Comment by livinginfear | Hacker News Reader

Comment by livinginfear | Hacker News Reader

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> "It'd be great if we could get to substantive debate..."

We've had substantive debate after substantive debate on this issue. The "thought-terminating cliche" of "Who gets to decide" really is the only sensible conclusion to this issue. The ability to be heard is to wield political power. "Big Tech" organizations understand this. I don't believe for a second that the concern-trolling that follows this topic around is ever in good faith. The movement for so-called "anti-misinformation" is an application of political power. This debate has been forced on society by online platforms who have become a bottleneck on the proliferation of information, and are using it as a means to protect their own interests.

> "I think the institutionalization of lying is anathema to a free society, because honest people waste valuable time debunking liars, and it's faster to spread lies that truth."

Every side of a political debate thinks that the other side is either misinformed, or dishonest. The interests of political entities with diametrically opposed views cannot be reconciled. The SPLC and someone like David Duke (I had to grasp for an example here) probably both think that a great bulk of their effort is spent debunking the lies of the other, and what can we conclude from that? Is there any empirical proof that either is lying and that the other is correct?

> "A moment's thought will suggest a range of possible answers, and one can then advocate for one's favorite"

What happens when all of the answers support incompatible, irreconcilable worldviews? (see above)

You're taking a discussion about adding context and trying to reframe it as a censorship issue, then accusing everyone who disagrees with you of concern trolling and bad faith. Guess what, so do the people who claim the earth is flat and so do all kinds of demonstrated scammers.

I'm betting that you don't believe the earth is flat. I'm also betting that you are familiar with the idea that people sometimes lie for profit. Why don't you take an example where you do feel confident of the truth and lay out your ideas about how to refute the deliberate spreading of untruth?

> Why don't you take an example where you do feel confident of the truth and lay out your ideas about how to refute the deliberate spreading of untruth?

i feel confident that the Earth isn't flat. And i have no desire to deny to people their right to choose to believe that the Earth is flat. I mean the true information is easily available - in this particular case for example it has been known for 2000 years how anybody can themselves measure the curvature of Earth. So why should i come upon them and militantly refute their freely chosen beliefs? One can bring the donkey to the water, yet one can't make the donkey drink.

The point here is that people choose to believe untruths, and thus any attempts to refute are missing that point and thus fail flat. Because the "misinformation fighting" goes against people's choice, it is as result felt by the people as oppression and censorship which they instinctively resist.

I think your answer exemplifies the chicken-and-egg nature of the problem....

I mean the true information is easily available - in this particular case for example it has been known for 2000 years how anybody can themselves measure the curvature of Earth.

...for example, if I'm a flat earther I can just go 'Who decides 'what is known' or the correct way to measure? You're just a tool of big geodesy' etc.

So why should i come upon them and militantly refute their freely chosen beliefs?

Well, if we were talking about going to the flat earth conference and mocking people, I'd agree. But we're actually talking about people who inject themselves into discussions and spread lies. That's equivalent to you and me having a normal conversation about satellites orbiting the (round) earth or whatever, and a flat-earther butting in saying 'satellites are a lie, the earth is flat you simpletons.'

When we're talking about misinformation/disinformation, we are not discussing person(s) who just happen to hold mistaken ro easily disprovable beliefs. I am OK with people believing in superstitions, religious ideas, or counterfactuals, in a general way. they may be at an earlier stage of knowledge, or the belief may serve some valuable psychological purpose for them, or maybe my belief is incomplete/incorrect and theirs is a better metaphor for the underlying reality, even if it is not fully worked out. When I run into people like and they solicit my agreement I might politely demur or express a different point of view, but I am not concerned to convert them to my own.

What I am talking about is the situation where people with such ideas join an ongoing discussion specifically to attack the beliefs of others, then claim they're being victimized by having their attacks refuted. Let's take a more current example:

Alice and bob are discussing vaccines. Alice says she just got hers and bob expresses the hope that everyone gets vaccinated. Carol joins the conversation and expresses doubt about vaccines.

Now, if that doubt is framed like 'I'm not so sure, have they really tested them long enough, or is [disease] really that big of a problem?' that is (probably) a good-faith doubt that can be amicably discussed and ideally agreed upon. But if Carol comes in with 'you idiots are pawns of the media's 5g conspiracy, wake up sheeple' that's not a good faith engagement. In such a case, Carol is probably not even attempting to persuade Bob and Alice, but to use them as props to create doubt in the larger number of people who read the conversation but don't participate.

Some conspiracy theorists are genuinely ignorant, or paranoid int he clinical sense. Where they are very insistent on promoting their wrong views, we can call that misinformation, as in mistake. But quite a few people deliberately spread untruths to stymie discussion of a particular issue or to damage the cohesion of a social community by lowering the signal:noise ratio of community discussions, and that's disinformation, as in distrust.

"Who gets to decide" is clear: oneself, by listening to what others have to say, and using that to build your own web of trust about who to listen to.

"What happens when all of the answers support incompatible, irreconcilable worldviews?"

You mean, as with all the information that exist in the world? That is a direct consequence of there being more than one person with the ability to think. The solution to that is to get informed, carefully selecting and contrasting your sources, and building a mental model of your own.

It doesn't hurt when others publish their own views on what they think of others' statements. What hurts this process is when their comments are based on demonstrably false information.

Corrupt authorities are happy to label anything they don't like as "demonstrably false" so we're back to square one.

If you're not capable of developing your own demonstrations nor checking the quality of the ones provided by authorities, you deserve whatever level of misinformation you're fed.

Exactly, thus eliminating the need for the we-know-better than you authority on what can and can't be discussed in the first place; glad to see we have yet again come back around to the same conclusion on censorship.

This story is explicitly not about censorship - rather, supplying additional context - but you and other posters seem unable or unwilling to address that.

> It doesn't hurt when others publish their own views on what they think of others' statements. What hurts this process is when their comments are based on demonstrably false information.

Circular argument is circular. Repetition doesn't strengthen it any.

The comment I have quoted is alluding towards censorship of "demonstrably false" statements; that comment is what I was replying to as can be seen via the technique of reading-the-comment-chain; most with a basic understanding of forum architecture can get to grips with this but hopefully now I've spelt it out as explicitly as possible you can manage, unless perhaps some sort of diagram would help you with the difficulties you appear to be struggling with?

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