Why are we so worried about adults reading incorrect information? Once they eventually find the info was wrong they'll be more sceptical of that source. We know policing speech doesn't work, whoever does the policing introduces their own biases, this was clear as day with the hunter laptop story and how the goverment put pressure on social media companies to supress it.
This “sounds smart” and I’m sure it circulates well in conversation. In practice, no. The point of “facts” is to identify useful truths that guide decisions. When some portion of the distribution of people identify misalignment, which is inevitable—not optional—then they will true up.
4 years on and a significant proportion of Republicans still believe the 2020 election was stolen. Just how many years will it take for that to true up?
I notice you don't make a definite claim that it wasn't stolen. You're annoyed by the fact others believe it was, based on what you feel is insufficient evidence, yes?
Surely the burden of proof is on those making a claim of election interference? Elections are designed to be reliable and there haven't been reports of previous elections being "stolen", so I would think that reasonable evidence should be provided if people want to push the idea that an election was interfered with.
There is no burden of proof required to assert a hypothesis. This is how none of truth nor science nor security operate. There is evidence gathering activity which supports or undermines, strengthening or weakening a hypothesis. Ideally, one dispositive form of evidence affirms or denies a hypothesis. It is not difficult to find historical precedent of election fraud, but in any case, other claims are weak evidence.
These are recounts, audits, and security guards. No recounts deviated by that much, even the massive Arizona recount found no significant deviation.
> It is not difficult to find historical precedent of election fraud
Please provide that. The evidence AFAIK is counted as essentially "parts per million", it is so small. Meanwhile there are a variety of safeguards, audits, verifications & recounts.
The null hypothesis in this case I don't believe would be "fraudulent election", so it is a claim.
This is true, if you're billing your hypothesis as a hypothesis. The problem is that prominent Republicans billed their "election was stolen" hypothesis as a fact, claimed to have boatloads of evidence in order to convince the public, and then never published that evidence.
In the aftermath of this clearly deceptive behavior, they've maintained the support of Republican voters who still believe the lie despite none of the evidence ever being released.
It's one thing to claim something is true and that you have evidence, then release the evidence and find out that it's insufficient to win in court. It's another thing entirely to make a claim, say you have overwhelming evidence to support it, and never release any evidence at all. In the former case, maybe you got overzealous or maybe you were dealing with an unsympathetic judge. In the latter, the only rational way to interpret the situation is that you were intentionally misleading your audience.
Why do you say something is treated as fact? For example, are either the ‘cheating’ or ‘no cheating’ hypotheses verifiable in any productive regard? There may be confusion between “absence of evidence” versus “evidence of absence.”
It is absolutely fantastic that this assertion draws ire from those who have no substantial response. It is intended to poke you directly in the eyeballs. That crowd so often favors censorship to protect the same.
If you have a substantial response, cast it forth.
Your claim is not false, but not universally true either, the counter is alex jones, the flat earth movement, religion as well, you can spend nearly an infinity believing in lies. The human brain is quite malleable to lies.
So what? People have the right to be wrong and ignorant. It's far better than having The Ministry of Tru... sorry I mean Disinformation Governance Board. Even if lies spread far and wide they always get exposed eventually. For example consider the Iraq war, a war the american public was rushed into without the free flow of information, something you seem keen on, but now that the public has access to info the same republican base that was in support of the war now hates war hawks like john bolton.
> Even if lies spread far and wide they always get exposed eventually
Eventually, yes, but until it happens, bodies are piling up.
EDIT: Also, FWIW, the truth is often exposed nearly immediately, yet for some people, once they have chosen to believe the lie, they can't be convinced of the truth.
It's well established that adults who read incorrect information frequently don't find out it was wrong and become more skeptical of the source. Some people operate that way, but it's a small minority unfortunately.
In particular, it's been shown that people with dogmatic beliefs strengthen those beliefs when shown evidence to the contrary rather than questioning them.
> Why are we so worried about adults reading incorrect information?
Because I'd much rather my grandma get a COVID vaccine than trying to find a source of Ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine.
