Recently I was forwarded this video about the exponential growth of information technology.  One of the facts presented in the video is that “It is estimated that 4 exabytes (4.0×10^19) of unique information will be generated this year. That is more than the previous 5,000 years.” My first reaction was, “Wow, that is a lot of data.” Today I thought, “What does that even mean?” What qualifies as “unique information”? A blog post? A novel? Who is quantifying it? And how? Do they mean more than the previous 5000 years combined? Or more information per year on average?

I poked around online to find some people asking these same questions, but a lot of people were discussing the data and its implications as fact. And the implications were myriad. As it turns out, the statement means whatever you want it to mean.

Here’s what it means to me, or, rather, what the “fact” inspired. Information is spreading so rapidly that it has gone beyond the ability of Wikipedia fact-checkers and Snopes-like watchdog groups to evaluate. Reality, “fact”, is a product of consensus. Rapid data proliferation via social networks and memes gives the same appearance as consensus. On the Internet, the appearance of consensus is virtually the same thing as consensus itself. So information that may not be “true” is being treated as such.

But so what? Hasn’t it always been that way? Sanity and facts and laws and morals are all ultimately outgrowths of what the majority agrees to. These are the written and (largely) unwritten social contracts that make the world work, regardless of “truth” or “rationality”. The world got along just fine when the sun orbited the earth or when it used to be flat or when Pluto used to be a planet.

Some people might venerate science and logic and the importance of “truth”. I would argue that placing importance on such things is as faith-based as any religion. Ultimately, at the core of such beliefs, is the decision that any of it matters. There is no altruistic capitulation to geometry or thermodynamics. No one says, “Oh, I don’t have any real stake in gravity, but I’ll go along with the idea regardless.” No. People go along with science or any other system of measurement because, on some level, they have decided that it matters. Outside of the social contracts we have made as a species, the particles of reality have no intrinsic value and any system which measures them is, at its core, absurd.

I have observed the same people who put value on logic and “reality” also treating them with a cavalier attitude. It is illogical to eat junk food or smoke or not recycle, but smart, rational people do these things all the time. People plan for “tomorrow”, a day that isn’t real and has never existed. People create paintings and movies and books about fantastical worlds and those creations all find a place in society’s prefabricated boxes, but belief in the reality of said worlds is considered irrational.

Here’s what is real to me: I have to feel it. I don’t care if a decision is “rational” or “logical”. I care about how it will make me feel afterwards. Sometimes this overlaps with logic, but it certainly isn’t the driving factor. If a thought or belief or image makes me feel anything at all, then it is real, because that is the only system of measurement that matters to me.

What is the point of subscribing to anyone else’s system, no matter how many people agree with it? They don’t have to live my life. They never have to deal with my feelings. They are not in here.