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I'd rather have this concept than not have this concept. It seems obvious to me that there's a kind of attack you can perform by just telling humans (not ideal agents) a set of true facts, eg a list of actual crimes actually committed by all the Republicans in a town.
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I don’t think I had ever seen the term “malinformation” — something that is true, but likely harmful from some points of view. It popped up twice today in different contexts, and I have a visceral negative reaction to the concept. twitter.com/elonmusk/statu…
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If we don't have the concept of an attack performed by selectively reporting true information - or, less pleasantly, an attack on the predictable misinferences of people we think less rational than ourselves - the only socially acceptable counter is to say the info is false.
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Finally, please note that just because I think it's useful to have a word for something, does not imply that I think Twitter or the government should regulate it.
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But even if it is regulated: it seems slightly saner, and more convenient for such trustworthy thinkers as ourselves, to have the purportedly misleading truths regulated as openly declared "malinformation", rather than for truths to be labeled lies.
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“That which can be destroyed by the truth should be” is, in my experience, a bit out of touch. To be clear, I would love to live in a world where that was true — but I don’t. And, in this world, there’s a lot of things worth keeping that would be thrown out with the bath water.
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There are a lot of worlds that I’d like to live in that hinge on “if people were different”. But, alas, people are not different. And, after a LOT of thought, I think — or, as a floor, think that a better me would think — that that’s okay.
Eh I’d still differentiate incomplete truth (semiinformation? hypoinformation?) from harmful truth (malinformation)
I'd say infohazards are a pretty leading cause of commitment to psychiatric wards. Can't help but have a headful of them once I end up in such places. :/ n=5
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