4 ms·

Because it causes real harm, same as yelling bomb on an airplane or fire in a crowded building. Misinformation can cause people to not get vaccinated or storm

by mehphp 5y ago

Because it causes real harm, same as yelling bomb on an airplane or fire in a crowded building. Misinformation can cause people to not get vaccinated or storm the capital building... As much as we'd like to think people are "deciding" anything, it's simply not the case. They just take what they hear as fact because they believe the source is trustworthy.

CivBase 5y ago
> They just take what they hear as fact because they believe the source is trustworthy. No, they take what they hear as fact if they believe the source is trustworthy. So how do we determine which sources are trustworthy? Who decides that? And how are they held accountable when they're wrong? These are very serious questions which need to be answered before I can support any effort to filter out misinformation. And to go back to the bomb-on-a-plane comparison, there is one key difference between that and something like election conspiracies. The person who yelled "bomb" is only penalized if they were knowingly wrong - something that's generally pretty easy to prove when it comes to bombs and fires. They aren't prevented from saying "bomb" in the first place and they aren't reprimanded until it's known that they were lying.
- mehphp 5y ago
  > No, they take what they hear as fact if they believe the source is trustworthy. So how do we determine which sources are trustworthy? Who decides that? And how are they held accountable when they're wrong? I agree, this is exactly my hesitation I pointed out in my original post.
umvi 5y ago
Lots of freedoms can be abused to cause real harm. If you can't cause harm, you don't have freedom. So life is just a harm reduction optimization problem that governments and/or megacorps need to solve? In that case install a king that takes away all freedom in exchange for drastically improved harm reduction.

by mehphp 5y ago

CivBase 5y ago

> They just take what they hear as fact because they believe the source is trustworthy. No, they take what they hear as fact if they believe the source is trustworthy. So how do we determine which sources are trustworthy? Who decides that? And how are they held accountable when they're wrong? These are very serious questions which need to be answered before I can support any effort to filter out misinformation. And to go back to the bomb-on-a-plane comparison, there is one key difference between that and something like election conspiracies. The person who yelled "bomb" is only penalized if they were knowingly wrong - something that's generally pretty easy to prove when it comes to bombs and fires. They aren't prevented from saying "bomb" in the first place and they aren't reprimanded until it's known that they were lying.

mehphp 5y ago
> No, they take what they hear as fact if they believe the source is trustworthy. So how do we determine which sources are trustworthy? Who decides that? And how are they held accountable when they're wrong? I agree, this is exactly my hesitation I pointed out in my original post.

umvi 5y ago

Lots of freedoms can be abused to cause real harm. If you can't cause harm, you don't have freedom. So life is just a harm reduction optimization problem that governments and/or megacorps need to solve? In that case install a king that takes away all freedom in exchange for drastically improved harm reduction.