Ancient Views on Evidence:
Historically, evidence has been a crucial aspect of society, with Moses’ Ten Commandments emphasizing the importance of avoiding false reports and malicious witness, highlighting the significance of truthfulness in legal matters. In Greece, trials were often conducted as rhetorical battles where hearsay was allowed, witnesses were not cross-examined, and the focus was on compelling speeches rather than objective truth-seeking.

Trial by Rhetorical Combat in Ancient Greece:
In ancient Athens, trials were often decided through rhetorical combat, where famous rhetoricians wrote speeches for the parties involved. Hearsay evidence was admissible, and there was no concept of cross-examination. The outcome of the trial depended on who could make the most persuasive speech, a concept that resonates with modern-day debates on social media platforms like Twitter.

The Evolution of Evidence:
Over time, the concept of evidence has evolved, with the emergence of objective processes for establishing truth. The development of scientific evidence and the scientific method has enabled researchers to verify claims through experimentation and reproducibility. However, historical and interpersonal evidence, such as testimony in court, remains more complex and challenging to evaluate.

The Future of Evidence:
The speaker expresses excitement about the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) to revolutionize the way we evaluate evidence. AI can assist in analyzing large datasets, identifying patterns, and detecting inconsistencies, aiding in the pursuit of truth and justice. The combination of AI and human judgment can lead to more accurate and efficient decision-making in legal and other contexts.

From Deuteronomy to the Tang Dynasty: Evolving Standards of Truth
The concept of truth and justice has evolved significantly over time and across cultures. In Deuteronomy, the importance of truth is emphasized, and false witnesses are punished. During the Tang Dynasty in China, magistrates played a more active role, investigating cases and gathering evidence, leading to a less developed concept of lie detection.

The Priest’s Role in Truth-Seeking
In the Judeo-Christian tradition, priests play a crucial role in determining the truth by choosing who to believe in a dispute.

A Different Approach: Trial by Ordeal
In the Middle Ages, trial by ordeal was used to determine guilt or innocence, such as the trial of the coin. In this ordeal, the accused would reach into a pot of boiling water to retrieve a coin. If blisters formed, they were considered guilty and hanged. The effectiveness of this method relies on the belief in God’s intervention and punishment, as innocent individuals would trust in God’s protection.

Modern-Day Parallels: Eyewitness Testimony
In contemporary courts, eyewitness testimony remains a common method for determining truth. This practice stems from the Judeo-Christian tradition, which emphasizes the importance of firsthand accounts.

Complexity of Evidence: Contemporary methods of evidence collection have evolved beyond eyewitness testimony, including photography, surveillance cameras, microphones, fingerprint analysis, and DNA evidence.

Reliability Concerns: Despite these advancements, the reliability of such evidence is questionable. Photographs and videos, for example, may be manipulated or presented with misleading perspectives.

Case Study: The Paris riots illustrate the unreliability of photographs. An image of a large fire near the Arc de Triomphe may not accurately reflect the scale of the event, highlighting the limitations of photographic evidence.

Editing and Deepfake Technology: Digital editing techniques and deepfake technology allow for seamless alteration of images and videos, further undermining their credibility. Fake news and misinformation spread easily online as a result.

Bots and Online Identity: The anonymity of the internet gives rise to concerns about the authenticity of online interactions. Bots and fake accounts can masquerade as real people, making it difficult to verify the validity of information.

Potential Solutions: Some suggest a future of constant surveillance with cryptographically secured cameras and microphones, leading to an “ultraprenopticon.” However, such solutions raise ethical and privacy concerns.

Practicality of Ubiquitous Surveillance: Implementing widespread, comprehensive surveillance is challenging, leaving gaps in coverage and making it impractical as a reliable solution.

Understanding the Role of Judgment in a Digital World:
Emmett Shear emphasizes the current state of online information, where individuals serve as “Jewish cyber priests” tasked with adjudicating disputes in the digital realm. This reality echoes the ancient practice of pastoralists judging disputes in a small tribe. However, the context has shifted drastically, with people attempting to form beliefs about distant events without firsthand knowledge.

