> This requires an educated civil society
Do you think educated civil societies just spontaneously form, or is it because they are enabled through the government providing things like education (the best way to combat misinformation).
Do you think educated civil societies just spontaneously form, or is it because they are enabled through the government providing things like education (the best way to combat misinformation).
This would rightly be understood as a shallow hold-out. ... and they would probably still be waiting today.
Education is hard work and does not happen spontaneously. Good governance can facilitate education. But people should always be assumed to be capable of judging their informational environment independently of formal education. Not to do so would be deeply paternalistic and infantilizing.
And, as you seem to assume, this skepticism led to more indirect forms of democratic institutions: Would you argue against direct democratic institutions in the U.S. on the same basis?
>But people should always be assumed to be capable of judging their informational environment independently of formal education. Not to do so would be deeply paternalistic and infantilizing.
That's not the point. The question was "what can be done to combat misinformation" and my response was "education" which in the democracies that I'm aware of, is generally provided by the gov't. You are talking about something else entirely, and a bit pejoratively as well, which is ironic because you are talking about education but apparently completely missed the point.
No, the topic was that whether the thesis that technologies like ChatGPT enable misinformation is a reason to keep the technology unfree.
And in response to that topic it was me, not you, who introduced education. You then just added a loaded question designed to hint at a preexisting government.
edit: I can't add further comments anymore due to HN limits, but notice how the person responding to me is changing the topic after I pointed out that they are misrepresenting the earlier discussion.
They wrote:
> The question was "what can be done to combat misinformation" and my response was "education"
But they weren't able to point at the comment where 1) this question supposedly emerged and 2) their response supposedly brought up education as a solution.