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> Propaganda is vulnerable to open discourse, promoters of false information are handicapped by the flaws in their arguments. The only way it can flourish is ce

> Propaganda is vulnerable to open discourse, promoters of false information are handicapped by the flaws in their arguments. The only way it can flourish is censored away into manipulative misdirection and secretive groups. This is so false it's bordering on the absurd. Anyone with even a little experience with debate and techniques like Gish gallop, which are widely employed, know that rational arguments simply do not convince most people of things. Humans aren't purely rational beings. It's dangerous to assume we can just talk away propaganda because all evidence points to the contrary. More than 80% of Trump supporters believe the election was rigged against their candidate despite there literally being no evidence supporting this claim. We're seeing propaganda succeed on such a massive scale because it's so widely spread and so difficult to counter. You've got literally millions of people who have been conditioned to label everything that contradicts their views as "fake news". There is a reason why Fox News viewers score lower on current information than people who don't watch any news at all. Their propaganda works and talking about it and pointing it out isn't helping at all.

lawnchair_larry 6y ago
> More than 80% of Trump supporters believe the election was rigged against their candidate despite there literally being no evidence supporting this claim. This is not accurate. Many non-Trump supporters also do not trust the results. I suspect you have not paid a lot of attention to the legitimate concerns. > We're seeing propaganda succeed on such a massive scale because it's so widely spread and so difficult to counter. This is true, but as of late, it’s going the opposite direction. It’s not that anything that contradicts their views is fake news, it’s the stuff that contradicts reality. See finepeoplehoax.org for a great example.
cortic 6y ago
Think of the last hundred years, the countries that supported some form of free expression and discourse are now the most progressive rational societies on the planet. And the ones that enforced moral standards and 'ministries of truth', usually religious, are the most regressive. It doesn't matter whether you can change someones mind on the spot, it matters that your argument is superior and the public tend to repeat and re-argue the superior argument. And yes, things like election fraud, that might be possible, and has happened before, is harder to argued against than a flat earth. But these positions are also the ones where we might be wrong.
- ntsplnkv2 6y ago
  The fact is this is not how ideas progressed historically. Eventually regressive nations LOSE economically, politically, and in warfare. They are not convinced through debate.

lawnchair_larry 6y ago

> More than 80% of Trump supporters believe the election was rigged against their candidate despite there literally being no evidence supporting this claim. This is not accurate. Many non-Trump supporters also do not trust the results. I suspect you have not paid a lot of attention to the legitimate concerns. > We're seeing propaganda succeed on such a massive scale because it's so widely spread and so difficult to counter. This is true, but as of late, it’s going the opposite direction. It’s not that anything that contradicts their views is fake news, it’s the stuff that contradicts reality. See finepeoplehoax.org for a great example.

cortic 6y ago

Think of the last hundred years, the countries that supported some form of free expression and discourse are now the most progressive rational societies on the planet. And the ones that enforced moral standards and 'ministries of truth', usually religious, are the most regressive. It doesn't matter whether you can change someones mind on the spot, it matters that your argument is superior and the public tend to repeat and re-argue the superior argument. And yes, things like election fraud, that might be possible, and has happened before, is harder to argued against than a flat earth. But these positions are also the ones where we might be wrong.

ntsplnkv2 6y ago
The fact is this is not how ideas progressed historically. Eventually regressive nations LOSE economically, politically, and in warfare. They are not convinced through debate.