Comment by isaacremuant
2 days ago
> There are glimmers of hope - like Wales trying to ban lying in politics
Lol. Give me a break. This is like all the "combat disinformation" bullshit. You claim something is a lie or disinformation because your government appointed expert said so and jail someone. When years later it's undeniable that you were the one lying you said "we did the best with what we had at the Time".
Naive solutions only give more power to those in power and are abused routinely.
You do realize laws like this already exist in America? Slander and defamation are laws against lying
I fully support banning politics and the media from lying because they should be held to a higher standard
That's an unfortunate example, as defamation is notoriously difficult to prosecute as it requires proof of knowledge and intent, among other things.
The problem lies in how such a law can be used; unless the law is weak it will likely be abused (but then its effectiveness will also be minimal).
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Obviously all available tools will by used by bad people. What we need is:
1) Good people to also use those tools - a lot of self-proclaimed good people think some tools are bad and therefore they won't use them. But tools are just tools, what makes it good or bad is who you use it against / for what reason.
A simple example is killing. Many people will have a knee-jerk reaction and say it's always bad. And they you start asking them questions and they begrudgingly admit that it's OK in self defense. And then you ask more questions and you come up a bunch of examples where logically it's the right tool to use but it's outside of the Overton window for them to admit it.
A good way to reveal people's true morality is movies. People will cheer for the good guys taking revenge, killing a rapist, overthrowing a corrupt government, etc. Because they naturally understand those things to be right, they've just been conditioned to not say it.
2) When bad people hurt someone using a tool, we need the tool to backfire when caught.
Obviously, to jail someone, the lying needs to be proven "beyond reasonable doubt" - i.e. Blackstone's ratio. Oh and no government appointed experts who get to dictate the truth. If the truth is not known with sufficient certainty, then neither side can be punished.
This threshold should be sufficient so that if it later turns out the person was not in fact lying, the trial is reevaluated and it will show that the prosecution manipulated evidence to manipulate the judge into believing the evidence was sufficient.
Alternatively, since incentives dictate how people play the game, we can decide that 10:1 is an acceptable error ratio and automatically punish prosecutors who have an error rate higher than that and jail them for the excess time.
So yes, if A jails B and it later turns out this was done through either sufficient incompetence or malice, then A should face the same punishment.
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I am sure given more time, we can come up with less "naive" and more reliable systems. What we know for sure is that the current system is not working - polarization is rising, anti-social disorders are more common, inequality is rising, censorship in the west increased massively in the last few years, etc.
So either we come up with ways to reverse the trend or it will keep getting worse until it reaches some threshold above which society will rapidly and violently change (either more countries fall into authoritarianism or civil war erupts, neither of which is desirable).
Just because something doesn't work doesn't mean anything you propose will be better. That's how we get security theater or worse, the war on drugs.
> So either we come up with ways to reverse the trend or it will keep getting worse until it reaches some threshold above which society will rapidly and violently change (either more countries fall into authoritarianism or civil war erupts, neither of which is desirable
Bullshit. That's your thesis. But hey, if you want to start that violent revolution to overthrow the government do post about it here. I'm sure you'll be successful in this day and age.
Your argument contains multiple fallacies.
You first act as if the current situation is the best we can do by pretending that no alternative can be better by implying that any alternative is naive.
I attempt to be reasonable and explain in good faith.
Yet then you admit the current situation doesn't work while at the same time continue acting as if a solution is impossible by pretending any attempt at a solution is worse without actually giving any specific criticisms.
On top, you:
1) (Probably intentionally) misrepresent what I said - I never said I wanted a violent revolution, I warn about it.
2) Mock me.
EDIT: Oh and I just noticed you attacked another commenter for absolutely no reason[0]. I would very much like to understand your goals because without further explanation, just going by your behavior here, they seem diametrically opposed to a better society for no valid reason.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43814782
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If you have a constructive argument to make, I encourage you to do so.