Illusionary Times

The Future Is Just Lies That Haven't Come True Yet

Nov 20, 2023

Here's a recipe for the future: repeat something enough times, and your brain will believe it's true. This isn't a metaphor. It's neuroscience. Scientists call it the Illusory Truth Effect — your brain processes familiar information more easily, and interprets that fluency as truth. Propaganda uses it. Advertising uses it. Your parents used it when they told you vegetables taste good.

We decided to cook with the same ingredients, but aim for a different dish entirely.

What if instead of using repetition to sell you things, we used it to convince you the future has already arrived? What if fake news was... optimistic?

The Recipe: Tomorrow's Headlines Today

Illusionary Times is a fake news station. Yes, you read that correctly. We built a system to generate and distribute news about events that haven't happened yet — and might never happen — presented with the production quality and gravitas of actual journalism.

The secret ingredient is time. Traditional news reports events at least one second in the past. We report events one second in the future. Sometimes further. Sometimes much further.

AI policy reshaping global governance. Rocket-based intercontinental commutes. Cities designed for humans who live to 150. We slow-cook these futures with professional news formatting, then serve them across multiple channels — displays in public spaces, podcasts, street newspapers, social feeds. Same story, different flavors, multiple exposures.

Because that's how the Illusory Truth Effect works. Repetition across different contexts creates familiarity. Familiarity feels true. Truth shapes behavior.

Why We're Manufacturing Reality

Here's the uncomfortable question: is this manipulation or inspiration?

Consider the history. Jules Verne wrote about submarines and space travel in the 1800s. Rocket scientists later said his books inspired their careers. Star Trek showed us communicators that became smartphones, tablets, and Bluetooth headsets. Elon Musk explicitly credits science fiction for SpaceX. The iPhone exists partly because Gene Roddenberry imagined it first.

Fiction has always been a prototype for reality. The only difference is speed.

Illusionary Times is what happens when you compress the inspiration pipeline. Instead of waiting decades for novels to inspire engineers who then inspire entrepreneurs, we're serving tomorrow's news directly to today's audience. Every day is April 1st, except the jokes might actually happen.

The philosophy is simple: don't compete with facts, compete with creativity. Facts tell you what is. Creativity tells you what could be. We're betting that showing people vivid, repeated visions of better futures is more useful than arguing about the present.

It's essentially The Matrix Problem made practical. If reality is just information we all agree on, then changing the information changes the reality. The simulation runs on consensus. We're updating the code.

The Uncomfortable Truth About Truth

There's something genuinely unsettling about this project, and we're not going to pretend otherwise.

The same cognitive bias we're exploiting has caused tremendous harm. Propaganda. Misinformation. Political manipulation. These are all dishes cooked in the same kitchen with the same tools. The difference isn't the ingredients — it's the intention. And intentions, historically, are cheap.

But here's the thing: the alternative is to leave these tools in the hands of people with worse intentions. If repetition shapes belief, and belief shapes action, and action shapes reality — then maybe the question isn't whether to use this mechanism, but what futures to cook with it.

We're choosing futures where AI helps rather than replaces, where cities breathe, where humans have solved problems we haven't even named yet. Are we right? Maybe not. Is it better than doomerism and decline? We think so.

In Closing: Believe It When You See It (Repeatedly)

Every visionary started with a lie — a story about something that didn't exist yet, told convincingly enough that others believed it might.

Illusionary Times automates that process. Professional-grade fake news, distributed systematically, designed to exploit a cognitive bias for optimism instead of fear.

Is this ethical? Debatable. Is this weird? Absolutely. Is this the kind of project that makes people uncomfortable while secretly hoping it works?

That's the sweet spot.

Illusionary Times: Tomorrow's news, today. Repeat until true.