Who Actually Gets to Decide What's True? Four Declarations in Two Weeks

FUNK !T | Mindful Media & Communication · Oct 14, 2026 · 26m

On 27 September, MTV invented an award that had never existed and gave it to Taylor Swift. Two days later the President of the United States signed an executive order renaming artificial intelligence.

One of those worked instantly and permanently. The other one did not work at all.

Both are the same kind of act: somebody with institutional standing saying a thing is so in order to make it so. John Searle called these declarations, and they are the only sentences that change reality rather than describe it. I now pronounce you married. You're fired. The defendant is guilty. They work, but only…