Werner Herzog Is Ready for the Post-Truth World

In Herzog’s own words, truth is “an uncertain journey …
into the unknown, into a vast twilight forest, that gives our lives meaning and
purpose,” a pursuit that “distinguishes us from the beasts in the field.”
(Unsurprisingly, he is no great admirer of cinema verité, the observational
documentary style that he rejects as the “accountant’s truth.”) In the new book
he examines various histories, some contemporary, many ancient: the Emperor
Nero and his imposters, the origins of the Vatican, the creation of the
Potemkin villages, the death of Princess Diana, Enron’s bizarre Hail Mary
attempt to create the appearance of “going gangbusters” by building a fake
trading floor (complete with banks of phones and computers), the factually
dubious but undeniably gripping work of Ryszard Kapuściński, among other
examples. To fully articulate his case, he revisits his own work, arguing that
manipulation and a bit of deceit in filmmaking are essential to uncovering
deeper truth. 

Perhaps it’s only natural, then, that artificial
intelligence appears to fill him with both dread and a terrible sense of
wonder. AI, Herzog writes, “sees its occasional errors, and arrives at
strategies and decisions that were not programmed in it by humans,” operating
“with a little pinch of chaos and imprecision, as is also embedded in human
nature.” Exponential improvements in biochemistry, robotics, quantum physics—AI
is coming for all of it. “It can offer us ideas and suggestions that never
occurred to us. And more: We are going to experience a reinterpretation of our
role in reality, and of the understanding of this reality.” How, then, are we
to be in this world? 

In Herzog’s eyes, we are far more open to and accommodating
of fakery than we might realize. It is as if we’re ready for this brave new
world of techno-deception, paradoxically, because our imaginations have been
primed for it by the ubiquitous duplicity that surrounds us. Victims of pyramid
schemes, aficionados of professional wrestling and opera alike, alleged alien
abductees: All have elected, on some level, to participate in their own
deception. (Of alleged abductees, he is “gentle”: “The fact that someone claims
to have been snatched by aliens doesn’t make it true, but it doesn’t
necessarily mean the snatched person is lying either.” )