Preventing false information

[Ophiolite]

If you had the ability to prevent false information that could cause unnecessary harm from coming out, should you?

Why or why not?

It would depend on the answers to these questions and others that might be prompted by those answers:

• How certain am I that this information is false?
• Will the correct information be convincing to the interested parties?
  
• What is the level of harm that will be caused and how certain is it?
• What harm will occur if this information does not come out and how does it compare with the harm if it does?
• What is your motivation for involving yourself in this matter? Is is honourable?

 

[stevevw]

If you had the ability to prevent false information that could cause unnecessary harm from coming out, should you?

Why or why not?

If there was no such thing as false information then I would think there would be no such thing as truth. You cannot have tru information unless you have false information that will differentiate between what is true. If we have no truth or falseness then we would not have the free will to choose. We would not be human and know what is a polar opposite to things in life like good and bad. We would be robots and boring.

 

[The happy Objectivist]

If you had the ability to prevent false information that could cause unnecessary harm from coming out, should you?

Why or why not?

I have no right to impose my

If you had the ability to prevent false information that could cause unnecessary harm from coming out, should you?

Why or why not?

Only on my own property, where I have the right to do that. I wouldn't have the right to prevent ideas from being expressed anywhere else. I'm not the thought police or the speech police and I wouldn't want to be. If someone came to my door to promote Islam or socialism I'd send them packing pretty quick.

 

[zippy2006]

If you had the ability to prevent false information that could cause unnecessary harm from coming out, should you?

Why or why not?

Yes..?

I don't get it. Seems like a no-brainer.

 

[SkyWriting]

If you had the ability to prevent false information that could cause unnecessary harm from coming out, should you?

You are welcome to try, but you could end up killing thousands with your views...so there's that to consider. Mass suicides and genocides all followed people voicing what they claimed was best for everyone.

 

[zippy2006]

I assume the OP is referring to information that is intentionally propagated when it’s known to be false and potentially harmful. Morally, of course it should be prevented. But legally, that would seem to be prior restraint. Which—given the 1st Amendment—is very limited.

What might be possible is to hold those who spread falsehoods financially responsible. Even if little or no harm is done, bad actors could be made to pay for their lies. Hitting them in the pocketbook is where it really hurts.

I actually think the OP might be trying to get at social media censorship. For example, if Twitter believes that the NY Post story on Hunter Biden is false and potentially harmful, should they censor it?

In U.S. law there is what is called a "Platform," which is essentially a free-speech space where censorship is not allowed and the owner cannot be held liable for the speech that occurs there. Due to some legal complexities Twitter is not a platform, but they really should be. Or, to poke into a rather deep topic, they should be able to be held legally accountable for their speech policies and the way they enforce them. In cases such as these it always comes down to the fact that one person's falsehood/propaganda is another person's truth.

In general we have a duty to reduce false information, particularly when it is harmful, but this duty must be balanced against the interest of free speech.

 

[Chriliman]

I actually think the OP might be trying to get at social media censorship. For example, if Twitter believes that the NY Post story on Hunter Biden is false and potentially harmful, should they censor it?

In U.S. law there is what is called a "Platform," which is essentially a free-speech space where censorship is not allowed and the owner cannot be held liable for the speech that occurs there. Due to some legal complexities Twitter is not a platform, but they really should be. Or, to poke into a rather deep topic, they should be able to be held legally accountable for their speech policies and the way they enforce them. In cases such as these it always comes down to the fact that one person's falsehood/propaganda is another person's truth.

In general we have a duty to reduce false information, particularly when it is harmful, but this duty must be balanced against the interest of free speech.

Or is it better to allow false information to be seen while combating it with the truth? Let people decide for themselves what to believe.

Yes, Big Tech had a bit to do with this post.

 

[The happy Objectivist]

Or is it better to allow false information to be seen while combating it with the truth? Let people decide for themselves what to believe.

Yes, Big Tech had a bit to do with this post.

The very best way to combat false information in my opinion would be to teach people how to think properly, to recognize fallacies and other conceptual errors. Children should start learning the basics in kindergarten of what reason is and how it works, what a concept is and how it's formed, validated, integrated, defined objectively, what the abstraction process is (essentially, measurement
omission), and as they grow older learn the more complex skills such as deduction and induction. Heck, if children were taught from a young age to recognize stolen concepts then they would see through all the nonsense themselves. They would be philosophically armed instead of being little lambs led to the slaughter. The Nigerian scammers would be out of business.

But that's not what we do. The last thing leaders want is people being able to think for themselves. In my whole career as a student, reason was never discussed much less defined and it was just taken for granted that we could think properly. Not even in college and I took classes in philosophy. It wasn't until much later that I started to study it on my own because a lot of what I had been taught just didn't make sense to me. The learning never ceases either.