Some of the biggest, deadliest, costliest sagas now and in the past 75 years have been caused by society-level disinformation campaigns by organized groups. Yes, in the long term, the truth wins out, but usually after an incredibly hard fought battle, years or decades of damage, erosion of trust in institutions, and billions in profit rewards for the fraudsters.
A. adjust our social norms to make the world at large less punishing for pedants, “well, actually”, and those who do not “read the room” — when people are more willing to accept “well that was poorly framed but true” as a valid reason to keep someone in leadership.
B. Make humans better at social interactions in general without somehow introducing tradeoffs.
I honestly can't tell.
Why is there doubt that vaccines are safe and that tobacco is harmful?
I can understand reluctance to say too much of sweet smoothies filled with fresh fruits is harmful or milk/milk products are harmful because they contain lots of useful nutrients and the reality is very nuanced and our understanding will evolve over the next few decades.
However, the topics you mentioned are solved issues. Why is it so easy to cast doubt about them?
Because people will say just about anything if you pay them to say it, and they will keep saying it for as long as you keep paying them.
This feeds into people reasonable assumption that if to different people are saying different things these is some doubt about the issue.
The entire vaccines cause autism thing started as a disinformation campaign against the MMR vaccine in order to sell an alternative (expensive) 3 part vaccine and to win a lawsuit. The media gave the original paper huge coverage without actually reading it and it took many people a lot of work debunking and discrediting the author before he even lost his medical license.
You never read "We got tricked into spreading BS" on the front page of a newspaper.
>... a subsidiary of Distillers Co. Ltd (now part of Diageo plc), marketed thalidomide throughout the UK, Australia and New Zealand, under the brand name Distaval, as a remedy for morning sickness. Their advertisement claimed that "Distaval can be given with complete safety to pregnant women and nursing mothers without adverse effect on mother or child ... Outstandingly safe Distaval has been prescribed for nearly three years in this country."
>Experts estimate that thalidomide led to the death of approximately 2,000 children and serious birth defects in more than 10,000 children, about 5,000 of them in West Germany
Focusing just on industrial misinformation, I'd add
- asbestos and lung disease
- mercury dumping
- chromate dumping
- numerous workplace hazardstranslation: mass market products are responsible for a very large portion of the total economic GDP, and by definition, touch the lives of millions (or more) people each day. Product liability is a system of law where the brand holder does have financial responsibility when things go wrong. Truth, obviously, is the real effects of the products on people, living things, and our common environment. A third-rail is a real-live, high voltage carrier of power for trains, but the term is used to convey something too powerful to even slightly touch, at the risk of death and destruction. In colloquial political talk it means that a appointed official or elected official could be terminated by broaching the topic in public.
from an "Economist magazine point of view" some products do cease to generate profit after restrictions or penalties on the market, which is "deadly" to profit.
depending on your world view, many products today, like gas-driven cars, are actually toxic from the beginning, yet have so much economic and daily importance that it is collectively tolerated, until it is not.
ordinary product liability, like "body burden" long lived chemistry rubbing off from sofas or children's toys, live in a gray area in markets where a change in public opinion or regulatory framework can alter the product and its market quite a bit at any time.
since steady profit over time is a de-facto definition of social power, there are multiple layers of second or third order actors that delay, deny and obfuscate any change in status quo, and are paid real money to do so.
activists, educators, researchers and regulators that try to change the status quo of products with facts about toxicity are then "touching a third-tail"
source: research on electronics products life-cycle worldwide