Why should we worry about misinformation?
I recently read an article in Nature magazine in which researchers plead to their readers that we ought to care more about the threat of misinformation to democracy. To illustrate the threat they provide the typical examples, false claims about climate change, the efficacy of proven public-health measures, and the big lie about the 2020 US presidential election have all had clear detrimental impacts that could have been at least partially mitigated in a healthier information environment. The researchers promise us that efforts to keep public discourse grounded in evidence will not only help to protect citizens from manipulation and the formation of false beliefs but also safeguard democracy more generally.
In their book The Misinformation Age, philosophers Caitlin OConnor and James Weatherall come to the stunning conclusion that the same legislative prohibitions the state puts on false advertising, hate speech, and defamation ought to extend to misinformation. With existential threats like climate change and Donald Trump in our midst, websites such as Brietbart and Infowars are as dangerous to human health as the smoking lobby was before the regulation of cigarettes, so these propagandists need the sort of labelling that one might find on a pack of darts.
These two examples are meant to illustrate a perennial tale, that some individuals believe other individuals need to be protected from the kinds of information our betters do not approve of, and therefore monopoly on information needs to be achieved. In this case, our betters are advocating for some form or other of Official Truth and censorship so that others do not form false beliefs.
One wonders how it is that the authorities in this instance are immune to misinformation and false beliefs. Presumably some official will peruse misinformation just as anyone else, and therefor are at the very same risk of forming false beliefs as the rest of us, so it makes little sense to give some and not everyone the power to judge the veracity of information on their own accord. And given that falsity and false beliefs have been with us since the beginning, one wonders of its increasing criminalization as of late. Perhaps worse, our betters have never been that adept at disseminating the truth, historically producing its opposite on an industrial scale.
All of this leads me to conclude that the hubbub over misinformation is a campaign for more power rather than a legitimate plight for public safety. Their monopoly has and will continue to produce human rights abuses, all of which is a far greater threat to the public and to democracy than misinformation and false beliefs.
Their arguments are unconvincing. So I pose the question in the hopes that my fears may be satiated by someone smarter than me. Why should we worry about misinformation?
Nature - Misinformation poses a bigger threat to democracy than you might think
The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread
Poynter- A Guide to Anti-misinformation Actions Around the World.
In their book The Misinformation Age, philosophers Caitlin OConnor and James Weatherall come to the stunning conclusion that the same legislative prohibitions the state puts on false advertising, hate speech, and defamation ought to extend to misinformation. With existential threats like climate change and Donald Trump in our midst, websites such as Brietbart and Infowars are as dangerous to human health as the smoking lobby was before the regulation of cigarettes, so these propagandists need the sort of labelling that one might find on a pack of darts.
These two examples are meant to illustrate a perennial tale, that some individuals believe other individuals need to be protected from the kinds of information our betters do not approve of, and therefore monopoly on information needs to be achieved. In this case, our betters are advocating for some form or other of Official Truth and censorship so that others do not form false beliefs.
One wonders how it is that the authorities in this instance are immune to misinformation and false beliefs. Presumably some official will peruse misinformation just as anyone else, and therefor are at the very same risk of forming false beliefs as the rest of us, so it makes little sense to give some and not everyone the power to judge the veracity of information on their own accord. And given that falsity and false beliefs have been with us since the beginning, one wonders of its increasing criminalization as of late. Perhaps worse, our betters have never been that adept at disseminating the truth, historically producing its opposite on an industrial scale.
All of this leads me to conclude that the hubbub over misinformation is a campaign for more power rather than a legitimate plight for public safety. Their monopoly has and will continue to produce human rights abuses, all of which is a far greater threat to the public and to democracy than misinformation and false beliefs.
Their arguments are unconvincing. So I pose the question in the hopes that my fears may be satiated by someone smarter than me. Why should we worry about misinformation?
Nature - Misinformation poses a bigger threat to democracy than you might think
The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread
Poynter- A Guide to Anti-misinformation Actions Around the World.
Comments (158)
And presumably the suggestion is that the criminal code should include such things as misinformation along with slander and so on.
But why?
Why is slander illegal? Why are bomb threats illegal? We criminalise certain speech because we believe that allowing them would do more harm than good.
Many harmful human rights abuses have been committed on such a premise.
Do you personally need someone to decide for you what you can and cannot read, what you should and shouldnt believe, and so on, especially when such entities have been the greatest historical purveyors of misinformation?
Are you suggesting that slander and bomb threats shouldnt be illegal?
Whenever this subject comes up, someone points out that freedom of speech, the First Amendment here in the US, only applies to government action. It doesn't limit what individuals, corporations, or institutions can do about your or my speech. It's not against the law to fire someone or ask them to leave your house if you don't like what they say. Certain kinds of speech, e.g. slander and libel, can also be addressed under civil law. If I sue you for something you said, that's not a violation of free speech as it is usually understood. Here in the US, slander and libel are not crimes.
So... I don't see anything wrong with what the authors of the article wrote, at least as you've described it.
Quoting NOS4A2
In the US, there are no "legislative prohibitions" against defamation and so-called hate speech. I'm not familiar with the laws regarding false advertising. I assume it is considered a type of fraud. As far as I know, it is still addressed in civil rather than criminal proceedings.
Quoting NOS4A2
Actions, including speech, have consequences. If those consequences harm someone, it may be appropriate for the harmed party to take the speaker to court. Do you have a problem with that?
Quoting NOS4A2
Do you have specific examples in mind of "authorities" putting the kibosh on someone's politically incorrect speech? If not, what's your kvetch? How about that - "kibosh" and "kvetch" in the same response.
Quoting NOS4A2
Well, you certainly haven't made any case for your claim. Besides that, I'm with Mikie.
Quoting Mikie
It's hard to take this seriously.
No, slander shouldn't be illegal. As I noted in my response to @NOS4A2, slander is not a crime in the US, which makes sense to me.
Freedom of speech is not the same as the first amendment, I'm afraid, so its a mistake to equate the two. That's fine, it's a common error.
I've described what's wrong with the argument further along in the post.
The US isn't the only country in the world. At any rate, this isn't about the United States and its legal system.
I do have a problem with that. The consequences of speech, for instance, is air and sound coming out of the mouth. To be fair, I'm willing to subject myself to a test if you wish to promote your harm theory. Let's see which injuries you can inflict on me with your speech.
I put a link in the original post. It's old, so it may be out of date, but it shows how people and journalists around the world are being placed in jail on the premisses you advocate. I'll place the link below.
Poynter- A Guide to Anti-misinformation Actions Around the World.
Jesus Christ NOS. We could get you killed with speech.
For science.
The problem is that "misinformation" and "disinformation" are nonsense terms. What are they supposed to mean?
Quoting Jordan Peterson
Lots of folks around here can't handle Peterson, but he's right. Such words are bogeyman stand-ins meant to justify censorship. If someone disagrees then they will have to give their definition. The only plausible definition of such terms is either 'falsehood', or 'intentional (or intentionally harmful) falsehood'. Neither one is going to stand up in this debate, which is nothing more than a debate on free speech. What is at stake here is not truth but power. Truth is a sideshow, and it has been for some time:
Quoting Harvard historian of science Steve Shapin, Is There a Crisis of Truth?
I agree. "Misinformation", by definition, is tantamount to falsity. But in practical use it is used to counter information those in power do not like. Any argument from any Western philosopher, like JS Mill or Bertrand Russel should suffice to refute such nonsense, but here we are.
We have a winner!
It's not a mistake and your response is disingenuous. There is no freedom of speech beyond what protections government or other institutions provide. Are you suggesting there should be? Are you suggesting people shouldn't be held accountable for what they say? Are you suggesting there should be no consequences for libel or slander? Are you suggesting the government should get involved in protecting freedom of speech beyond what they already do? What exactly are you suggesting?
Quoting NOS4A2
In your first paragraph you identify Trump's lies about the 2020 election as an example of the issue at hand. Caitlin OConnor and James Weatherall are both American academics working in an American university. For you to say you're not talking about the US goes beyond disingenuity into intentional misleading.
Quoting NOS4A2
As I asked before, are you suggesting that people shouldn't be accountable for what they say? That I shouldn't be able to sue you if you lie about me in a way that causes me harm? If that's what you mean, you should be clearer. It would involve a radical rewriting of civil law in the US and every other country in the world. Is that what you think is needed?
Quoting NOS4A2
Another false statement. The article you linked to identifies no country in North and South America or western Europe except France and Italy that have potentially significant restrictions. Indications of people being put in jail are primarily located in authoritarian countries in Africa and Asia. Is that it? You're worried about press freedom in Burkina Faso?