And I imagine the owners of Comet Ping Pong would have greatly preferred that adults didn't read lies about Hillary running a child sex ring in their basement. [0]
Haitian immigrants in Ohio certainly weren't fans of Trump claiming that they're kidnapping and eating pets.
Speech has consequences.
> Once they eventually find the info was wrong they'll be more sceptical of that source.
...have you been living in a cave for the last 10 years? I just can't fathom how someone can be so naive to actually think this.
If there was any truth to this, Infowars would have been damn near been dead on arrival. Fox News would have been bankrupt before Obama even began his second term.
Or maybe I'm putting the cart before the horse and operating under the assumption that people will accept when they're wrong.
Sorry but I'm not willing to live in an insane orwellian world just so your grandma gets her vaccine. It's her family's responsiblity to convince her and if she still refuses shes an adult she has the right to refuse treatment and vaccines.
As for libel, it has always existed and always will. There are laws against it to protect people if they suffer any damage from it. It's not without consequences.
What you're proposing is so much worse. Imagine a tyrant government is after you and has control on information like you propose. How will you protect yourself from the goverment's false accusations?
> Imagine a tyrant government is after you and has control on information like you propose
You're straw-manning. I never proposed anything like government enforcement against misinformation.
I don't think misinformation should be illegal, for the reasons you touch on: You certainly don't want government deciding the truth.
Who gets to decide what is misinformation is an entirely different issue. But I can at least hope you can agree that misinformation as a concept is unethical, right? People are literally dying because of misinformation. Again, set aside the question of "Well, who decides what is misinformation?" and consider just the mere concept of it.
Hmmm... I really wonder what the said tyrants did when they got into power? Oh that's right they imposed heavy restrictions on speech and all forms of media. And it's not like there was free speech before them, the Weimar republic tried banning them as well. It's almost like challenging ideas and defeating them on an intellectual level is far better than trying to supress them.
... Yeah but they didn't do that before they were in power. They abused misinformation to get to a position to then lock it down. That's indeed what I'm saying.n I'm not disagreeing that they lock it down once in power.
> Because I'd much rather my grandma get a COVID vaccine than trying to find a source of Ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine.
So the misinformation didn't affect your decision making. Instead, the misinformation you were exposed to was corrected by your exposure to more, better information.
Those are all valid disadvantages of community notes, and free speech in general.
How do you explain that there are smart people who have known about these very disadvantages for many years, and still respond positively to "the solution to misinformation is more/better information"?
I don't suppose you know of a solution (to a problem that I admit I haven't fully specified) that has no disadvantages. The proposed solutions I've seen appearing on the left are frightening.
> How do you explain that there are smart people who [..] respond positively to "the solution to misinformation is more/better information"
Someone can be intelligent and still have misplaced hope for humanity to the point where I would consider them to be outright naive.
All it took was an hour or two on social media back in 2020/21. You could easily find someone who insisted that Ivermectin cured COVID, point out tons of studies showing that it's worthless against COVID, and yet they would reject all those studies as lies.
> I don't suppose you know of a solution
Nope. :-(
Kids are taught the scientific method, but that doesn't seem to be enough. They learn enough to pass a test and then forget about it all.
> The proposed solutions I've seen appearing on the left are frightening.
Agreed, though be careful to not read words that aren't there. Elsewhere in this thread, someone accused me of being in favor of government enforcement against free speech despite me saying nothing of the sort. Arguments that misinformation is bad is not an argument that it should be legally enforced!
In other words, yes, some leftists believe that misinformation should be illegal, but not everyone arguing that misinformation is bad is arguing that it should be illegal.
I'm looking back with how much teenage edgelord/ironic/sarcastic speech that was rampant in my youth covered for people who actually held horrible views like white nationalism. I thought it was all just shock humor. I know better now, but I'm worried about that persisting in kids. I think it's always been that way. I don't know how to mitigate it.
By the time Community Notes has appeared, tens or even hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of people will have seen the misinformation.
Even once Community Notes have appeared, many won't read them.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_asymmetry_principle