Your right to spread misinformation cannot be justified on the grounds of free speech.
Your right to spread misinformation cannot be justified on the grounds of free speech.
Please don't create accounts to do that with.
Greatgirl also makes an important point. It also appears she only made this point once, here, and has no other "violations". The comment wasn't provoking or ill-meaning. It most certainly did not "trample curiosity".
As other comment rightly pointed out, your implication requires censor.
Also it implies that misinformation is decidable, i.e. there is a strictly objective rigid method of telling what it The Truth™ everybody agreed upon. Could you show me such a decision procedure?
Sure, it's called reason, philosophy, and the scientific method, all of which influence a dialectic which is a method of arriving at the truth.
Buzzword
> philosophy
Subjective opinions hidden behind obscure rhetoric.
> scientific method
Is not applicable to most of the issues bothering human beings: epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics are highly unscientific.
Neither are decision procedures though. Here is the example:
Putin is a thief.
Show me a rigid decision procedure proving it right or misinformation.Putin is a thief.
my standard approach is to follow the old, standard
"The burden of proof is on the proposer."
Or, it is not up to me to try to debunk such a claim. And I'm not obligated either to debunk the claim or accept it.
So I want to discard essentially all claims that don't come with solid information, the "proof".
Right, such proof can be good stuff in pure math and in parts of mathematical physics but less good elsewhere.
If there is a claim such as
The tap water is toxic.
as long as we have sources of safe water, we might make a decision to avoid the tap water and go with the safe water until we have more evidence about the tap water.
And that is where it seems we are stuck on practical decision methodology and procedures.
Yeah, but what's a proof? What if Putin try to poison Navalny (as he did), but will deny it? Everybody believes that, but there is no proof that he is in charge.
Does it mean that this is misinformation until proven otherwise, and Russian censorship is justified?
Otherwise, in a case without threat, we are reluctant to devote the resources to develop a proof and just ignore the claim that has no proof.
What about questions or allegations? Can I say to my neighbor: "I think it will rain today" even though I can't prove it.
If that is allowed, can Qanon state "I think Biden is a communist"?
See how restriction of speech is a tricky subject?
You and another commenter missed a crucial part of my sentence: dialectics.
The method of isolating the contradictions of a system so as to arrive at the best possible answer. No one said there is a quick formula for this, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be attempted.
It is much easier to tell if someone is free to say what they think than it is to tell if they are properly employing dialectic techniques.
If you can't tell truth from lies how are you sure something is misinformation?
What's the point of the term misinformation then? Most people agree upon the shape of earth anyway, but questionable topics are questionable due to, you know, lack of persuading argument which would persuade the bulk of people.
5G cannot cause infection by the coronavirus because it is merely a non-ionising radiation. It is a waveform of specific frequency of the electromagnetic spectrum and cannot carry viral nanoparticles through the airwaves, penetrating the skin, and infecting the body.
I won't even bother to debunk flat Earth or Moon landing hoaxes because they're beneath me.
Your argument is in bad faith as you've either read none of the disinformation that is perpetrated or you're pretending that most of the claims are verifiably, irrefutably incorrect.
You know, this infallible social institution which never pushed society towards cringeworthy ideas, which never revised previous theories (wiki has a whole article on superseded theories). And who said reproducibility crisis? It doesn't exist, science is perfect, ergo we know.
Like when Swedes practised eugenics and sterilised innocent people, that was just a bad science, yeap. Hopefully today we have perfect science so this couldn't happen.
Not to mention that science is not applicable to everything, most questionable questions are not scientific, hence I don't know who is arguing "in bad faith" by cherry-picking grotesque examples.
> Your argument is in bad faith as you've either read none of the disinformation
No, your arguments are completely orthogonal to what I said.
You are saying that some people tell lies.
I'm saying that there is no objective decision procedure which tells truth from lies.
If you don't see the difference, it means you are too dumb for me to continue this argument "in bad faith".
But for actual evidence that it's true (supporting the claim that it's true) - I don't see as much evidence that it's false (supporting the claim that it might be true).
Would "lots of people would need to be involved" the only rebuttal in that case?
