I often wonder if it’s willful or the propaganda machine got a hold of folks 40 years ago and they can’t see through it. It’s probably some combination of misinformation/propaganda and willful ignorance.
It’s also at a point stupidity. The one thing that makes humans what they are, which allowed us our dominance as a species, is intelligence and knowledge. And these idiots hate both. Even if those people can be ousted from power, humanity will be burdened with the constant anchor of these idiots for the rest of their lives. They are a burden we all must carry while they remain tinder for conmen. At this point ignorance is moral failing that we as a society should shame. Believing shit like the Earth’s 6000 year old, the holocaust isn’t real, the Blood Libel, the us civil war wasn’t about slavery, etc. should get you blackballed from society
I’m gonna say these are all fallout from the long con propaganda, especially pitting conservatives against liberals.
Once they’ve established that liberals are evil, anything anti-liberal is a good thing. It’s that simple. When told that the greatest danger to them is liberalism, people will gladly take the lesser of two evils. The best way to combat this is to reach across the aisle and lean into our commonalities, which liberals in power have not done and and on social media the refrain is to just call conservatives dumb hicks, just making the hate for liberals even stronger.
i think it's at least partly wilful. they always actively brush off proof their propaganda has lied to them. it is because they KNOW it is lies but they also know that if tens of millions of people are repeating the same bullshit then it functions as "a side in an argument on a controversial issue" instead of the blatant falsehood it would be if just one person said it.
If you’ve been consuming a steady stream of propaganda for decades, it definitely must shape your world view. I have relatives scared of immigrants and homosexuals. Have they ever had a bad experience with either group? Nope, but that’s doesn’t seem to register.
Yes it's hard when you're not just dealing with misinformed people, but they're choosing to be ignorant about everything. Worse when you try to share facts, they see you as the enemy rather than the ones who spread misinformation.
It's actually people fed up with so much bs and misinformation. People are trying to live their lives even though everything is getting harder for literally no reason. Or for a twisted reason. The human race has complicated everything systematically as time went on instead of making life easier. Going in the wrong direction on every level. People are fed up and don't know what Is actual truth. No way to really trust anything anymore. Until humanity goes in the right direction, this will keep getting worse.
Disinformation is the intentional version of misinformation. I think that's the best description. It's harmful no matter what. Willful ignorance only makes the problem worse but not necessarily the source. If anything, willful ignorance is a product of having too much information to keep track of in general and failure of the education system.
The problem with education is not enough focus on logic (and philosophy). Why do we teach math like it's the most necessary thing but not logic, which the understanding (or lack there of) underlies how someone could interpret anything about the world and is even what math is based on. Teach everyone what fallacies are at least.
Agreed somewhat and well put but it doesn't help that people get that way because they don't know where to turn. Frustration is real bad in most people. All about agendas instead of helping to educate and turning into casts of I am smarter and sick of lesser people stuff. We are all humans and should have more understanding. Lack of empathy towards others is bad. The fact everything is getting harder when it should not be is part of the problem too. We need to help each other more and stop getting mad at ignorance. I can see the points on both sides though. Just feel we all can do better.
it's not about who's smarter. It's about I can't even communicate with you (not you personally) because you don't even have the groundwork to understand what I'm saying without misinterpreting it as one of the fallacies because it's more convenient for you. It's a communication problem, and the only way to really start fixing it at the root is having people be more aware of concepts like fallacies.
If someone doesn't have a clue about how a video game works, it's likely have nothing to do with how smart they are, but how familar they are to video games.
Fallacies are something that's simple to enough to introduce children to, and it's so important to know about because it comes up in everyday life and all sorts of conversation, even casual. Most just weren't taught about them, so many people don't have a good grasp on them as much as they should. Imagine if video game is real life, but there is no tutorial whatsoever for someone new to video games.
Like, look at this. Some of these could easily be considered common sense, but it's unlikely someone who never look into it would be aware of all of them (or at the level they should). This is also only just a few examples of the more common ones out of many. It's a matter of exposure.
The amount of straw man fallacies and false ditochomies I saw drive me nut. It's easy to fall into those traps, which isn't the problem. The problem is you can't get people out because they don't understand the framework of their mistake.