The Rise of the Fetterman Conspiracy:
Shear highlights a peculiar conspiracy theory regarding the existence of John Fetterman, a U.S. Senate candidate. The theory claims that Fetterman is not a real person but an amalgamation of body doubles, similar to the Sandy Hook crisis actor conspiracy. Fetterman’s changing appearance and the use of different camera angles contribute to the confusion, sparking the sale of “body double” merchandise at his events.

Assessing the Validity of Information Online:
Shear acknowledges the challenges in determining the authenticity of information in the digital age, given the prevalence of body doubles and the impact of camera angles. He explains his process of assessing trust, ranging from recognizing people in the room to trusting certain individuals based on their past interactions.

Conclusion:
Shear concludes by acknowledging the complexity of navigating trust in the modern era, where information and identity are constantly being challenged and manipulated.

Web of Trust Model:
Trust relationships are complex and difficult to delegate to computers. The current model of explicitly and automatically delegated trust is flawed. People trust others based on various factors, not easily quantifiable.

Vouch App Proposal:
A crowdsourced app where people can vouch for the authenticity of photos, videos, and raw facts. Users would declare their connections to other people and the sources of information they share. This would create a web of trust that can help verify the credibility of content.

Example:
In a situation like the Sandy Hook shooting, people could use the vouch app to verify the identities of individuals involved. By tracing the chains of connections, users could establish the authenticity of eyewitness accounts.

Conclusion:
The vouch app aims to address the challenge of misinformation by creating a community-based verification system. By providing more context and connections to information, the app can help people make informed judgments about the reliability of content.

Building Trust in the Age of Misinformation:
Emmett Shear emphasizes the urgent need to address the declining ability to make sense of the world amid rampant misinformation.

Core Facts vs. Meaning:
Shear argues that establishing core facts is crucial before discussing their meaning, as it forms the basis for any meaningful discussion.

Mechanized Trust in Facts:
Shear proposes a mechanical way to establish trust in particular facts, reducing the incentive to create misleading narratives using true facts.

Optimizing for Coherence:
Shear suggests that optimizing for a coherent narrative, even with true facts, is a problem others should solve, as his concern is the injection of imaginary or false elements into the narrative.

The Danger of Imaginary Narrative:
Shear highlights the danger of injecting imaginary things into the narrative, as it becomes increasingly easier to do so with technological advancements.

Restoring Trust in True Facts:
Rather than eliminating bad facts, Shear aims to build trust in the true facts, as people’s disbelief in underlying facts is a significant problem.

Strengthening the Immune System:
Shear compares the issue to society’s immune system, suggesting that people feel the gravity of fabricating false evidence and getting caught.

Adapting to Deepfakes:
Shear acknowledges that deepfakes pose a challenge, but stresses the need to adapt existing methods used for screenshots of emails and other digital fabrications.

The Window of Verifiability:
Shear expresses concern that the window for verifying stories is shrinking, emphasizing the importance of making verification more common and frequent.

Common Concerns about Scalability:
The app’s effectiveness hinges on widespread adoption, which could be challenging initially. It may take time to garner a user base beyond the initial 10-100 users.

Addressing Trust Issues:
Immediate upload from a trusted camera source, such as an iPhone, could enhance the app’s credibility. Nevertheless, there’s no sure-fire solution, and experimentation would be key to finding the optimal approach.

Dilemma of Trust in the Information Age:
Institutions like the New York Times may not necessarily become more powerful in a world of deep fakes. A more likely scenario is that distrust in large institutions will persist, while trust in unconventional sources might also erode. A situation where neither established nor decentralized information sources are entirely reliable could emerge.

Establishing Credibility:
The app relies on individual endorsements, which can be abused. To mitigate this, the app aims to limit endorsements to verifiable facts, such as personal acquaintance or the time and location of a photo. The intent is to minimize ambiguity and defer to user judgment regarding the interpretation of these facts.