You've just made up this whole issue so you can paint your preferred right-wing political cohort as unjustly persecuted.
It is a huge mistake to equate an amendment to a constitution with the principle or right it is meant to protect. Its nothing short of circular. The first amendment doesnt protect the first amendment.
All I have suggested is that there should be no law to suppress misinformation. I thought that was obvious, since Ive said as much.
They should be held accountable, and the best way to
do so is to counter their falsity with truth. The history of censorship and free speech attests that censorship is not the answer.
It has Canada, Mexico, and Brazil in there. But see I dont need to counter your misinformation with censorship. More information suffices. But yes, I worry that free speech is being stamped out worldwide. If you dont, thats fine.
Gavin Newsome just passed a law combatting deepfakes.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/17/technology/california-deepfakes-law-social-media-newsom.html
Ive had my say. Ill leave it at that.
Some typical responses at the edges:
If people panic and some are trampled to death, then the tramplers are at fault, not the inciter.
If the inciter aimed to cause panic, then they're at fault, possibly a sociopath.
You could argue either, right?
Presumably, legislation would follow ethics.
As usual, we have whatever examples, and a simple universal decision/rule is suspect.
Is it coincidental that you're one of the major boosters of MAGA disinformation on this forum?
The dictum has long ago been overturned, and so is no longer binding or relevant to first amendment jurisprudence. Immanent lawless action, not clear and present danger, is the dictum used today.
We should worry about misinformation because its effective and because usually misinformation means a darker truth is being hidden, one that it would be good for the public to know about.
However, thats not what I think this is actually about. The argument you made is more relevant to the question: How should we go about avoiding misinformation? and I believe the best plausible solution is just to rely on individuals who care using their resources to find truth on their own.
Having someone else tell you what's true just adds another chance for the truth to get corrupted.
It is actually possible to set up decentralized censorship-resistant information publication networks.
For example, Bitcoin is one. The powers-that-be cannot prevent the publication of money-moving transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain. It is beyond the capacity of any government on earth to do that.
Unfortunately, it would be prohibitively expensive to cover ordinary non-financial speech with electricity-based proof-of-work protection.
Conclusion. We would have censorship-resistant social media, if we agreed to pay for that.
The author claims that it is enough to "distribute data across a network of peers" in order to achieve censorship resistance:
I have my doubts about that.
In that case, it would also be enough to just distribute money-moving transactions across a network of peers in order to implement something like Bitcoin. There would be no need to burn lots of electricity as proof of work.
I personally do not believe that the principle of "distribution" alone would be enough to fend off the censorship attacks of a determined state actor. In my opinion, it takes a lot more effort to put up a credible anti-Statist defense. Everything else is just an exercise in wishful thinking.
Anti-Statist measures are possible but they are invariably costly.
Good points.
I note that many of the fears over misinformation mention the threat to some amorphous, ill-defined order. Both China and the EU have this in common. From the EU, The risk of harm includes threats to democratic political processes, including integrity of elections, and to democratic values that shape public policies in a variety of sectors, such as health, science, finance and more. Or for China it threatens to undermine economic and social order. Its clear to me that it is a threat to the state. Therefor, digital authoritarianism and the control of information is required.
That seems to me to be a stupid idea, not well thought out at all, because if lying is universal and comprehensive your authorities would be subject to lie. And thats a common argument for free speech and against censorship that maybe someone who doesnt understand it hasnt pondered before: who decides and enforced what is true and what is false? Personally I cant think of any people, alive or dead, fit for such a task.
But youd be happy to know that the jailing of journalists is on the increase since such measures have been adopted.
https://www.cima.ned.org/publication/chilling-legislation/
What you're really concerned with is, "Can government handle misinformation?" Of course. It already does today. Libel, slander, and outright intent to deceive for monetary gain are already handled fairly well under the law. There are a few keys that need to be in place if we were to expand the laws to other things such as "Misinformation to voters".
1. Innocent until proven guilty. This one I'm sure is obvious to you.
2. A high burden of proof. An individual must have clear evidence that they knowingly lied. It must be clear that the person did not imply that it was an opinion. "I think Ivermectin will help Covid" is different from, "Ivermectin has been proven to help Covid and is better than all the other medications out there."
3. A chance at remission. Sentencing or fees can be lowered or eliminated if the person in the wrong publicly comes out and admits guilt, and presents the evidence of what is actually true. The point is not to punish, the point is to ensure the public has access to the truth.
4. Harsh penalties on the campaign trail. This ensures it is more difficult for people who would deceive the American people to get elected.
Again, careful law crafting and jurisprudence can ensure misinformation is handled well without stepping on the first amendment.
On the other hand, having a central government authority deciding which things are the orthodox truth is similarly dangerous. A lot of naive online leftists seem to believe that truth-determining organizations are a clearly good thing, but they only think that as long as the truth-determining organizations believe the things they believe - they don't think about what happens when *the other side* get control of the official truth. They're short sighted about that, many of them.
So I think misinformation should absolutely be fought, and is a real problem - but I have no idea how to fight it, and giving governments the power to choose truth seems kinda insane to me.
Misinformation is just false information. Under its heading falls satire, irony, fiction, exaggeration, miscalculation, and so on. The threat is not only too broad, but as it turns out, not that threatening at all. Weve lived with some degree of it just fine for the entirety of human history, generally speaking.
But worse, the institutions commonly used to penalize misinformation have historically been the greatest progenitors of it.
On the other hand it seems reasonable to punish people for knowingly false bomb threats.
So at least we agree with the principle that some speech shouldn't be allowed. The difficulty is in deciding exactly which speech shouldn't be allowed.
For me, misinformation is more about people lying about politically relevant facts - like making up stories about immigrants eating pets, for example.
Is that what the book is including? Misinformation in such broad terms should of course not be prohibited. Generally when this subject comes up, its about actively conveying information to people that are lies, when the subject knows they are lies. So, not satire, irony, fiction, exaggeration, or miscalculation.
To that, do you see an issue with creating laws that prevent outright deception and lies to people on public platforms? Or should we allow people to deceive others without any risk? The law already forbids revenge, violence, and other forms of 'community regulation'. Can the community properly regulate purposefully deceptive facts with less harm then careful laws and the courts?
Yes, deception is terrible and immoral. It hurts being deceived, and further, to act on a false belief could lead to very real harm. More often or not this leads to some sort of penalty for the deceiver, for instance the loss of credibility, and as a result, the social and economical fruits that come with it.
Recall what Jaspers said. Both censorship and freedom will be abused. The question is, which abuse is preferable? Censorship leads to both the suppression of truth and its distortion, while freedom leads only to its distortion. Censorship is absolute, while distortion can be straightened out by freedom itself.
I wish this were the case, but its often not true. Especially when someone is in a powerful position and the law does not punish them for their transgressions. If it were so easy to punish such things, why would there be a call for the law? There is a call for the law because society is currently inadequate at addressing these issues alone. We don't touch things like comedy, parody, or opinions, because its clear these things are not meant to be authorities on information. But when someone pretends to be an authority on information, when they clearly know what they are peddling is false, we're seeing in real time that there is a minority majority of society that cannot handle it.
I think the problem you often run into on these forums with your worldview NOS4A2 is your ideals are viewed through the lens of a very small community. Rules and massive societal regulations and laws come about as communities build. This is not a corruption, it is a necessary thing that must happen to assist with new community problems. It is actually natural for governments to form as societies grow. Show me a society of a several thousand people in a small living space without a government. It doesn't exist.
Your other problem is that you see that government can be corrupt, therefore it must be corrupt. Or that its corruption is beyond a minimal sense. Government is a tool, and like any social tool, if wielded right, it helps society. How do you think we're able to speak our minds without getting shot by our neighbors? A free society requires the management of resources and broad human conflicts.
Quoting NOS4A2
Which is why you build a government with safe guards and anti-corruption measures. Free and frequent elections. Rights, etc. The problem is that the peddling of false facts is corruption of the free market of ideas. It has long been ruled that yelling "Fire!" falsely in a theater to cause a stampede for your own amusement is not defendable. Why then should people peddling false information for their own gain in other areas suddenly be off limits? Corruption does not just apply to government. It applies to every single person.
In the most extreme case of having people that are working from within the system to actively bring about what might be the end of democracy, or humanity in general, I would say that freedom takes a back seat.