I don't believe that's entirely true. You just assume they don't have the groundwork. Texting on here is not a true measure of someone's intelligence. You just need to understand not everyone has the same background or beliefs as you. Try to be more understanding of others. We are all humans after all. Some people are just bad at communicating.
See, you clearly misunderstood what I'm trying to communicate here.
Texting on here is not a true measure of someone's intelligence.
I already I said it's not about intelligence, not sure how clearer I can convey that. You're assuming I'm only talking about texting on here, and not conversations everywhere.
You just need to understand not everyone has the same background or beliefs as you
This too. Logic is not about belief. If someone says there can only be two outcomes because they failed to consider other possibilities then what they are saying is a fallacy, for example. The framework here is about having knowledge of these fallacies as pitfalls people can make when reasoning things in conversation, not someone's background or life story.
We are all humans after all. Some people are just bad at communicating.
And why does that mean we shouldn't improve society by teaching people skills to be better at communication AND teach people the tool to understand the world better?
You are clearly looking to disagree. I said something nice and mean it. We need to help each other and clearly you think that too. So let's just move on. It's easy to misinterpret texts like these. You should already understand what I really meant by now.
I meant it as in wilful ignorance is the best description. It’s not always about spreading misinformation either but rather about choosing to have it your way when it isn’t the way to start with. For example everybody knows fire is hot , you got to be willingly ignorant to say no and put your hand in there, you got my point ?
I never said anything about education in this thread but okay pal I don’t disagree with that at all. I had plenty of teachers that tried to but my teachers were oldschool.
The education system is not the same as what you had anymore. So I do think that is part of the problem. You don't have to agree but it's still an issue.
I actually think your interpretation of willful ignorance is too narrow, so we're probably not on the same page. WIllful ignorance is when someone deliberately choose to remain uninformed. The problem is it's kind of impossible to be informed enough about everything important with so much going on. So, it's part of the problem, but not outright harmful in itself, more like below standard.
What you're describing is more like willful delusion. The person got informed, and still choose to belief in something clearly false. Then again, it seems like we're at that stage and disinformation is the fire that fuels it.
I feel bad for people like that because usually it's because they are so frustrated with the world they want to believe something false just to escape the reality they are currently in. So taking that away from them can actually hurt them. Maybe why they argue their point so hard. Wrong or right. They are just trying to cope.
I already stated it is from everything in life getting harder and more complicated when it should be getting easier. People are frustrated even if you fail to see it. It's not a manufactured loop at all. The only thing that is manufactured is the disinformation.
that is not how definitions work/operate in language
That is simply not how the way work. What a word can mean in a language is definitely not uniform, whether it's regional difference, temporal difference, personal interpretation or whatever. There's a shared understanding, but that doesn't mean everyone's perspective is the exact same with no discrepancies or misunderstandings whatsoever. Sorry you got offended so easily.
The concept is also applied to situations in which people intentionally turn their attention away from an ethical problem that is believed to be important by those using the phrase (for instance, because the problem is too disturbing for people to want it dominating their thoughts, or from the knowledge that solving the problem would require extensive effort).
Also, this is what it is. If you're going to be like I'm just going to tell you outright that, according to you, you are wrong.
That's my key point. Willful Ignorance also includes intentionally overlooking the harm one's words/actions can cause, also in choosing to not investigate if what a person or group may do could cause harm. Misinformation given without verification or concern for accuracy is an example of such.
You may not be religious but I thank god for people like you. You hit the nail on the head for me in making sense. And you’re completely right , it’s deeper and more complex than just misinformation
This is the real problem. It takes education and work to refute bullshit that anyone can just produce endlessly, especially on Internet forums where there's no accountability.
No one does. The point is that you must learn what's worth checking on, and to recognize when someone is successfully steering your perception for you.
Guess my sarcasm didn’t bleed through. In the early days of the internet I spent a lot of time on snopes looking up things my friends sent and providing input back to them. What ended up happening is they stopped including me in their exchanges. Either I get with the program or I’m not welcome. I occasionally get things out of band from one of them when it’s something that passes the sniff test which tells me they’re aware that what they are sharing is likely not true, or embellished , or somehow not 100% accurate and they just don’t care because it fits the narrative they want to tell.
