The SEDUCTIVE power of the FAKE

In 1835, thousands of people in France and the United States believed an incredible story: a renowned astronomer, John Herschel, had discovered humanoid creatures with wings on the Moon, the Vespertilio-men. The story was so detailed – names of scientists, scientific descriptions, precise figures on the telescopes – that the true and the false were mixed in an almost inextricable way. Yet, it was all made up. What is most striking is that even after the hoax was revealed, the fascination with this story persisted, as if the power of attraction of the false surpassed that of the truth. Today's idea of the fake is often linked to new technologies: deepfakes, AI, social networks. We think it's the sophistication of the deception that makes people gullible. But the story of the lunar hoax – and well before it, that of the famous panic of Orson Welles' War of the Worlds, which itself is largely a myth – shows that, as always, it is not the subtlety of the deception that seduces, but our own desire to believe it. We believe what makes us dream. As early as the 18th century, David Hume said that the human mind judges the credibility of a story according to two compasses: the plausibility of the story and the reliability of the narrator. But he added that some reject these two criteria and believe in everything, out of a "love of the marvelous." And that love never wavers, regardless of the era or the technology. Monique Atlan, an essayist, goes further: for her, "the false does not exist in itself; it exists only in relation to the true." It's always a balancing act, a tightrope walk between reality and imagination. However, the ease of access to the false today – social networks, AI, deepfakes – only exposes a much older human tendency: the desire to escape the limits of the rational, to be entertained, to treat oneself to thrills. Alexandre Marsinkovski, who studied the moon hoax, tells how this false discovery became a bestseller, translated into several languages, and featured in the press, theater, literature, and songs. It wasn't just a joke: it was a cultural phenomenon, a collective form of entertainment. The Academy of Sciences did try to restore the truth, but half-heartedly, and the public, for its part, wanted above all to dream. Even John Herschel, the scientist involved without his knowledge, reacted with amusement before being overwhelmed by the scale of the rumor. What makes all this dizzying is that even the debunking of the story itself becomes a new legend: the panic of The War of the Worlds? It never happened, but everyone remembers it as a fact. The effect of the fake persists, even when it is debunked. Roger-Pol Droit reminds us that science and the imagination always advance together: the more scientific knowledge progresses, the more the collective imagination is stirred, sometimes to the point of delirium. The boundary between fiction and reality becomes blurred, especially when the markers of fiction fade. We are reaching a point in society where indifference to the truth is becoming almost normal: what matters is no longer whether a story is true, but whether it entertains us, outrages us, or makes us dream. That is the real danger. When everything becomes entertainment, even moral issues fade away. An anecdote from the Talmud imagines a city where every lie kills a loved one. We learn from this that truth is not only a question of knowledge, but a moral requirement, an act of responsibility. But living in pure truth would be unbearable: we must accept walking the tightrope, doubting, and seeking without ever possessing. The real threat is not atrocious doubt, as Tocqueville said, but quiet indifference, that moment when we even stop questioning ourselves. To resist the seduction of falsehood, we must rediscover the taste for discernment, accept uncertainty – and rehabilitate curiosity as an ethical value. In short, the more technology amplifies the power of falsehood, the more we need limits, benchmarks, and above all, to link the search for truth to a common, shared, and never solitary effort. Truth is never a given; it is an aspiration. The more science advances, the more the imagination follows it, and the more we must walk the tightrope between the two. If we don't want reality to disappear in the great mess, we must learn to love the discomfort of doubt, and not give in to the ease of the marvelous without a compass. Truth is never given; it is sought together, and that is what makes it precious. If this way of looking at the false has turned your mind upside down, on Lara Notes you can mark that you are in with I'm In – it is your commitment to no longer let yourself be seduced without thinking. And if this story of the lunar hoax ends in a discussion tonight, on Lara Notes you can tag the person who shared this moment of truth or dream with you thanks to Shared Offline. What you just heard came from France Culture, and saved you 49 minutes of navigating the great mess of truth and falsehood.