That isn't to say that freedom isn't worth fighting for, or even dying for, but freedom is a function of what we can allow ourselves in the absence of existential threats to our existence. If you value freedom, then consider if the United States were indeed run by verifiable fascists. We would undoubtedly have even less freedom than we might have had had we suppressed portions of the media to prevent such a takeover. Do you actually think that the fascists wouldn't come for those that are reporting on truth once taking power? Everything except the accepted propaganda would be suppressed for being misinformation. Are you so naive, NOS, that you think you, as a gay vampire, would be unaffected?
Whether or not we have actually reached a tipping point with regards to misinformation I don't know. Maybe we wouldn't even have to suppress speech. But I no longer see anything wrong with it in principle - and especially if it means saving our country.
Interestingly, for Aristotle democracy is inherently unstable, especially in the direction of populism. So is a democracy that is safeguarded from "threats to democracy" still a democracy? Is democracy a threat to democracy?
The irony here is that calls for censorship meant to safeguard democracy from threats to democracy are themselves a threat to democracy, and this seems fairly uncontroversial. At the end of the day a kind of theocracy with science or some other truth-approach at the helm is not democracy.
Admirably diverse. Kibosh has Irish roots, kvetch is yiddish. Kibosh has a nicely gruesome origin -- referencing methods of execution:
Slanguage, A Dictionary of Irish Slang"]. Coles' dictionary of "difficult terms" (1684) has cabos'd "having the head cut off close to the shoulders". It isn't clear to me what the relative advantages would be of having one's head cut off further up the neck or closer to the shoulders. At any rate, putting the kibosh on something is a most assertive and definitive act.
The meaning of KVETCH is "to complain habitually", like @NOS4A2 whining about suppression of misinformation.
Quoting T Clark
It's interesting that laws against false advertising weren't passed until 1946--if that is indeed when such protections were first put into place. A lot of "snake oil" products were advertised and sold with impunity, at least in the earlier 20th century, and generally false claims were made about a lot of products. "Caveat Emptor" is still a good idea, because lying, or intentional misrepresentation, hasn't disappeared.
Lying, misrepresentation, failure to inform, misleading manipulation of images and information, pettifogging, outright fraud, etc. are endemic, particularly when corporate prerogatives and profitability are at stake. Misinformation is the lifeblood of the petroleum industry, for example.
Well, we dont have any say in the matter whether things like comedy, parody, and opinions are touched because we are not the authorities on such matters. So I think its a mistake to pretend that we in the grand sense, or society as a whole, have some sort of say.
I appreciate the critique. Thank you.
But in my defence the very small community I view it through is me. I only have one pair of eyes. The fact that you or anyone else are afflicted with the same limitation, and cannot view the world nor speak about it through anyones lens but your own, puts the very idea of a community lens into immediate doubt. I just dont know enough people of any given community to see or speak for them, and Im sure that is the case for most.
Its just not true that rules and massive societal regulations and laws come about as communities build. They are imposed by very few individuals on the much wider society, and one can compare the amount of legislators at any given time to the amount of the rest of society in order to confirm this.
It is the history of states that leads me to believe governments are naturally corrupt. Its an anti-social institution, an exploitative monopoly by its very nature and organization. As a rebuttal, I have a problem with the belief that as soon as a species of moral exemplars gain power, and use the government to help society and not themselves, it will no longer be. History attests to the opposite, and I would implore you to compare it against what I would call a dangerous hope.
Id love to get together with you and build safeguards and anti-corruption measures, but like the vast majority of human beings we do not have the power to do so. And it has long been [I]overruled[/I] that falsely yelling Fire! in a crowded is indefensible, and was never a binding dictum in any law or otherwise. Its just a popular analogy.
Of course the fascists would, so it makes no sense to afford them the power to do so. One of the best ways to avoid fascism is to not do what the fascists do, which in your idea is to suppress portions of the media to prevent such a takeover.
Their suppression is a gift to them. Note the Weimar fallacy, that had the Nazis been censored they wouldnt have risen to power. The Nazis were routinely censored. Goebbels, Fritsch, and Julius Striecher were imprisoned for hate speech. Their publications were shut down (one hundred of them in Poland alone). Hitler himself was banned from speaking. Censorship did not help in the one instance where it should have. When Hitler debated Otto Wells regarding the Enabling Act he reminded Wells of how much he was censored, and this justified for him the passing of that law. They used these pre-existing laws to further suppress the opposition.
It appears there are two-brands of "democracy" in conflict, the one that favors the power of the people, the other that favors the institutions that have arisen in representative democracies, for instance elections and parliaments and the credibility of those in power. It's an interesting conflict.
I'm pretty sure this is a deliberate misrepresentation of history. The Reichstag Fire Decree was far worse than, and thus superseded, any relatively weak laws that might have already existed against some speech I would think. And I'm sure you know the Reichstag Fire Decree was passed by the then president of Germany at the behest of Hitler with the intent of paving the way to totalitarianism. Thus, the Enabling Act was largely passed because the Nazis were able to work from within the system to create a situation in which they could eliminate their political opponents. My guess is that this regime of violent intimidation and suppression of freedoms played a larger part in the Enabling Act being passed than Hitler whining like a little bitch for being cancelled in the 1933 debate.
Quoting NOS4A2
Yes, it certainly plays to the victimhood narrative fascists propagate, but is that really what made the difference in the case of the Nazis? That Hitler was canceled for being an insane, dangerous moron on multiple occasions? Is suppression of lunatics really so injurious?
Quoting NOS4A2
Then how do we stop them, NOS?
Disinformation does harm.
Direct harm:
-many failed to get COVID vaccines and suffered as a result.
-Increasing numbers of parents aren't getting their kids vaccinated against the various childhood diseases.
-Jan 6 2021: 4 rioters were killed. They were present because of disinformation about the election.
-Families of Sandy Hook sufferred harassment because a conspiracy theory pushed by Alex Jones
-the "Pizza Gate" conspiracy theory nearly led to deaths when a man who believed it shot his way into the restaurant to rescue nonexistent children from a nonexistent basement.
- On a personal note, I know two women who contracted breast cancer who chose "alternative treatments" hyped on the internet ("I do my own research"). One is dead; the other soon will be.
Indirect harm:
1) candidates often get elected for telling people what they want to hear - and many want to hear confirmation of the falsehoods they embrace as true. If those candidates truly believe, then they obviously have poor judgement - implying they will be incompetent. Even those who cater to those who embrace the falsehoods will need to bend policy in that direction for they own political survival.
2) the disinformation can drown out the facts, making it harder for even rational people to make informed judgements.
You can certainly frame the issue in terms of harm. You can also frame it in terms of freedom, since misinformation can at times act as a clear limit on freedom.
For instance, "knowing how to do," things is generally a precondition for being "free to do them." For example, I cannot fix my car if I have no idea how to address whatever issues it is having. One is not free to address their obesity if they have absolutely no idea as to the causes and solutions to the problem, etc
The internet is an exceptional tool for enhancing our freedom in this respect. For instance, it's pretty easy to find videos showing you how to fix all manner of issues on all varieties of automobile. Diet information is another matter. On the one hand, it's fairly easy to discover effective ways to deal with obesity; on the other, there is also a lot of bad advice on this front, as well as many products that purport to address this issue, but are effectively useless or even counterproductive.
Ignorance is a limit of freedom.
Here, it's worth considering the production of misinformation directly. Sometimes it is the result of ignorance. Sometimes people have a vested interest in not allowing people access to this sort of freedom, and so they intentionally generate misinformation to "muddy the waters" and decrease the "signal to noise ratio," vis-á-vis some issue. We might consider here how auto manufacturers have often ended up on court over claims that they intentionally make their vehicles difficult to repair, requiring specialized, patented tools, etc. in order to be able to charge more to repair them. It's not hard to see how mechanics and dealerships would have an incentive to produce bad information on how to fix our vehicles (if they could get away with it), since someone using such information will eventually get frustrated, break their vehicle further, etc. and eventually end up going to a mechanic to pay for repairs, and perhaps even more expensive repairs since they have done more harm than good in their attempts to fix the problem based on misinformation.
So, there is an important sense in which the freedom to be ignorant or to consume false beliefs is not freedom. We tend to miss this in the modern context because freedom is so often defined in terms of potency, the ability to "choose anything," and act is essentially ignored. As if we are giving up the "freedom to be tricked into addressing problems in ways that won't solve them," if we only have access to good information. But of course, a fire hose of misinformation makes it so that we are no longer free to actually solve those problems in an effective manner, because we cannot distinguish truth from falsehood.
