Lie, disinformation, and verosion in Stanislaw Lem’s intellectual science fiction

Doklady Bashkirskogo Universiteta. 2017. Volume 2. No. 3. pp. 478-484.

Download text.pdf

The article is devoted to the problem of aggressive manipulation of information that threatens society with a catastrophe. This problem is brought forth by Stanislaw Lem, a science fiction writer, futurologist, and philosopher. Lem introduces such notions as "verosion" (derived from "verity" + "erosion") and "social schizophrenia" to denote the catastrophic degree of pollution of the information environment. The writer remarks that the level of information pollution higher than 70% leads to "rattling vibration", while the pollution reaching 80% and higher is irretrievable, because "the naked truth can no longer be separated from falsehood". The problem becomes more acute, as the poisoners of infomedia "get poisoned" themselves to become unable to tell truth from falsehood.