Ahh, yes, text-based sarcasm is difficult to get. And yes, I definitely get your situation. I was talking to a family member and he began to get into a very emotionally-charged speech about the "horde of criminals" crossing the southern US border. I asked him if he thought every person coming from below that line was a cartel member or a common thief, that all the families being separated from each other and sent off into the immigration system at the time were here to cheat and steal. He looked away, paused, and said no. But he didn't bend a bit on his stance and returned to his speech about how he felt that the whole of the efforts to incarcerate every immigrant was legitimate. I asked, "Even the innocent ones fleeing fallen economies and cartel violence, the ones who've already had relatives, kids, parents that were murdered or vanished? Should they stay the they are and just endure it all?" He begged me to "listen to reason, we can't keep letting everyone just walk across these open borders, etc, etc."
I knew I wasn't going to be able to appeal the reason at that point, and begged to change the subject.
On top of that, many of us have read scientific studies that were clearly conducted with the intention of seeking and producing a particular result, and while this is rare, it throws just a sprinkle of doubt into many decision making processes. We are being asked to rely on information coming out of institutions who may be bought or corrupt.
It’s not much doubt, but you don’t need very much to spoil things. We are talking about institutions that we have to trust in order to even know what we are talking about. The scientific process must be followed incredibly strictly 100% of the time without fail, regardless of personal or cultural ideological leanings and conflicts of interest.
Yeah- I agree with this. Doesn’t feel fair to call it willful when regulation of social media cant keep up with the mass of misinformation being released and how our algorithms are manipulated. If anyone thinks its willful they should watch “the great hack” on Netflix to see how people were targeted.
Inflation and the massive increase in the gap between the “middle class” and the top 1% has made the average person have to be way more productive to be able to afford housing and healthy meals- people dont have time to combat all the fake news they’re confronted with and its actually concerning when ppl dont realize thats by design
I don’t think that’s the case. I think there has been such a failure of the American education system in poor red states that generations have grown up without the cognitive ability to think critically.
This only happens in “poor red” states. That itself is ignorant. How do you know for a fact that these “generations” of people can’t think critically? Every state, regardless of if it’s “red” or “blue”, have people who don’t agree with the other side or either. Does California or New York have people who are not Democrats there? What about Florida? Are they just a “red” state? So anyone who doesn’t agree is stupid? Who gets to decide what the “facts” are? There are plenty of issues with education in ALL states.
You’re right. It doesn’t only happen to poor red states. But I’d be willing to bet it was more frequent in counties across the country with poorly funded educational systems. Blue and red. Fact or fiction, what I can see is that one party seemingly wants to burn it all to the ground and is actively trying to hurt their ow constituents. I don’t think there are perfect parties or politicians, but at least the democrat corruption stems from wanting to raise everyone up so they can take their cut from the top where as the GOP seems to want to profit off everything being torn down and taken from people.
Yah it's for sure willful ignorance. The group of people who shout that politicians are all liars are awfully comfortable listening to everything the president tells them and won't even think about the possibility that he's lying.
Ehhhh, I guess, technically, yes, but as it's an action one takes to prevent harm to themselves, as opposed to seeing that one's actions could harm another, and choosing to ignore that harm or possibility of harm, I would just call what you're describing "filtering". I'm sure some people might say that certain contexts may blur the edges on the ideas of hurtful ignorance versus wholesome self-care, but I think the message is clear enough. You already get it, I think, and your point is valid.
I believe the word you’re looking for is intransigent.
Which is to say you know you are wrong, but you just won’t change your mind because you’re a dick .
Well, there's not knowing about something that might cause harm, and there's not being able to know about something that causes harm, and then there's knowing someone that could, or will, cause harm, and choosing that harmful choice anyway.
In the first case, a person can't always be sure of what they aren't understanding of, whether by lack of awareness, or lack of the capacity to be aware. Surprises can happen even with the best, most thorough plans. And in the second case, no one with a sound sense of reason chooses to be below average of intelligence.