Of course, dealing with misinformation is made all the more difficult by modern assumptions about who is best able to sort through it. Should the doctor deal with information about health? Probably. But don't doctors have a vested interest in manipulating access to some sorts of information? Indeed, hasn't the American Medical Association been engaged in all sorts of rent seeking behavior to restrict access to healthcare in order to boost their membership's income?
Hence there is an issue where the specialist who is in the best position to vet knowledge vis-á-vis some subject is also generally the person who stands to benefit most from constricting access to some knowledge. This is why ethics is always going to be important. There is a reason why Plato had the leader of the ideal city be the one who is lost focused on the good of the whole.
However, the solution here is clearly not to say "all adults with a pulse are actually equally well positioned to vet all manner of information." Nor does "let's hold a popularity contest and whoever wins the popularity contest gets to pick who they want to monitor and deal with misinformation," seem like a particularly good solution.
Well, I have had some ideas about how we might better select leaders, but I don't think they're likely to be implemented any time soon.
I understand possibly more than you think. I grew up to a very different drummer. I had my own way of doing things and generally never favored group conformity. Not rebelliousness, just simply viewed the world differently then most. I don't mind being told what to do as long as its not for someone's personal gain at my expense. My personal value above all else is freedom. I genuinely believe in allowing as much freedom in a society as possible. But it is freedom within a society, not freedom from a society.
I was a high school math teacher for about 5 years in my past. As such, I was in a situation in which I had to manage anywhere from 1 to sometimes hundreds of kids at a time. You get to really understand people dynamics in larger populations. When I only had to manage one or two kids, rules were generally very lax. But as more and more kids enter into the picture, you can't be. Its like heating up a pot of water. More energy gets concentrated and if you don't put some type of lid on it, it bubbles over. You need clear, consistent, and fair rules. And you might think that the kids would be happier with lax rules in larger groups. They aren't. Nothing gets done. It becomes chaos.
Now, was I teaching math to lord it over kids and enjoy power? Hardly. I don't like putting people in a position where they have to listen to 'me'. But it was necessary that they listen to something, "the rules". To an individual, "the rules" may seem personal or restricting at times. But for a group, they're necessary. I had a strict no tardy policy. If you were late, you went to the office. Many kids hated it, but they all stopped being late within about two weeks. If I didn't have that? I would get tardy kids all year disrupting class.
My advice if you really want to see what group dynamics is like, is lead a group in some way. Organize a trip with a few close friends, then organize a trip with 30. Its night and day. "Rules" are necessary. And that requires some type of enforcement mechanism or governance. Done right, it creates respect and greater freedom within the group. Done wrong its a power trip and abuse. But not done at all? Its unorganized chaos where little gets done.
Quoting NOS4A2
I think your input would be invaluable. True, we don't have the power to do so, but why be on these forums at all then? We have almost no power to do anything we come up with. Plato's "Republic" is a book about what the ideal Republic would entail, and he was no politician.
Quoting NOS4A2
I had to look that up, and you are largely right. Its never been overruled, it was just an analogy that was a non-binding dictum. In truth, it would only be a crime if the attempt to invoke panic succeeded and damages happened. Yet a theater that did not kick this person out would lose business overall, so there is some measure of culpability for the individual.
The issue we're currently having in society, is that is oftentimes profitable to peddle false information. There is little societal recourse for your father not getting the Covid Vaccine because they were told "Studies show you don't need it," and they die. Even if you can get monetary compensation after years of litigation, it doesn't bring your father back.
A carefully crafted bill that penalizes peddling knowingly false information for profit would curtail some of the outright falsehoods that have taken off in the social media age. But I also agree with you 100% that it must be carefully crafted. While it would be simpler to dismiss the issue for fear that a lack of nuance would cause more harm, the law can handle nuance well if the right people are behind it.
I appreciate the story and advice. But is it any strange wonder that it involves children? A paternal outlook is a prerequisite to authority and undergirds the notion that other adults need to be governed as if they were kids.
The problem with collective action is well-enough known. There are too many conflicting interests among the individuals involved. But to insert a class of masters and institute coercive mechanisms in order to make it work is simply to put one or more persons interests over the others, and to exploit the rest in order to achieve those interests, which to me is immoral. Far better is it to find others with a common interest and coordinate and cooperate voluntarily.
Thats the problem. Who would you choose to decide what is true and false, and punish those who deviate from it?
The first step would be to stop acting like them, then win the argument.
Chomsky makes this case often:
False information cannot cause people to believe false information or act on false information. If youd like to criminalize the cause of the harms youd need to criminalize the act, for instance taking alternative medicine or refusing vaccines.
I answered your question: "Why should we worry about misinformation?"
Are you disagreeing with my answer? You seem to be jumping to a conclusion that I'm proposing to criminalize something. I actually didn't propose a solution.
The Pizzagate conspiracy theory led to Edgar Welch driving from North Carolina to Washington DC and shooting his way into the restaurant. Perhaps you're suggesting the falsehood didn't "cause" him to do this. I'd agree that Welch is responsible for what he did, but this father of two would never have made the trip and committed the act if he had not seen the falsehood.
So please explain: do you agree, or disagree, with the answer I gave to your question. We need to get on the same page with that before we could possibly think of ways to address it.
Im just saying the information never caused the harms you mentioned. The choices of those involved did. So why must I worry about the information?
As I said: because people are harmed as a result. This is true EVEN IF there is nothing we can do about it.
Sure, but harmed as a result of someones choices, not as a result of the information. Post hoc ergo propter hoc.
Ha ha! I don't think its too strange. While we could look at it as 'paternalistic', we can also look at it as 'serving a community'. I viewed it as a duty to help ensure the most order with the least disturbance. Not for myself, but for the kids. However, I did meet teachers who definitely got a kick out of lording over kids. I think kids tend to know. One evidence for myself is I was able to handle 'trouble makers' in my class without issues. Its because I didn't yell at them, single them out, or hold any grudges. It was the rules, and you always had a clean slate the next day.
But really what we're touching on is, "Status". What is it and who deserves it. Status at its most basic is the idea that there are certain individuals who are so good at a particular need or want of humanity that we look to them for guidance in those areas.
Good status is when it is purely based on this mindset. The person of high status does their best to serve the person who knows less, and the person of low status is polite, pays for, and listens to the person who has those skills. Bad status is when a person is motivated by their own ego to be in a position of power. When it isn't about serving the other person, but themselves.
Quoting NOS4A2
Too true, and I agree. But I believe this is an incidence of bad status, not the good kind. The existence of abusive status individuals is always a concern, but we don't want to eliminate the ability for good status individuals to flourish as well because we're so afraid of the poor ones. To prevent this, we need to give those of lower status the ability to either leave the relationship with the higher status individual, or replace them. Thus in governance we have elections, and we let people regardless of status vote. This forces anyone who wants to stay in a position of power to serve the majority of their people, or at least the one's who vote. We also allow recalls, and have rights to block certain decisions from those in power.
Quoting NOS4A2
In most cases, I agree. But governance is something that we cannot withdraw from once a population reaches a certain size. Governance is about the resolution of all those difference conflicts over resources and culture. If governance was not there, history demonstrates that crime and war will be used by one side or the other to obtain what they want. Proper governance is the avenue by which we may obtain compromise without bloodshed or crime.
Quoting NOS4A2
First, we of course keep the jurisprudence that has worked over centuries. Innocent until proven guilty, and burden beyond a reasonable doubt. One very simple way to determine it is to go after citations. If I say an article is one thing, when it clearly isn't, its either negligence or malfeasance. Fairly cut and dry. If a politicians claims they were under sniper fire in a helicopter, when all the military reports prior to this claim showed no snipers in that area, we have a clear contradiction between facts and statements.
At the least, this will incentivize people to think carefully about statements of fact before noting them. A short pause or a political candidate or social media entertainer can sometimes be enough to alter a culture which sees lies as highly beneficial with little potential cost if caught. Thus we let the courts handle it, and allow a prosecution and defense to hash it out in court. The prosecutor would provide the documentation of both the original source, and the improper citation, and have to convince the judge/jury that this was intention by the defense.
Anyway, been a lovely conversation, but I have to head out for the day. Stay well Nos, and good points.
Are you suggesting that Edgar Welch would have shot up Comet Ping Pong Pizzeria even if he had never read that Democrats were sex trafficking children? That's ludicrous.
