> I never understood why "foreign influence" was supposed to be a bad thing. Free speech is grounded in the idea that people are capable of reasoning and forming their own opinions.
You should invest a minute thinking about the problem. Pay attention to your own opinion: people are capable of reasoning and forming their own opinions. Focus on that. Now, consider that propaganda feeds false and deceiving information to the public. In some cases, the decision-maker is only exposed to propaganda. Even if that decision-maker is the most rational of actors, what kind of decisions can he do if they are only exposed to false and deceiving information?
There are plenty of reasons why libel and slander are punishable by law. Why do you think they are?
>There are plenty of reasons why libel and slander are punishable by law. Why do you think they are?
Also note: nobody is cracking down on libel and slander on social media because we consider internet publishers "common carriers" when infarct the should be held accountable for the things they promote.
> Also note: nobody is cracking down on libel and slander on social media because we consider internet publishers "common carriers" when infarct the should be held accountable for the things they promote.
The "common carrier" status of services which hold editorial control over the content that's pushed and promoted is highly dubious.
maybe common carrier is not quite right but social media has no proof of identity. hence I cannot sue motorest for libel if you send a nasty personal-attack reply to this :)
This is an interesting thought experiment, but how is it relevant in practice? In free-speech countries, people are not exposed to just a single source of information. That simply doesn't align with reality. It's akin to criticizing capitalism by imagining a scenario where a single company monopolizes everything.
Truth is absolutely _not_ subjective.. a person is either alive or dead, the earth is either flat or not flat, e = mc2 is either true or false, .. I could go on.
Reminds me of a quote from 1984:
"In the end, the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it." [0]
opinion is subjective, truth means (can’t believe I have to write this) that which is true or in accordance with fact or reality. and it is not objective unless you live in a fantasy world half+ of this country lives in
Truth is absolutely _not_ subjective.. a person is either alive or dead, the earth is either flat or not flat, e = mc2 is either true or false, .. I could go on,
I can agree with you on this point but when someone is standing on the earth they can prove it is flat. Then you zoom out and prove it is not. The flat earth person will just say: "that's not what I meant."
Zoom out to the cosmos and think about the truth available to different observers. This same principle holds across the board. You have to reconcile with each observer, and until you do truth is subjective.
I just have trouble stating that my objective truth is also someone else's objective truth. What if my information is "the Bible." You can split hairs with these people until you die of old age and they can technically be wrong but their truth can work for them.
Just like we have all kinds of wild unintuitive math proofs that are very enlightening once they are communicated to all observers. Newtonian physics are true until they aren't, the same as those Bible "truths."
Given the infinite probabilities of the universe I have trouble declaring a set of objective truths that are immutable and try to give people a pass on what they hold as true. Can anything be known? We settle on some truths that work for us in the little time we have.
You should invest a minute thinking about the problem. Pay attention to your own opinion: people are capable of reasoning and forming their own opinions. Focus on that. Now, consider that propaganda feeds false and deceiving information to the public. In some cases, the decision-maker is only exposed to propaganda. Even if that decision-maker is the most rational of actors, what kind of decisions can he do if they are only exposed to false and deceiving information?
There are plenty of reasons why libel and slander are punishable by law. Why do you think they are?