So other than making proactivesvcs the arbitrator of misinformation, what process do suggest to replace the status quo?
I would describe the status quo as: everyone is allowed to publish information unrestricted. everyone else can review any information and either ignores it or amplifies it. The more people who have critical reasoning skills, the better the system works.
My response has long been that from the media, etc., I want solid information, up to, say, at least common high school term paper writing standards with complete quotes, with context, with credible references to objective, original sources. Then I want the author to have a long established solid reputation.
In practice, that approach does not work very well. First, nearly nothing in the media meets such standards. Second, even with the high school standards, it is still too easy to manipulate, deceive, or lie to an audience.
My view of deception in politics is that it stands on a foundation of the audience wanting only headlines or very short articles. Then, writing deceptive material is easy.
It would appear, then, that at least for now, stopping the deception in politics would be easy since the deception depends on just no more than short news articles and, thus, should be easy to debunk for the fraction of the audience willing to read some material a little longer and more complete. At this point, until the means of deception react, there may be some potential via such longer materials.
It seem to me the main problem are that there are things like troll factories and also that everybody is just getting information from their own bubble. The latter could maybe be addressed in a small way if we forbid these big companies to spy on people so much. For the first problem I just do not see a solution. Maybe the only thing that can be done is waiting until peoples BS-detectors have calibrated themselves somewhat to the new online world that we are living in. Which may or may not happen.....
I think that it is separate question - should the government have power to censor misinformation? Is it good or bad for this company to censor that misinformation?
However, that does not mean that misinformation campaign itself can not be considered "an assault on free speech" or whatever else.
How is it an assault if it doesn't prohibit the opposing opinion.
It does not require the prohibition to happen. It does not have to succeed either.
But how is it an attack on free speech? If it doesn't endanger free speech or threatened, or even refer to it.
I think you should articulate the connection, because I see no connection whatsoever.
My claim is that those are two separate topics. I will be happy to argue that claim.
Yeah, that is the whole point...
This rhetorical question is rather old, but you should at least await answers before concluding it can't be answered.
So if the spreader believes it's true? How do you know if they know or pretending?
I think it's useful enough for practical purposes that we can clearly classify something as misinformation where the spreader knew what they were doing.
That's wrong. Misinformation is often spread unwittingly.
My belief means that it is a falsehood rather than a lie.
Things like libel, slander, false statements of fact, false advertising, etc have long been considered beneficial as a limitation on free speech (e.g., not protected by the First Amendment)
The term "misinformation" contains an argument that there is a broader set of statements (not yet considered libelous or false in the eyes of the law), which should be regulated by an appointed group or new set of laws.
The backlash is against this new zeitgeist: a campaign against misinformation is certainly one that dials back the liberal view on freedom of speech, more so than the current boundary conditions already established.
Misinformation is a type of free speech. Whether purposeful (medical experts lying as to whether we should wear masks) or accidental (weather forecasting,) misinformation is merely a facet of freedom, to use wisely or not. Some instances are made illegal (e.g. in a stock exchange,) whereas most instances are seen as harmless (Santa Claus) or used to prevent greater harm (this shot will only hurt a little, Louise.) What's healthy is to reserve a bit of skepticism towards the information you get till you can confirm it is 'truthful' or not.
That is a most silly argument.
One does not loose any freedom to express oneself if one believe in a falsehood, for if that were true, no man would enjoy any such freedom as all believe at least some falsehoods.
Having the freedom and the power to do things are two entirely different things. A mute and deaf man is considerably hampered in the power to express his opinion, but not in his freedom to.
Similarly, freedom to own property is an entirely different matter to whether a citizen have the capital to purchase it.
Why did this happen? Because they intended to. But the law only punishes what they did, and provides loopholes for not ever admitting intent, so long as they lie about it. That lie is the true crime. That lie is profitable.
Irnonically, in modern America, it takes a fake news show to be honest about the news, and a comedian to be honest about modern culture. That's also absurd. Hilarious, but absurd.
"When telling the truth, if you don't make them laugh, they will kill you."
I don't need someone telling me what is and what isn't "good" information, I can do that myself.