> I agree that the fight against disinformation is likely to be worse than the disinformation itself.

It what way?

Censorship is bad. Once we start allowing it it only increases.

Misinformation is subjective. There is nobody we can trust to be the arbiter of what is misinformation and what isn’t.

Also the first attempts have failed terribly.

There is no true and false, anywhere? Doesn't that help the very people pushing disinfo the most? If everyone is "guilty", no one is.

I believe in absolute truth but that is increasingly unpopular in an increasingly relativist age.

However, I don’t trust any broad society wide effort to censor anything. Even if it works well now and the deceiving evil people of today are muted it WILL bite us down the road when evil people use the precedent and mechanism to silence truth.

I would rather we spend our time educating our people to be rigorous thinkers vs controlling what they are exposed to.

> I believe in absolute truth but that is increasingly unpopular in an increasingly relativist age.

You believe climate change is real. I don't. It's 50/50, so nothing happens on a policy level and we all slowly die.

See the problem?

> I would rather we spend our time educating our people to be rigorous thinkers vs controlling what they are exposed to.

Por que no los dos?

I don’t think its a 50/50 split on climate change. I think the majority think it is happening. The disagreement is more on the confidence that this is something govt could ever address via policy and if the policy cure would be worse than the disease. Assuming alignment there it goes to, ok now what policy concretely? Blue states like CA have been warning about climate change and pollution for a long time and while an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure they have been meh on the former and disastrous on the latter. My confidence that more left politicians can shift course or even soften the blow is low.

I dont think we should control information just because someone doesnt like it.

It doesn't have to be 50/50. Misinfo props up a small but significant minority to "counter" something like climate change, a theory that is all but proven everywhere except in public opinion.

The stakes are too high (democracy, climate change, public health) to allow purposeful lies to cloud our ability to actually address these problems. These are weaponized lies, not benign mistakes.

The fastest way to shut down any debate or public discourse is to casually throw that word around for anything you dislike.

No I think the fastest way to shut down discourse is to lie in a way that makes it clear you have no intention of having a good faith exchange of ideas.

Which is the definition of disinfo.

How do you distinguish between disinfo and being wrong?

What if the “authorities” are wrong? Is it disinfo to say so? For example: Is suspecting a lab leak as the cause of Covid disinfo, misinfo, wrong or right? (We dont know yet a lot of sites flag it as misinfo) same for the CDCs flip flopping on masks. Would predicting a catastrophic collapse of Afghanistan 2 weeks ago been misinfo?

Obviously all of these are nuanced and thats the point. A binary classification is rarely appropriate but highly tempting.

> How do you distinguish between disinfo and being wrong?

Being wrong on purpose, to degrade the conversation itself. Gaslighting, whataboutism, etc. These are techniques used on purpose to destroy a conversation, and it's not simply about being "wrong".

> What if the “authorities” are wrong? Is it disinfo to say so?

No.

> Is suspecting a lab leak as the cause of Covid disinfo, misinfo, wrong or right?

Good example. Early theories were not about a natural virus, studied at Wuhan, that escaped. They were about an engineered bioweapon released on purpose. The latter theory was banned (and continues to be). If there was a measured, logical case for a leak as opposed to a frenzied conspiracy theory, I didn't see it.

I think banning it is bad. If it turns out to be correct you lose so much trust in institutions (which is thin already as “experts” continue to be exposed as frauds, just look at Afghanistan)

However, if it is false (most likely) then banning it puts in a dark place away from sunlight where it can grow and mutate and spread. Streisand effect comes into effect here.

> (which is thin already as “experts” continue to be exposed as frauds, just look at Afghanistan)

Respectfully it sounds like you already bought into the idea that "the experts" (if that can be referred to as a monolith, which I disagree it can) are usually wrong. Btw, no one got Afghanistan "wrong". Most knew the country would fall, no one knew how fast. That's a good example of how, when people claim "the experts got it wrong", they don't understand what said "experts" were actually predicting.

I appreciate you engaging with me on this. You might enjoy a book called “The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium”

Thanks for the recommendation. Have you read "The Death of Expertise"?

Ill check it out thanks!