Nathan Radke

And so once you have internalized that idea that your own experiences, your own memories can't be trusted, then what happens is you become dependent on that other person who's gaslighting you to provide and explain reality to you.

And this, we end up staying in these abusive situations, either politically or personally for longer, because that's the only life raft we see.

Well, I mean, the first thing you should do is recognize that it's happening and understand that those feelings that you're having of alienation, of anxiety, maybe depression, I mean, those are coming from this gaslighting situation.

Because when you no longer feel like you have any kind of grasp on a truth or reality, it results in loss of agency, results in the lack of feeling of freedom, and it's a feedback loop.

Because the gaslighting reduces confidence, and then that lack of confidence drags you back into the parasitic embrace of the gaslighter.

And of course, like almost every situation, the situation is complicated by generative AI now.

Because it's given the gaslighter two new weapons against the truth.

They can tell us that a real video is just AI.

They can show us an AI video and tell us it's the truth.

Oh, no.

I know.

But there is hope.

Yeah.

Because, I mean, to understand the hope, we've got to get a bit sadder first.

Because one of the tragedies is that gaslighting prays inequality that's actually helpful for us to get closer to the truth, and that's self-doubt.

Self-doubt is a good and healthy thing for us to have.

When we're not 100% certain of our beliefs, we're more willing to listen to new evidence and arguments and things like that.

But that's what the gaslighter takes advantage of, that self-doubt.

So we need to kind of join that philosophical humility with a steely-eyed focus on reason and rationality to help us make sure that people aren't trying to spit in our faces and tell us that it's raining.

Well, coming up, we're going to distract ourselves a bit.