that’s easy, it’s who/what agrees with me and my beliefs.
that’s all it means to people.
if you think that’s wrong, well, you’re probably an academic. but in the real world nobody cares about anything other than whether something makes them feel good, or feel bad. including academics outside of an academic context.
some of the most petty dumb and vile people i ever met were academics.
For starters we need someone to set what is a good or a bad actor, what is misinformation and what is Truth.
Common sense really isn’t that difficult, nor is being a decent person without being ingratiating.
Good actors go into dialogue*, they address the idea: “Hey. I don’t agree with your argument X because Y. What do you think about compromise Z?”
Bad actors rant, they attack the person, and deliberately use fallacies: “Only idiots believe X. Two plus two equals fish so only Z is true. If anything else, the world explodes.”
Disinformation is when a bad actor maliciously spreads information they know is false to further their or someone’s agenda. Misinformation is when an unsuspecting benign reader absorbs that information and spreads it. The latter happens more than the former.
What is true or false can be discerned with the scientific method: experiments, statistical analysis, et cetera, and most importantly reproducibility of said results because mistakes obviously do occur.
What are valid or invalid arguments can be discerned with logic—mathematical reasoning basically. Unfortunately most people suck at or dislike math because the archaic education system does it a disservice by subtracting from it all the fascination.
To answer your question, because I think your phrasing implies the verity of most information is “arbitrary”, subjective, it’s not. “Drop a feather and it’s gonna fall.” Truth. “Dogs are plants.” False. The majority of politics isn’t much different, but due to the amount of misinformation/misunderstanding, it creates the illusion as if it is. Politics is about policy making on things based in physical reality which can be objectively studied. That is, in an ideal society, where politicians aren’t corrupted by greed and don’t succumb to lobbying from the ultrarich parasites on top. Find out who has the most money and one will see who has the most manipulative power.
So any passionate actor is a bad actor. Which is necessary for wrong information to be disinformation according to your definition.
I will argue that a disinformation campaign could find agents that are able to remain calm and engage in ‘polite’ debate (via training, scripts and other forms of support, perhaps AI can help write some posts/articles etc). Meanwhile ordinary users are more likely to lose their cool when presented with propaganda even if it is well presented.
I am also going to address you suggesting that I believe most information is “arbitrarily” subjective. I don’t. The issue is that of course we cannot actually apply the scientific method in a lot of cases, including news and politics.
For example either the US attacked first or Iran did in the most recent case. How would one apply the scientific method to find out? In a lot of cases there is simply not enough data accessible to people.
Even in science, both physical and especially social ones we have this issue. We don’t really do experiments on whole countries etc.
I think you are handwaving away the issue. I am sure you know who the bad actors are and what is disinformation.
For starters we need someone to set what is a good or a bad actor, what is misinformation and what is Truth.
that’s easy, it’s who/what agrees with me and my beliefs.
that’s all it means to people.
if you think that’s wrong, well, you’re probably an academic. but in the real world nobody cares about anything other than whether something makes them feel good, or feel bad. including academics outside of an academic context.
some of the most petty dumb and vile people i ever met were academics.
Common sense really isn’t that difficult, nor is being a decent person without being ingratiating.
Good actors go into dialogue*, they address the idea: “Hey. I don’t agree with your argument X because Y. What do you think about compromise Z?”
Bad actors rant, they attack the person, and deliberately use fallacies: “Only idiots believe X. Two plus two equals fish so only Z is true. If anything else, the world explodes.”
Disinformation is when a bad actor maliciously spreads information they know is false to further their or someone’s agenda. Misinformation is when an unsuspecting benign reader absorbs that information and spreads it. The latter happens more than the former.
What is true or false can be discerned with the scientific method: experiments, statistical analysis, et cetera, and most importantly reproducibility of said results because mistakes obviously do occur.
What are valid or invalid arguments can be discerned with logic—mathematical reasoning basically. Unfortunately most people suck at or dislike math because the archaic education system does it a disservice by subtracting from it all the fascination.
To answer your question, because I think your phrasing implies the verity of most information is “arbitrary”, subjective, it’s not. “Drop a feather and it’s gonna fall.” Truth. “Dogs are plants.” False. The majority of politics isn’t much different, but due to the amount of misinformation/misunderstanding, it creates the illusion as if it is. Politics is about policy making on things based in physical reality which can be objectively studied. That is, in an ideal society, where politicians aren’t corrupted by greed and don’t succumb to lobbying from the ultrarich parasites on top. Find out who has the most money and one will see who has the most manipulative power.
*Comparing debate, discussion and dialogue:
So any passionate actor is a bad actor. Which is necessary for wrong information to be disinformation according to your definition.
I will argue that a disinformation campaign could find agents that are able to remain calm and engage in ‘polite’ debate (via training, scripts and other forms of support, perhaps AI can help write some posts/articles etc). Meanwhile ordinary users are more likely to lose their cool when presented with propaganda even if it is well presented.
I am also going to address you suggesting that I believe most information is “arbitrarily” subjective. I don’t. The issue is that of course we cannot actually apply the scientific method in a lot of cases, including news and politics.
For example either the US attacked first or Iran did in the most recent case. How would one apply the scientific method to find out? In a lot of cases there is simply not enough data accessible to people.
Even in science, both physical and especially social ones we have this issue. We don’t really do experiments on whole countries etc.
I think you are handwaving away the issue. I am sure you know who the bad actors are and what is disinformation.