Interesting, to be sure. :up:
This seems to me like a ridiculous generalization. If I lie to my boss this morning which makes him take unnecessary action, why can't I be held responsible for causing my boss to take action? False information has probably driven people to commit suicide on rare occasion. There have been those sextortion crimes of young folks on social media recently causing suicides. The Malleus Maleficarium of the 15th century caused paranoid adults to kill a lot of people. It is an example of the dispersal of a text ramping up domestic terror.
Global society is built on the power of people acting on information they trust is true. Misinformation at an excessive level undermines this trust.
Simply because you dont share your boss motor-cortex. You are responsible for what you do while your boss is responsible for what he does. Its simple physics and biology.
Would The Malleus Maleficarium cause you to kill someone? I doubt it.
No. Just note that many people read it and did nothing of the sort. So you have one instance of someone reading it and then later committing the crime. Compare that to the many others who did read it and then did nothing. If your theory is that those words cause people to commit harmful acts, youll likely need a greater sample of evidence to support it.
Would you commit the crime if you read it?
Ridiculously overbroad definition. Misinformation and disinformation are
* Either knowingly false, or told with indifference to their truth
* Told for the benefit of the teller, likely at the cost of the hearer and society at large
* Crucially, they target populations, not individuals
The cost of misinformation is clear.
*Cost to the individual: one cannot act in ones best interest misinformed.
*Cost to society: The actions of the misinformed are often to the detriment of society at large
*Distortion of democracy: democracy is impossible in both the absence of information and the predominance of misinformation. The will of the people devolves to the will of the most potent disinformers.
There is no obvious solution. The chief danger of misinformation laws is that these same laws can be used to suppress the truth while effectively promoting disinformation. This is a common pattern in repressive societies
It is simplistic physics and biology that treats humanity as if each individual human is her own pocket universe, and ignores the interactions between people which result in us changing each other's thinking to some degree.
Perhaps it is misguided on my part, but I am loath to provide you with knowledge (power) of such interactions, due to your general lack of understanding of, and empathy for, people. So don't expect me to argue the point.
This could be a matter of mutable perspective. I might as well be a mechanical limb at this point, controlled by speech impulses, which he would gladly toss if it stopped working.
Quoting NOS4A2
It's much more a condition of mass belief, or socially pressured acts. If everyone was in danger of being targeted as a witch it is possible I'd be much more likely to participate in finding witches as a survival mechanism.
I dont expect you to argue the point, because you have none. Ive never said any person is his own universe, have never ignored human interaction, nor have I given any indication of my empathy.
That is a more interesting theory in my opinion.
All I know is, had they put that book to the flame for the fear that it caused people to kill others we wouldnt have a chance to read it today. And the fact that it doesnt cause people who read it today to kill others proves to me that something else caused them to kill others. Besides, I doubt many of them even knew how to read.
My theory is only that the disinformation is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for these acts to occur. Do you disagree?
I am in favor of allowing neo-Nazis to express themselves freely. I would say the problem arises when portions of the media collude with fascists to report and spread disinformation in a concerted effort to gain power to subvert the federal government. To prevent things like that, I think we should hold those media outlets accountable somehow, or at least offset the effects of the lies via some safeguards. I don't think that that is too objectionable.
Quoting hypericin
I think you are mostly right, but usually when such laws are created in repressive societies, it isn't to fight the kind of edge case I describe above, but rather to repress for repression's sake or to enable authoritarian rule. Thus, I think that the intent behind the implementation of such laws is probably a somewhat decent indicator of whether or not they will be easily abused; the rubric in a repressive society for what constitutes disinformation would likely be broader or shift more easily to suit the powers that be as a result of policy hinging largely on the will of the repressors. In a freer, more democratic society these laws would probably just arise naturally from elected representatives legislating it to prevent certain virulent strains of disinformation. Of course, good intentions can always lead to bad consequences.
Yeah, that was kind of my point.
You don't repress for repressions sake. The above is not an edge case, it is the main case. They might brand the governments collusion with the neo Nazis as misinformation, or criticism of the neo Nazis themselves. Whilst their political opponents receive no such protection from the misinformation laws, the government itself would probably be an organ for spreading Disinformation about them.
disQuoting ToothyMaw
Intent matters only because a government with bad intent will write the law such that it can be exploited by them. While a more benevolent government would take more care to add safeguards.
Okay, fair enough. Not an edge case. But I do think that at a certain point repression can become indiscriminate insofar as totalitarian regimes go, almost to the point of doing it for its own sake, i.e. I don't think every suppressive law in North Korea, for instance, is a cog in some intricate machine that operates totally efficiently and always in a directed manner to serve a greater purpose. I cannot read the intent behind every crappy law in every crappy dictatorship, but my guess is that some of them aren't even put into action to directly benefit the ruling class, although the majority definitely are.
Quoting hypericin
That is almost exactly what I said here:
Quoting ToothyMaw
The authoritarians would write the law such that the rubric for what constitutes disinformation or misinformation would be likely be broader and more dynamic, while those in a mostly benevolent government would have some specific ideas of what kinds of disinformation they would target i.e. certain virulent forms of disinformation related to enabling fascists' attempts to subvert the government.
All sides use propaganda. All sides want people to believe their bullshit, while not believing the other sides' bullshit. The actors then have to engage in linguistic gymnastics to conceal the fact that they're two sides of the same shit coin.
Propaganda brokers (such as governments) do not want you to arm yourself against propaganda in general.
My advice: be worried about propaganda, it is extremely powerful and almost universally misunderstood.
It is often assumed that better education will decrease receptiveness to propaganda, but this does not seem to be true and there are actually indicators that people with higher educations are more vulnerable to propaganda. Noam Chomsky famously argued this.
My take on this is that people misunderstand the main vector of propaganda, which isn't reason or rationality, but emotion and psychology. People who are more cerebral and less in touch with their emotions and/or 'gut-feeling' may therefore be more susceptible to propaganda.
If one wants to arm themselves against propaganda, one should study (their own) psychology.
I do not.
You must have a great understanding and empathy for others.
It definitely varies, as is typical of social primates.
What is the point of your comments, really?
So are you open to considering ways to limit the spread of disinformation, if it doesn't infringe on free speech rights?
I do not agree, and am not open to considering ways to limit the spread.
I had previously asked:
Quoting Relativist
You answered:
Quoting NOS4A2
Did you misunderstand the first question?
If so, then explain why you deny that in the cases I cited, disinformation was a necessary condition.
You know as well as I do that I was disagreeing with this claim:
You are trying to maximize rather than minimize misinformation. And still nothing bad has become of it. All of it reflects on your own behavior instead of threatening me and my safety.
No, that wasn't at all clear. I asked you a specific yes/no question - that you answered. Now you're blaming me for your answering it wrong.
[Quote]You are trying to maximize rather than minimize misinformation. And still nothing bad has become of it. All of it reflects on your own behavior instead of threatening me and my safety.[/quote]
I first need to clarify the distinction between misinformation and disinformation. Disinformation entails falsehoods being promulgated. Misinformation is broader, and includes people being misinformed for a variety of reasons.
In my first post, I listed a number of bad things that disinformation led to. You focused narrowly on the personal responsibilty of the individuals who acted. You correctly noted that the disinformation wasn't necessary and sufficient for the act to occur. I didn't dispute that, but I pointed it that it was a NECESSARY condition for those acts. Edgar, the Pizzagate shooter, never would have done it had the disinformation not existed.
That doesn't excuse Edgar from his crime. It doesn't mean his personal responsibility for his act is less important than the lie. But it's still the case that this bit of disinformation was a necessary condition for Edgar's act to occur. I don't see how you can rationally deny that.
Ideas should be exposed to criticism by default, not taken at face value by default. Question everything. It is those that don't question what they read and hear that end up causing more harm than those that do.
Why didn't free speech prevent a man from shooting his way into a Pizza Parlor to rescue nonexistent child victims of sex trafficking from a nonexistent basement?
Whatever the man read probably just reinforced some idea he already had and a reason to engage in the violent tendencies he already had brewing within him.
Before I would take such drastic action, I would want to verify the source and legitimacy of the claims being made. How about you?
Well, it should have been clear because I linked to the post I was replying to, as I always do.
I agree that it was a necessary condition to the event. So is air, water, guns, and pizza. I disagree that it contributed to the event you mentioned and therefor ought to be minimized.
Quoting Harry Hindu
So, in the case of fascists posing a real threat to the government, we should allow news outlets and public figures to propagate dangerous, subversive lies - and they would be dangerous - because you think people ought to question everything they hear? Do you think you imploring us on a philosophy forum to not take things at face value could actually have an effect on the people predisposed via conditioning to acting violently on the lies they hear? Do you think they would apply even the miniscule amount of rigor you mustered up to formulate your vapid responses to engaging with the truth of why they should do what they are told to do by their dear leader?
