Last week I went to buy a Philip K Dick eBook while on vacation. It was only $2 and my immediate thought was, “what are the odds this is some weird pirated version that’s full of errors? What if it’s some American version that’s been self-censored by Amazon to be approved by the government? What if it’s been AI enhanced in some way?”

Just the consideration of these possibilities was enough to shake the authenticity of my reality.

Even more unsettling is when I contemplate what could be done about data authenticity. There are some fairly useful practical answers such as an author sharing the official checksum for a book. But, ultimately, authenticity is a fleeting quality and I can’t stop time.

You're obviously reading way too much Philip K Dick. You need to make it more about personal identity crisis though, not just reality in general.

Authenticity can be proven by saying things that upsets censors. For example, if I mention the Tiananmen square, you can be sure my comment wasn't edited by CCP's LLMs.