What is Authentic Disinterpretation?
We live in a post-industrial world where post-truth and false interpretation have become symbols of our age, no less than social networks and touchscreens. Much changes, but human nature remains boundless and strange. This is where a concept was born in my head. I hope you'll like it. Let's turn to the term "authentic disinterpretation", which arose from my thoughts and anxieties. Let's dissect this curious term. Definition. Authentic disinterpretation is a segment of personal awareness, subject to rational and/or irrational reasons, representing an individual distortion of the perception of reality. In simpler terms, this distortion feels reasonable and correct to a particular person under particular circumstances. Sounds confusing? I agree, but clarification is coming. Three Forms of Authentic Disinterpretation. 1. Gnoseological – the misinterpretation of sounds, words, or elements of the environment. For example, a person hears the phrase "school/scale for learning Spanish" and, without the original source, cannot choose the correct option, relying only on their own intuition. Another example: the game "What's behind the screen?" where shadows or sounds seem to be one thing to one person and something else to another, based purely on their senses. 2. Sensory (physical) – the misinterpretation of one's relationship to the material world. An example is trying to feel what's in an aquarium using only your hands, without visual or auditory confirmation. The same goes for blindfolded experiments, where a person relies solely on their sensory perception. 3. Conceptual – based on knowledge or myths from universal human or family experience, but reinterpreted by the person to fit their own example. This includes beliefs like: "In our family, all women give birth before 30," "I'm as tall as Napoleon – 5'1''" (in reality, the French emperor was 5'7'', but you feel the shorter version to be true), or "Everyone in our family worked as builders" (but do you really know what your great-great-grandfather did? You're only relying on the limited knowledge of a couple of previous generations). Phew, glad we got that sorted 😁 Now, what about examples? Don't worry, we'll go through a full example with all the components. The Foundation for Diagnosis and the Stages. First, the Foundation consists of: 1. Dogmatism (knowing something as an unshakable truth). 2. Faith (confidence in that unshakability). 3. Reflection (an attempt to find a solution for the first two, to make them a reality). And the Three Stages of authentic disinterpretation are: 1. Emotional response (desire, fear, love, hate, lust, disgust, etc.). 2. Cognitive economy (no need to double-check or verify due to the emotional response). 3. False authority (an external support, personal to you, that connects the previous two points). Here's how it looks in action, using the conceptual form as an example: A guy believes his calling is to be a singer. He knows it sincerely (dogmatism). He believes he alone is worthy of it (faith). But he is tormented by how to achieve it (reflection). And then, oh miracle, he finds online singing courses. This is his only chance, no one else's (emotional response). Blinded by his desire, he doesn't notice it's an obvious scam. Become a singer for just a $100 down payment, money-back guarantee (cognitive economy). What's more, the site has 9,000+ reviews saying how much people's singing has improved. But that's not all: there are videos showing real progress, created by AI — a perfect example of Baudrillard's simulacrum (a copy without an original). Now these are real professionals (false authority). Why This Matters Now. The rise of authentic disinterpretation is more obvious now than in the pre-internet era. You get calls from fake law enforcement, banks, or even from the voice of a relative generated by AI. You see a speech by a politician, a singer, a blogger — but it's a deepfake. Online, you're offered "overnight success" courses and affirmations that will make you rich, just like certain bloggers and gurus. Everything is quick and easy — for a fee, but without real learning. Of course, that never works. We are learning to fight collective misinterpretation — for example, the Mandela Effect, where millions remember Nelson Mandela dying in prison in the 80s, though he actually passed away in the 21st century. This is a collective error. Which brings me to the difference between collective and authentic disinterpretation. The latter requires getting into the head of each individual person — which is impossible. You can't save every grandmother from scammers, no matter how hard you try. But still, we, as a society, can try to create a system for understanding this process. Not to cure everyone, but at least to know the enemy by sight. This attempt is what led me to write this text. Thank you for your attention!
Translated from Russian with the assistance of AI (DeepSeek).
© [2026] [Sergey Belenky]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). You can read the full license here: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/