Do you think many Nazis asked for citations when Hitler claimed Jews were parasites on the German people in the 1939 Reichstag Speech? Did they critically examine the reasoning for his prediction that another world war would see the elimination of the Jewish race in Europe?
Think you can get on without? Can deduce it all from something else? Exclusively trust yourself?
There are whatever varieties and degrees; we might assess some by intent and consequences when taken seriously.
So, we strike a balance of sorts between freedom and disincentive.
The last sentence in the quote was my question: "do you disagree?" You responded. "I do not".
Quoting NOS4A2
So you believe Edgar would have driven to the Pizza Parlor and shot it up even if he'd never heard the falsehood. That's irrational.
Thats right. And as John Milton argued, the censors deny themselves (and others) the opportunity to see falsity collide with truth. By giving the authorities the right to determine truth and historical fact, they push for the stupidity of mankind.
Thats misinformation. You last sentence in the post to which I disagreed was So are you open to considering ways to limit the spread of disinformation, if it doesn't infringe on free speech rights?
Nope. I believe it didnt cause him to.
You're wrong. Here's the entirety of the post:
Quoting NOS4A2
Quoting NOS4A2
You're being evasive. I agreed that under a strict definition of cause as that which is necessary and sufficient to resultvin the effect , the disinformation was not the cause. If you read carefully, you'd know that was not on dispute. And yet you repeated the assertion that the disformation didn't cause it.
I have repeatedly asked you if you agreed the information was a necessary condition. You have not clearly answered that. Your "nope" seemed to imply that you do not believe Edgar would have shot up the Pizza Parlor.
You started this thread, so its odd that you seem to want to avoid serious discussion.
Quoting NOS4A2
Censorship is not the only way to deal with disinformation.
I think the problem here is that you're focusing on the content, the false or misleading statement, when the actual reason to worry about misinformation is the media environment.
It's no surprise that you approach the topic from the angle of the content, since unfortunately a lot of the reporting on the topic does the same thing - focusing on the content as the problem.
But the real problem with misinformation, what's "new" about it, is that it's become easier and more profitable to sell false information to people. Tailored media "feeds" (a rather appropriate term) create incentives that are very different from those of a traditional print or broadcast medium.
There have always been peddlers of misinformation, for various reasons, be it purely commercial (e.g. the traditional yellow press) or political. However, these could not be targeted, other than by subscription services, which meant that a publication needed to either have mass appeal or some other distribution channel to overcome the barrier of entry into a subscription.
Mass appeal acts like a filter for misinformation just in the way you like to think of more speech combatting false information: when exposed to a wide audience, it's likely that it's spotted and this will generally make the publication less favoured. So in a traditional medium there's an incentive to keep your reporting reasonably grounded in a shared understanding of the facts.
But today misinformation can be effectively targeted. It can thus influence a person's views without needing to be internally consistent for any other recipient. People can stitch together their views from disparate pieces which will overlap in some areas yet wildly disagree in others. The effect of this is quite visible in modern populist movements from COVID to climate change.
So it's not that misinformation has suddenly become more dangerous in and of itself or that people require a paternalistic guardian. It's that the truth has trouble surviving the modern media environment, and if there's no-one to help it do so we risk our societies atomising into various bubbles. We're already pretty far along that path and it's symptoms are quite visible: political gridlock, an increase in politically motivated violence, intolerance of differing views.
That to me is a more interesting and balanced outlook, so thanks for writing it.
I like your idea that truth has trouble surviving in the modern media environment. No doubt that's true; but I think it's true of all media environments. The adage that "Falsehood flies and the Truth comes limping after it" is quite old.
One thing that is increasingly modern is the exponential growth in the sheer amount of information, true or false. None of us are equipped to deal with all of it, assess it this way or that at all times, because we couldn't read all of it in the first place. It isn't long before we start to receive it through less-than-reputable sources like Uncle John and Nancy Sinatra. I'm more on the hopeful side and believe we'll adapt, but it would be a shame if some would attempt to deny us this opportunity.
I dont know how Im being evasive; Im telling you everything I believe.
We agree on the necessary condition. We disagree that disinformation contributes to bad things occurring, and that it would be good to minimize it. Then for some reason you wanted me to explain why I was denying disinformation was a necessary condition for these acts to occur, right after I said I do not disagree with you. It's just confusing, is all.
That speech has casual power beyond air vibrations is trivially obvious. Smart home systems are a clear modern example. Or, train a child to believe X, and that child will likely believe X, with all the consequences belief X entails.
It is up to you to demonstrate why speech in the case of misinformation is somehow not casual. I don't like your chances.
Actually all air vibrations, including non-speech, are transduced into electrical energy in modern smart-home systems. In the case of speech recognition It is the software that filters out the speech from the non-speech sounds. So the speech has no more causal power than any other sound.
If I read the phrase the earth is flat one-hundred times, and after Im done tell you the earth is in fact not flat, will that suffice as a demonstration?
It was bad that Edgar shot up the Pizzeria.
A necessary condition for this occuring was his hearing the disinformation.
So how can you say the disinformation didn't contribute to this bad thing occurring?
That's just a counter-example to a universal statement like "all speech acts are taken to be true by everyone".
Similarly, "no utterings are taken seriously by anyone" is also false.
Rather, as has been argued a few times, some talk is believed by some. It's common, daily.
I'd take it to be true if you claimed to be a globe-Earth'er (though your personal belief isn't all that consequential in this context).
What's your best guess?
It seems to me that the ability to question authority would limit news organizations from propagating lies because they would be shown time and again to be reporting falsehoods and they would eventually go out of business.
It is when we lose the right to question authority that authoritarians take over.
Are there people that are unable to think critically? Sure. Just look at this forum. If we were to make critical thinking a bigger part of society's education then that could help in limiting how many are enthralled by propaganda.
It also seems to me that abolishing political parties would eliminate the group-think that individuals are exposed to. When people find it hard to think for themselves they look to the group to think for them and then regurgitate what the group authority espouses. Take that away and people will be forced to think more for themselves, and the news organizations wouldn't have a team to play on.
So giving people the power to think critically, to question authority and speak freely would defeat any effort to propagandize individuals.
The right to question authority is a type of free speech.
Of course, but there has been an unhealthy trend toward treating expert opinion as no more credible than the opinion of a blogger on the internet- especially among Republicans. See: https://www.axios.com/2023/05/28/misinformation-science
Questioning authority is healthy. Countering it with disinformation is not.
What really sucks is the level of politicization that has infiltrated society today. It's as if most people view every aspect of life through a political lens. I haven't seen any politician from either side as something to get excited for, or to revolve my life around. It's as if the powers that be are instigating a civil war by shoving politics down our throats every chance they get.
Here's an idea: how about we take campaigning for a position of power out of the equation? Impose term limits on Congress. Since politicians and liars are synonymous then why even put a microphone in front of a politician's face? Politicians should just run on their records not their words.
Yes, to have the collision between 'truth and falsity' as described by Milton requires a shared secular space where the autonomous person is allowed to persist within. The freedom from authority is not a self-evident condition because authority has different dimensions. Consider the language of the First Amendment:
This list of what cannot be legislated starts off with a powerful source of authority in its own right. This permits different groups of people to teach their children as they please. If this process is not to dissolve into the despotism the amendment struggles to avoid, there must be a countervailing agency of education that will preserve secular freedom. How to do that without establishing another tyrannical authority is the fundamental challenge of democracy in our Republic. The secular is not an order that replaces all others but is a form of participation that stops when enough people stop participating. As Eliot said: "We are the music, while the music lasts."
In our short history, the 'Government' has given plenty cause for the petitions of grievances. The possibility for a democracy is the possibility that the secular spirit is still alive amongst those who serve it. Keeping open the space for personal autonomy is a continual struggle.
Over the years, the author of this OP has maintained that the existence of "states" is not the result of a process of human development within the dynamic of many conflicting agencies. It is, instead, an idea that infected the world when enough people started sharing it. By the criteria of the First Amendment, this makes the entity essentially theocratic. This is a withdrawal from any shared secular space where the causes of speech do not have to be adjudicated by abstruse logic. The imagined theocracy also abnegates the voice of the press. All appearances of culpability are washed away by gesturing to the dark cabal huddling just outside of the sensorium. The withdrawal from the space makes it impervious to any contradiction observed coming from it. Elvis has left the building.
Censoring politicians, not everyone else. Politicians should just run on their records.
