- the way we engage with and interpret the messages around us largely depends on our epistemology: how we approach what it means to *know a thing*. - [[{4.3a} our personal epistemology is the context in which we think]] - different communities, backgrounds, ideologies bring different frameworks of knowledge. - e.g. faith-based communities interpreting things symbolically rather than literally. - because we see *what it means to know* differently, we see knowledge, information, and truth differently. - this creates *epistemological gaps* that are becoming increasingly hard to bridge. - in some ways, i think this is connected to [[{1.2a2} context collapse]] and [[{1.2a2e2} truth collapse]]: putting all epistemological positions in a room and asking them to find the fact.