"truthiness"

True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society
by Farhad Manjoo

List Price: $25.95
Publisher: Wiley (March 17, 2008)
ISBN-10: 0470050101
ISBN-13: 978-0470050101

Book Description: In True Enough, Manjoo presents findings from psychology, sociology, political science, and economics to show how new technologies are prompting the cultural ascendancy of belief over fact. In an age of talk radio, cable TV, and the Internet—the blog- and YouTube-addled million-channel media universe—it is no longer necessary for any of us to confront notions that contradict what we "know" to be true. Stephen Colbert calls this "truthiness"—when something feels true without any evidence that it is. Here Manjoo probes the cognitive basis of truthiness, exploring how biases push both liberals and conservatives to select and interpret news in a way that accords with their personal versions of "reality."

Why has punditry lately overtaken news, with so many media outlets pushing partisan agendas instead of information? Why do lies seem to linger so long in the cultural subconscious even after they've been thoroughly discredited? And why, when more people than ever before are documenting the truth with laptops and digital cameras, does fact-free spin and propagandaseem to work so well? True Enough explores leading controversies of national politics, foreign affairs, science, and business, explaining how Americans have begun to organize themselves into echo chambers that harbor diametrically different facts—not merely opinions—from those of the larger culture. We meet people who espouse far-out interpretations of reality—about everything from the history of John Kerry's time in Vietnam to the integrity of the 2004 election to the truth about 9/11—and dig into the mechanism by which they came to hold those beliefs.

Where did you get that? Did you make it? It's way cool. And are you saying to book is wrong about its definition of "truthiness"? The definition you post seems to be the opposite of the book author's definition.

Just asking.

...and it's a pretty big one.

Admittedly, I have not read Mr. Manjoo's book, but based on the following quote from this review (or promotional piece?):I feel is false.

Religion is not "new technology" and it is religion, more specifically creationism, that has supplanted fact with belief. Religion is using new technologies and new tactics to assert their dogma into the public sphere. And it is the creationists that I believe are pushing "the cultural ascendancy of belief over fact".

Just my two cents.

You can read excerpts http://machinist.salon.com/feature/2008/03/18/true_enough_excerpt_2/">here if you want.