I understand the differentiation you wish to apply from your previous comments. My comment hoped to express my doubts that such should (or could) be applied directly as a measure of law.
The Axios article linked to a Pew survey that showed Republicans are more likely than Democrats to mistrust scientists.
[Quote]...Many Democrats have rejected biological facts regarding sex[/quote]
I've never seen anyone denying the biological facts regarding sex. Are you perhaps referring to the trend to treat gender as a social role that can sometimes be inconsistent with biological sex?
Quoting Harry Hindu
Yes, that's unfortunate and it's exacerbated by the political parties. GOP leaders have to cater to their base by appealing to their anti-science trends and the embrace of conspiracy theories. In the process, they draw in more of the lunatic fringe - to which they will them endeavor to continue to court. The only remotely similar thing I see the Dems doing is to tiptoe around policies and attitudes toward transgenders.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Everyone gets one term? I'd support that, but it won't happen - it would take a constitutional amendment. I'd like to see critical thinking skills taught in schools- but I anticipate Christian groups would oppose it.
Despite the passive voice, this is what Ive been saying all along. Some people believe some talk. This statement is completely accurate and I agree because it describes an act committed by the guilty party.
Misinformation does not have the power and abilities to harm society. But the believers in it do. So we worry about the believers in misinformation.
Free speech has never meant the freedom to say whatever you want wherever you want. Are laws against fraud and libel to be dispensed with because they infringe free speech?
Fox News lost a big lawsuit to Dominion Voting Systems for spreading lies that hurt their businss. Was that inappropriate?
Not at all. The importance of education as it engages what each person and family consider most important is what shapes what gets to be public. The simple dichotomy of 'elites' and 'people' overlooks the desire to raise children as one deems best.
For example, I don't want to dismantle the Department of Education because it helps develop universal literacy and objective knowledge and keeps alive the difficulty of sharing history from many different stories of history. On the other hand, I don't want them to replace my role as a parent. And to do that, I accept that my autonomy means other parents will exercise the same right, even when their choices are wrong from my point of view. The matter of when other peoples' choices infringe upon mine is where the matter gets sticky and difficult to solve with a list of restrictions. Who shall guard the guardians?
The damage of fraudulent speech, as demonstrated through Common Law, is measured by its demonstrated result. The level of criminality that may be involved concerns the question of malicious intent. Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote an excellent book about it. Those issues are different from the freedom from 'Government' as spoken of in the First Amendment. The Government cannot legislate against speech directed against itself. That is the meaning of the other ways listed such as the freedom of the press, the peaceful assembly of protest, or the petition of grievances.
It is a country mile from being permitted to pull anything one pleases out of their hind parts.
Why not just leave everyone alone instead of harming them and their work? It would be better for all of us.
I wish I could say it is a rare occurence among 'philosophers'.
Such deepfakes are unequivocally a lie, and it doesn't infringe on anyone's free speech. Identifying them for what they are benefits those of us who seek facts. So who's harmed by such a requirement? In what ways would we be better off by having these unequivocal lies compete with actual truth?
So you agree it's a reasonable infringement on free speech, because it can cause damage.
So far, I have made exactly one proposal: to require watermarking of deepfake videos, which are fraudulent by their nature. Do you agree this would be a reasonable step?
Fear and calls for censorship have always accompanied new advances in communication. The catholic church was against the printing press, for example. But while the printing press was used for nefarious purposes such as the spreading of false information, sowing confusion, and insulting established authority, it was also key to the enlightenment, progress, and liberation. I'd hate to see a church censor's watermark on a copy of Les Misérables, for instance.
The artist, those of us who look at it, and posterity are harmed by your actions, which amount to vandalism. It's not up to you to deface someone's work. Imagine the deepfake show "Sassy Justice", from the creators of Southpark, with your ugly watermark on it.
This is attempted gaslighting.
We can add to that the fact that you see yourself as being in a community of one and show no signs of having empathy for others.
Are you ready to take your best guess yet?
Attempted gaslighting...it is coming more and more evident that you're feeling like an abused girlfriend. Am I getting close?
So the speech, which caused the electrical signal that the software passed and interpreted, did not cause the lights to turn off? The software did? Or the electrical energy did?
If you are at someone's home, and say "Alexa, lights off" or whatever, and the host asks you why you turned off the lights, you answer "I didn't turn them off. The electrical energy did!"
Can you see why this is either a joke or sophomoric nonsense?
Hmm. Have you had many girlfriends who felt abused by you?
But no. Care to try again?
What I am arguing is that laws against harmful speech are not an infringement upon free speech as defined by the First Amendment. The First Amendment did not overturn the laws against fraud, libel, based upon harm that was inherited from English Common Law and developed in U.S law. We are expected to speak without harming people. The point of tort law is that such harm becomes something legally actionable when it can be reasonably proven by rules of evidence and procedure.
Free speech in the First Amendment deals specifically with whether the 'Government', the acting power of the state, can protect itself from speech for the sake of preserving that power. Each of the ten Bill of Rights directly addresses ways 'Government' becomes too powerful. Casting these restrictions as "infringements" of otherwise infinitely unencumbered potentialities weakens their utility as protections against tyranny.
In my first response to you in this thread, I began by agreeing with you that:
Quoting Relativist
The laws we have regarding fraud and libel are not censorship. A secular life of individual autonomy without them is the war of all against all. The life of the secular also requires a willingness to speak honestly for the sake of the life it makes possible. That willingness is the element that cannot be legislated or put in a company manual. That is an element absent from Nos4atu's peculiar brand of solipsism.
On that basis, I think the problem of deep fake images is a profound one which should be and will be addressed in all sorts of exchanges beyond the political. As a matter of participatory politics, maybe nothing more can be done in the near future than inculcate a skepticism shared by enough people of what the images are reporting. This includes imagined scenes of eating cats. There is an inflationary aspect to it all. It becomes less meaningful with each use. At some point, it is up to the citizen whether to keep purchasing it.
Agensis - First Analect of Men :cool:
My guess at the answer to the question is an evolved cheater detection module.
To the extent ignorance is "enslavement", it is an enslavement imposed on oneself (assuming free access to information). While deception is "enslavement" imposed by an other.
But of course the topic is not mere deception, but disinformation, which is deception on an industrial scale.
This is probably true because the Republicans are more religious and have a history of rejecting evolution. Scientists (and doctors) don't do themselves any favors when they become political as some have. And we should not forget that a defining aspect of science is that current theories are meant to be questioned and challenged. It's how progress is made (think of Galileo and Darwin) in challenging the status quo. You can only get there with free speech and exposing your theories to falsification. Some scientists seem to forget this.
Quoting Relativist Everyone that I've asked to define gender just ends up giving me traits of biological sex (why change your biology if gender is a social role?) or sexist tropes (being a woman is wearing high heels and make-up).
Quoting Relativist and systemic racism, identity politics, victimization (Republicans play the victimization game to), etc. I am Independent because I see extremists on both sides taking over the parties. It doesn't matter who wins because each one has authoritarian tendencies and we keep losing our freedoms slowly over time. I think Joe Dementia Biden has shown that it really doesn't matter who is president as they are not in control. Joe the Plumber could be the president and it wouldn't make a difference. But think about what would happen if you ran for office and made statements that you wanted to end corruption, and actually follow through with that threat. You would make enemies on both sides. They don't like outsiders coming in and upsetting their gravy train.
Quoting Relativist Not necessarily. If people wised up and voted for alternate candidates instead of Democrats or Republicans we could impose term limits ourselves. Critical thinking - That is why I am for school choice so that I have the option to send my kids to STEM schools (which I have).
Quoting Relativist
But that is not what we are talking about. We are talking about misinformation. Who gets to define what misinformation is, if not logic and reason?
Quoting Sep 22, 2024
Quoting NOS4A2
I'd say worry about both, dis/mal/misinformation being wrong in the first place.
"Ye shan't believe dis/mal/misinformation" won't work, whether edged into lawbooks or not. :D
Sure, you might argue whichever way I suppose. Extremes for the occasion: people should be entirely free to spread dis/mal/misinformation; people spreading dis/mal/misinformation should be guillotined.
Quoting Sep 22, 2024
No, I dont quibble much in everyday conversation. I would say, yes, I turned the lights off.
But then again everyday conversation doesnt center much around metaphysics. Only if someone in this domain of discourse tells me my speech turned the lights off will I tell them they believe in sorcery. Your voice hasnt moved a single switch in your whole life, but here you are acting like it does.
It was just a question. Touchy subject, Im sure.
