transit Ridership numbers rejects the white house claims of Trumps largest crowd in history statement.

Our perception depends on our perceptive but isn’t subjectively measured by reality because we see the world in patterns of contrast. High confidence doesn’t equal objective proof. For instance a person can confidently argue that the sky is blue but visual proves it’s blue. Based on what we know as truth we make conclusions. Authors Susana and Stephen attended the Women’s March in Washington.DC, feeling packed like sardines they reported more than one million attendees: when in reality half a million people attended. The difference even for perceptual scientist they too can be fooled by one’s’ own dishonest senses.Spicer and Conway believed President Trump could’ve came across as endearing had he admitted he was unsure of the factual numbers of attendees. Instead they found it unsettling that he stuck to his lie even after proven wrong.
In this era where fake news runs rampant there’s a quest for objective truth. We can not let alternative facts substitute for absolute truth. “ We can only attain truth by stubbornly stripping away every piece of misinformation that stands in it’s way”’.