Dealing with Adversarial Actors:
The app may not be effective against deliberate narratives that lack public verifiability. However, it could help verify more concrete claims, such as verifying Fetterman’s identity or identifying inconsistencies in his social network. This could be done by showing connections between individuals who vouch for him and making it easier to pinpoint where, if at all, inconsistencies arise within the chain of endorsements.

Key Challenges of Verifying Events and Information:
Verifying basic facts, such as the occurrence of events, has become increasingly difficult. Increasingly, people’s perception of the existence of events is driven by their social networks.

Problems with Prediction Markets:
Incentive issues arise in prediction markets, where verifying information is essential. Individuals may be hesitant to invest time and effort in verifying information unless they see a direct benefit.

Integrating Web of Trust into Social Media:
Integrating web of trust features into existing social media platforms could streamline the process of vouching for information. Users could have the option to vouch for the authenticity of photos and statements they share.

Web of Trust for Local Recommendations:
A web of trust system could be applied to local recommendations, such as for doctors or accountants. Users could vouch for the reliability of recommendations, making it easier to find trustworthy service providers.

Challenges of Anonymity in a Web of Trust:
Anonymity could become more difficult in a world where vouching is essential for credibility. Individuals may need to rely on trusted intermediaries to vouch for their identities while maintaining anonymity.

Potential for AI to Detect Synthetic Information:
AI systems could potentially be developed to detect synthetic information, such as deepfakes. However, AI’s ability to keep pace with advances in deepfake technology is uncertain.

Rhetorical Tricks and Misinformation:
Misleading tactics, such as presenting numerous confirmed facts while omitting a key lie, can be used to deceive individuals. Detecting such rhetorical tricks remains a challenge, and web of trust systems may not be effective in addressing them.

Vouching for the Identity of VouchApp Users:
Verifying the identity of users on a VouchApp platform is crucial for ensuring the integrity of the system. Cryptographic solutions, such as biometrics and chain-of-custody protocols, have been proposed but may be complex and fragile.

Pushing for Eyewitness Vouching:
The ideal goal is to encourage users to vouch for firsthand experiences and observations rather than sharing beliefs or opinions. This can help to build a more reliable foundation for verifying information.

Defining the Problem:
Emmett Shear discusses the difficulty of verifying identity and authenticity in the digital realm, where creating accounts and sharing content can be done anonymously. He emphasizes the need for a system that allows individuals to establish and validate their true identities without the involvement of central authorities.

Addressing Skepticism about Misinformation:
Bo, an audience member, expresses concern that individuals who believe in conspiracy theories, such as Sandy Hook being a hoax, would dismiss any attempts to verify information through a decentralized app.

Assessing Human Behavior and Trust:
Shear argues that people are capable of critical thinking and validation if given an easy and effective way to do so. He believes that requiring minimal effort, such as clicking a button and leaving a comment, can encourage people to verify information rather than passively accepting it.

Media Literacy and the Pursuit of Truth:
Shear admits to struggling with media literacy and verifying information, despite his expertise in the field. He acknowledges that individuals with limited media literacy skills may develop strong and false beliefs based on misinformation.

Conclusion:
Shear’s goal is to create a system that allows individuals to establish and verify their identities, enabling them to make informed decisions about the information they encounter online. He believes that a decentralized approach, where individuals can vouch for each other’s authenticity, has the potential to combat the spread of misinformation and promote a more informed and truthful online environment.

Trust and Credibility:
The authenticity of an event is harder to prove as time passes. Vouching for distant historical events (e.g., the Holocaust) as counter-arguments to conspiracy theories may be ineffective. Personal connections and trust in individuals can influence the acceptance or rejection of facts.

False Facts and Social Bubbles:
False facts are often believed within social bubbles rather than across different social groups. The assumption that there are few degrees of separation between individuals may not hold true for all cases.

Challenges in Interpretation:
Fact-checking becomes more complex when facts require interpretation and evidence. Interpreting medical data, such as vaccine side effects, poses particular challenges in fact-checking.

Validating Data Presentations:
Citing reliable data sources and presenting data in a transparent manner can improve credibility. Merely presenting data without clarifying manipulations or bias may not be sufficient for fact-checking.