University of Wisconsin-Superior associate professor Daniel Lawrence has recently released a new book. His second published work, “Disinformed: A History of Humanity’s Search for the Truth” asks a variety of questions on the ever-present search for truth.

“It’s a lifetime of thinking about these issues related to rhetoric and disinformation and truth,” said Lawrence. “The actual writing process was maybe two-and-a-half or three years in working with the publisher, but the central idea began years ago when I first read Plato and his dialogue ‘Phaedrus,’ which has this core idea that truth and rhetoric need to be aligned.”

In “Disinformed,” Lawrence delves into how our governments aren’t doing much to slow down technologically aided disinformation, and artificial intelligence and big tech companies are just getting smarter, faster, stronger, and more powerful. If those in power are going to continue to disinform and lie to us – and they always will – then we need to arm ourselves and protect ourselves from the lies and disinformation so that we can live rich, intellectual lives where we think for ourselves, come to our own truths and our own decisions, and craft the world that we want, not the world that they want.

As a professor, Lawrence has noticed a common theme in his courses; students are spellbound learning that many of the problems about truth and disinformation we now face today were the same problems that ancient philosophers spent their time debating. And, more alarmingly, not much has changed in our ability to detect, decode, and fight against disinformation. The idea for this book was born out of seeing how this story about humanity’s struggle for truth captivated so many students.

“For me, it’s finally getting to tell the story,” said Lawrence. “It’s so exciting because people have been talking about this disinformation, headlines, you can see it in the news all over, and to just yell proverbially from a mountain top that Plato told us about this thousands of years ago.”

Within the book are multiple thought-provoking questions such as: How do you tell fact from fiction amid the Internet’s endless flow of information? How do you evaluate the myriad claims made presented to you every day? How can you find the truth in the wild world of social media, evolving advertising and marketing tactics, and a constant influx of dubious information from unreliable sources?

“My hope is that this calls attention to an antidote to disinformation,” said Lawrence. “The book is partially a historical narrative to the warnings from the ancient Greeks, but also the practical steps we can take to wield those lessons from classical rhetoric in today’s world to inoculate ourselves in a sense from the absolute bombardment of political, commercial and institutional messaging that we receive every day.”