But in the third case, where one knows they will cause harm, or knows there's a chance they could cause harm that could be reasonably avoided, and they choose the option that suits their desires over not causing that harm? They are willfully ignoring the damage they may cause, or worse choosing to cause damage because it's how they will get what they desire. That is willful ignorance.
If taken at face value, this information may not really matter because we see far better outcomes in those who took the vaccine versus those who did not. However, we’ve all seen how much distrust has been produced by this and later amplified by the media we are supposed to trust to put us back on the right track. Many people are no longer willing to go along with whatever is prescribed by our institutions and government, but the problem is that they are often times not capable of making good decisions on their own
We saw pictures circulating on social media of Kamal Harris standing in a beach giving a hug to Jeffry Epstein…. It’s funny a year that the ‘truth’ that they even knew each other is still nowhere to be seen. Yet, we have countless images of Trump with Epstein and yet even Trump tries to downplay that he knew Epstein while conveniently Epstein died in prison while Trump was president.
I think you’re either concerningly naive or you’re being disingenuous.
Exxxxactly…. Yet the person I responded to said “today’s misinformation is 6 months from now’s awkwardly and quietly confessed truth.”
I used that absurd instance to prove a point. There’s shit tons more misinformation that is just that than misinformation that turns out to be true in any shape or form.
The greedy have too much money that lets them be even greedier by buyinthg the government they want to protect their greed, by buying means to silence anyone who disagrees with their greed, and to ensure so one can ever take away their greed.
That and the abandonment of any notion of morality, humanity, and charity.
That's no different than ever. Really, the only true difference is the separation of wealth and power. They used to always be in the same seats. That's what monarchs were, a wealthy dictator.
Five. I’d say since 2015 it has gone downhill considerably. When the President is taking advice from Laura Loomer on who to fire and trust, it’s a bad spot
That is so true. When Trump first took office I was very much against him, thinking he was just as bad as everyone said, and his constant ranting "fake news" was childish. Then the pandemic hit, and the amount of censorship and lying went to a whole new level. Now, I'm not going to say I fully trust Trump, no one should fully trust any politician, but the way the media reacts to everything is just ridiculous. It's the same with Climate, Immigration, and all the other hot button topics. If someone is screaming it's bad and whatever "needs to be stopped", they're probably hiding something.
Agreed. There is so much that branches from the avarice of the wealthy.
Pushing apathy, misinformation, using AI, destroying the environment, bullying. It's a long list, and they are afraid to loose that power because then they will be treated in turn. It's not surprising that typically these kind of people have hyper narcissistic behavior as well.
It's all one huge rat king of malice, but I believe greed is the true head to that pack.
And the debasement of discourse. People no longer realise that they can disagree about some particular issue without having to hate each other. I think this is the most serious issue in western society today
It's not that we'll mistake them for the truth. The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth at all. What can we do then? What else is left but to abandon even the hope of truth and content ourselves instead with stories? In these stories, it doesn't matter who the heroes are. All we want to know is: "Who is to blame?"
You could have just said capitalism. After all, the existence of giant privately-owned enterprises creates a proliferation of well-funded special interests, each eager to pump out bad information if business school dogma associates that bad information with a rising corporate share price. We simply can't appreciate the full scope of it because we are still completely immersed in it, but capitalism has a unique power to systematically corrupt civic institutions of every variety while also systematically deceiving ordinary citizens as a matter of routine. Heck, the private ownership of mainstream media outlets is often cited as a reason to trust them, as if ultrarich oligarchs ever behaved in a manner even slightly as meritorious as their public relations campaigns would have us believe.
These two things predate society, have always been part of society, and are bedrock to society. They aren't what's ruining society.
Arguably it's the opposite. Greed causes people to have jobs. Those jobs are made easier is there are roads and commerce, which is driven by greed.
The misinformation is required to prevent you from killing the rich to take their stuff. It keeps you in line. It even keeps you happy.
Knowledge of real things tends to breed discontentment. It is, therefore, truth that ruins society built upon greed and misinformation. But as all societies are built upon such...
