From the perspective of knowledge equals power, intentional misinformation, no matter by whom, could be regarded as abuse of power.
More people should educate those knowing less instead of ridiculing their ignorance. (Given the “knowing” really “know”, but that’s another topic.)
Edit: Intentional misinformation meaning posting and spreading “fake news”, willfully publishing or sharing false information through media of any kind, as organization or individual, not merely everyday lyingy which is sth different.
Edit 2: Apparently it’s “misinformation” not “disinformation” sorry.
This is why fraud is illegal.
It should be illegal to have the government or any entity with power deceive or lie to you. Using the best of psychology to manipulate people should absolutely be a serious crime. Instead, corporations and governments do this everyday with impunity.
Personally, I like extending the metaphor.
- Sharing information you have no good reason to believe is gross negligence (in this case, the power being your ability to get things in front of people). If you haven’t read the article and checked for common sense, don’t post it.
- Upvoting a post based on the title without looking at the source is a minor version of the same.
- Giving non-primary sources when the primary source is right there is a form of gatekeeping. Give me the court ruling pdf!
Worse still, democracy relies on informed citizens. Distributing disinformation does not only hurt the individual affectwd by it, it hurts democracy itself.
informed citizens
Informed educated citizens. Deliberately removing critical thinking from the syllabus is much the same as gerrymandering, but with follow on effects for the economy (actually society, but due to lack of broad education, economy is all that matters now).
Representative democracy has problems. Consider alternatives. Random citizen election worked for centuries for the Athenians.
Worse still, democracy relies on informed citizens.
No it doesn’t. This is literally the oldest anti-democracy argument; people are too stupid to rule themselves.
Citizens are entitled to vote because they’re subject to the authority of the State. Dumb people still have to pay taxes and obey the police. A voter who chooses a candidate because Mars is in retrograde casts a ballot that is every bit as legitimate as the head of the political science department. “low information voter” is an argument for voterID, poll taxes, and literacy tests; it’s voter suppression.
You are missing the point. I am not talking about voter supression, I am talking about democracy leading to good outcomes for its people. There is a reason why people keep voting against their own interests and why the swampiest swamp creature won the 2016 US election with the slogan “drain the swamp”, and that reason is systemic misinformation. Fox News is so far removed from the truth that they can put up the defense that “No reasonable viewer believes them” and get away with that.
There is a pretty big difference between “citizens have a responsibility to educate themselves and governments have a responsibility tk enable that” and technofascism.
Also there are way older arguments against democracy. Like “I am more capable of physical violence than you, so why should care about your silly little ballot?”, “the gods blessed me with the authority to rule”, or even the classic “we don’t have time to let the masses squabble- we need a unilateral decision maker who can make quick decisions”.
But what if it’s really funny at the time?
Well it depends on the gravity of the misinformation right? Is it just a small prank or are you substantially influencing someone’s world view? How grave are the consequences of the misinformation for the affected? How much distress does the misinformation cause them? I suppose there’s always differences in degree.
Like the thing about the swedish scientists finding out a person ate like 20-50 Spiders in their lifetime while asleep, bc of spiders crawling into our mouths, which turned out to be fake news that was supposed to show how much easier misinformation spread if you just put the claim in that “scientists found out”. Still many ppl believe it though.
So is it harmful to people who have severe arachnophobia? Is it just a funny experiment?
Like this
If you’re talking about lies you should know we as humans learn to lie before we learn to talk. It’s part of who we are and as crazy as it sounds is a necessary part of living in a group. It’s wrong to lie to hurt people but we lie all the time in many small ways just to exsists in a world with other people. You really don’t want to live in a world completely without lies.
I didn’t mean lies I mean intentional disinformation as in posting and spreading “fake news”, willfully publishing or sharing false information through media of any kind, as organization or individual. So yes, it involves lying but “lie” is too unspecific and general a term here.
Ahh okay.
Thx for asking tho, helped me phrasing my thought more clearly.
My pleasure. I love a good think.
I will say though fake news is older than real news. Most of our history is people making shit up.
It’s still wrong of course but I don’t think it going away in our life time. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try tho. It’s a long slow march to freedom.
Seems like a pessimistic perspective, I’d like to note that public access to information has increased and become easier too. There are a lot of things you can learn if you really try. And also institutions that help you. It’s a two edged sword though, but a lot can be learned merely by studying philosophy, logic principles and the scientific methods in order to decelop a mostly reliable bullshit detector.
Its a good idea but, we live in predatory times where everyone wants people to see what they want you to see. They stopped caring about the truth a long long time ago.