No, youve addressed nothing Ive said, while Ive answered countless of your questions and tried to follow your logic in good faith.
Good man.
It was a question which demonstrated your lack of empathy towards abused women. So it seems appropriate to consider the extent to which your perspective is a result of Psychopathy:
You didn't answer these specific questions:
Regarding Edgar shooting up the Pizzaria: you agreed the disinformation he received was a necessary condition to his action, but then you (bizarrely) claimed the disinformation did no "contribute" to his bad act. I asked, and you did not answer: "So how can you say the disinformation didn't contribute to this bad thing occurring?"
Regarding my proposal to require watermarks on deepfaked videos, I asked (and you did not answer): who's harmed by such a requirement?
In what ways would we be better off by having these unequivocal lies compete with actual truth?"
What questions of yours did I fail to answer?
I've personally been discussing DISinformation: lies. Disinformation that is repeated becomes misinformation - a tougher problem to deal with. But knowingly spouting falsehoods isn't so fuzzy. Fox knew they were telling falsehoods, and were appropriately held to account.
The person who creates a deepfake video knows he's faking it - lying. That's not a matter of alternative opinions, it's an unequivical fact. That's worth addressing, and entails no ambiguity.
But you quibble here?
Why is your metaphysics "quibbling" in one context, but in the more important context of misinformation it is somehow relevant?
If the metaphysics were sound maybe that would be one thing. But it is not. You are confusing "cause" with "direct cause". My voice cannot directly turn off the lights. But it can still turn off the lights with Alexa.
This has been addressed already. Do you believe that playing violent video games leads one to shoot up schools? Should we ban violent video games, or sue the developers? Not everyone that plays violent video games goes and shoots up a school. Why?
Quoting Relativist
Quoting Relativist
So are you saying that we should depend on the person who knows he is faking it to add watermarks to their own video? If not, who decides what is a deep face video and what isn't if not logic and reason? Doesn't the deep fake video need to be released so that it is exposed to public criticism - to logic and reason. If it isn't released and circulates among a private group, how are we suppose to stop that? Your proposals to solve the problem do not seem to fit with the way these things work.
No, it was the question about why you're doing this. You haven't stopped writing about me yet, telling someone you have never met that they lack empathy and are psychopathic. I'm just curious as to why.
Ahh, "directly". Just great. So what can your voice directly do then?
Misinformation cannot control a motor cortext. It did not plan the attack or load the weapon. Information cannot act. It did not contribute to the act because it is incapable of contributing.
I did answer this question.
For one, deep fakes are not "unequivocal lies", as is demonstrated by the show Sassy Justice. We'd be better off without you telling us what is true or false, what is allowed and what isn't, and for us to figure out on our own accord what is true or false without a third party such as yourself.
Also "immediate cause" or "proximate cause".
My voice directly stimulates cochlea, or a electronic sensor.
By your "metaphysics", a twitch of an index finger never killed anyone, nor usually a gun, but only bullets. So nothing to fear from someone with a gun.
No, it is never that, never 4d chess. 4d chess is almost always the wrong answer.
I think the idea is always "stability", where "stability" is implicitly or explicitly the perpetuation of the ruling regime. They achieve this by repression, by squelching any possible threat. And they might do this crudely, stupidly, without regard to human cost.
Because I think there is something more useful to consider than the thread's title question, "Why should we worry about misinformation?"
Regardless of any matter of "should" there is the simple matter that some people do care about the damage to humanity that results from the propagation of disinformation and misinformation, and some people don't. To justify that all people should care, it would seem important that all people could care. So the topic of whether some people can't care is relevant, and that brings up psychopathy and whether you are capable of caring about the damage to humanity resulting from misinformation.
False equivalence. Deep fakes are inherently falsehoods, whereas videogames are inherently fictional. I haven't suggested banning them - I just proposed identifying what they are. Video games are clearly identified as GAMES; no one is being deceived.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Software is used to create them, and these software tools could automatically add a watermark. If someone removed the watermark, hacked the software, or developed their own, they would be criminally liable.
[Quote]If not, who decides what is a deep face video and what isn't if not logic and reason? [/quote]
Deepfake can entail faking a voice and image of a public figure. There's nothing ambiguous about it. Logic and reason can't identify it, if it's sufficiently sophisticated- and the sophistication is getting increasingly better.
In the absence of deepfakes, logic and reason would dictate treating videos as among the best evidence for determining what a person has said or done. If we can't even trust videos, our ability to discern truth is severely hampered.
[Quote]Doesn't the deep fake video need to be released so that it is exposed to public criticism - to logic and reason. If it isn't released and circulates among a private group, how are we suppose to stop that? Your proposals to solve the problem do not seem to fit with the way these things work.[/quote]
If sufficiently sophisticated, they will become impossible to distinguish from actual videos. Further, their existence provides an excuse for a public figure to deny incriminating video evidence of wrongdoing. No longer will we be able to say "seeing is believing".
Understand that we aren't quite at the point where deepfakes are indistinguishable from real videos. But we're heading in that direction, so now is the time to get out ahead of the projected future problem.
You agreed the disinformation was a necessary condition to the bad act. That logically implies that in the absence of the disinformation, the act would not have occurred. In your defense of your position, you're coflating "necessary and sufficient" with "necessary". I haven't suggested that the disinformation alone caused the bad act, but you keep treating it that way- so you aren't confronting the issue I brought up.
Quoting NOS4A2
I can only find you falsely asserting it's a violation of free speech. This doesn't stop anyone from saying whatever they want, nor does it prevent them creating fake videos- so no rights are being infringed. (There's no right to commit fraud).
Quoting NOS4A2
That's utter nonsense. They depict a person saying/doing things they did not do - and they appear real. It's fraud. It's fine to parody, and watermaking wouldn't prevent that.
Quoting NOS4A2
Deepfakes are becoming increasingly sophisticated. It will eventually become impossible to determine if they're real. Video/ audio evidence has traditionally the best possible evidence of acts (whether by politicians or petty criminals). Sophisticated deepfakes make it harder than ever for rational people to discern what is true.
Thats true. Thats what bullets are made for, why they are shaped the way they are, etc.
It doesnt follow that you shouldnt fear someone shooting bullets at you, however.
My own worry is the damage to humanity resulting from censorship. Are you capable of caring about that?
Do you believe that since something is a necessary condition it therefor contributed to the act?
Youre just going to have to look harder before falsely asserting I didnt answer it. And yes, vandalizing someones work violates their free speech.
Hokum. Sassy Justice is satire, not a fraud.
So why not get better at discerning what is true than giving some people the power to be the final word on truth?
Sure.
But you are being disingenuous.
Much more likely seems an egocentric fear on your part of you being 'censored' in the sense of being banned for low post quality, though of course that wouldn't actually be censorship. I suppose it is likely that your victim mentality would make it censorship in your mind.
Im sure you wouldnt consider your fantasies to be misinformation or have any worry about damaging humanity with it. But in fact the only damage it has done is to you. Its ok; youll survive.
? information ? decisions ? acts ?
Lack of information tends to result in more arbitrary acts. :down:
How to personally verify this or this, for example?
The world is markedly larger than any individual. :shrug:
My impression is that you're narrowly focusing on the immediate cause of an act, and ignoring the fuller context.
A necessary condition is both a contributing cause and a necessary cause of the act.
[I]Necessary causes
If x is a necessary cause of y, then the presence of y necessarily implies the prior occurrence of x. The presence of x, however, does not imply that y will occur.
Contributory causes
For some specific effect, in a singular case, a factor that is a contributory cause is one among several co-occurrent causes. It is implicit that all of them are contributory. For the specific effect, in general, there is no implication that a contributory cause is necessary, though it may be so. In general, a factor that is a contributory cause is not sufficient, because it is by definition accompanied by other causes, which would not count as causes if it were sufficient.[/i]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causality
Quoting NOS4A2
Adding a watermark does not hinder satire. Even if satire is evident in its original context, a video can be copied, truncated, and distributed on social media without the context.
[Quote]vandalizing someones work violates their free speech.[/quote]
Does a person not have the right to control the use of one's image? Using someone's image without permission to convey a falsehood is fraud, and if it casts a negative light on the person, it constitutes slander. The alternative to a watermark would be more draconian fraud and slander laws and/or laws against using a person's image without permission.
Quoting NOS4A2
You completely ignored my point. Deepfakes can make it harder to discern the truth, and this is a case of unequivocal truth. It does not entail empowering some person or group to make a judgement- it entails exposing an unequivocal falsehood at its source.