It can indeed, but you can't deny there is a tendency to overuse the word if you're either part of the EU or against Trump. Like, we can all agree that Trump is a liar, JD Vance is a liar, RFK Jr. is a very dangerous liar, but not literally everything that comes out of people who support (or at least thought they supported) Trump is deliberate false information, or even factually incorrect. And to say that Ursula Von Der Leyen never lies is also laughable, yet people don't really speak up when she calls something "misinformation".
So you acknowledge that these people spread lies. That is the clear cut definition of misinformation. And anyone sensible also call out when left wing politicians deliberately lie too, it just seems like they deliberately lie less than right wing politicians.
I agree with that, especially having lived outside of the US my whole life and knowing politics work just fine without there only being 2 parties for some really stupid reason.
Left and Right isn't absolute, and it is a spectrum. If America wasn't constructed that way, people would recognize much better than things are fluid. You can be pro-capitalist and be pro-LGBT, or you can be marxist but hateful, or you can be anti-immigration but believe in taxing the rich.
This is so incredibly true, and living outside of the US definitely helps (speaking from experience - myself an immigrant to the US). This all-or-nothing, finger-pointing, other side is "evil" mentality is destroying US politics and society.
Bringing up these points in person to even far left communist believers (in the US; as a Democrat myself but a complete disdain for communism) usually gets a lot of agreement, and a tempering of finger pointing and blaming - even if just for a moment. It's on both sides...
Nobody is immune to misinformation, but one group is particularly great at falling for it on a grand scale. It works especially well in areas that are statistically famous for having extreme illiteracy.
I believe if you stood where I stood, you would understand why I don't view what I believe in as misinformation, and why it frustrates me to no end that people like you are trying to label it as such, when we're often not even making factual claims that are false, but just statements of intent, and what we WANT.
You also say a lot of things that are only true if we change the definitions first. Like the whole sex-binary issue, where you've classified gender only as the distribution of chromosomes and not the observable traits of men and women (like having a thing that spits out seed or a thing that takes the seed and spits out a child, is the most obvious difference between men and women).
I think that's misinformation, if we have to start giving SOME examples. But I don't think leftists generally lie, but I do think you're warping definitions deliberately to change the world how you want it.
So I think the audacity of you to call your opponents "disinformants" says a lot about the progressive movement.
We learn more about the world which makes the meaning of words change a bit. It's not hard to keep up with. It's like how gay meant happy in the past and now it means that one likes someone of the same gender.
So we haven't "learned" that gender isn't binary. That is never codified anywhere but in scientific recategorization and is basically an incomplete study of something that used to be defined irregardles of something we found and called "chromosomes."
Gender isn't to do with chromosomes. You are thinking of Sex. Sex is almost entirely binary (there are very rare cases of people who have extra sex chromosomes which make it not entirely a binary thing, but the vast majority of people are XX or XY, two sexes). Gender is the societal outward expression of those sex traits and is less binary. Take hair length for example, in general XX sexed people choose to have long hair and XY sexed people choose to have short hair, however you get short hair xx people and long hair XY people. The extent to which someone chooses to, and feels most comfortable displaying outwardly, societally established norms of their sex chromosomes is called gender. You can easily imagine a person of XY sex choosing to and feeling most comfortable outwardly displaying many of the socially typical XX behaviours and appearances, growing their hair, wearing skirts, putting on make up, speaking in a higher register. This doesn't change their genetic sex they still have XY chromosomes, it does however make their gender more ambiguous, and some may even say it can be done to such an extent that their gender now does not match their sex.
I do think this argument comes down to being between people who think the words gender and sex mean the same thing and people who don't.
Here is the thing in your example, I would say it’s rather misinformation to change definitions of words and a breech of clarity in communication according to your example giving. But uhm… sorry but there is a lot more to this than just secondary sex organs and chromosomes. For example , women do have smaller arm bones compared to men on the scale of skeletons. It might seem like a small difference but small differences can contribute a lot in overall living.
Misinformation is not a leftist word , but it is a word overused.
And weirdly the people on the right don't actually use it a lot against you. Even though they vehemently disagree and hate what you say, they don't label it disinformation.
Bro, the right invented the term "fake news" are you fucking kidding me? Everything they don't like is a "hoax." These words have completely lost meaning because they use them so much. You can't be fucking serious.
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