My own worry is the damage to humanity resulting from censorship. Are you capable of caring about that? — NOS4A2

Sure.

But you are being disingenuous.

Much more likely seems an egocentric fear on your part of you being 'censored' in the sense of being banned for low post quality, though of course that wouldn't actually be censorship. I suppose it is likely that your victim mentality would make it censorship in your mind.

It seems to me to be an odd mix of individualism and universalism. An overestimation of the reliability of intuition. — Fooloso4

:up:

No, it was the question about why you're doing this. You haven't stopped writing about me yet, telling someone you have never met that they lack empathy and are psychopathic. I'm just curious as to why. — NOS4A2

Because I think there is something more useful to consider than the thread's title question, "Why should we worry about misinformation?"

Regardless of any matter of "should" there is the simple matter that some people do care about the damage to humanity that results from the propagation of disinformation and misinformation, and some people don't. To justify that all people should care, it would seem important that all people could care. So the topic of whether some people can't care is relevant, and that brings up psychopathy and whether you are capable of caring about the damage to humanity resulting from misinformation.

On the whole, though, it seems that others' are more inclined to pick apart my beliefs than I am, so the idea of an individual overcoming their biases isn't even necessary because the individual doesn't do that alone. — Moliere

:up:

Which seems to bring us back to psychology. :wink:

It was just a question. — NOS4A2

It was a question which demonstrated your lack of empathy towards abused women. So it seems appropriate to consider the extent to which your perspective is a result of Psychopathy:

Psychopathy, or psychopathic personality,[1] is a personality construct[2][3] characterized by impaired empathy and remorse, in combination with traits of boldness, disinhibition, and egocentrism. These traits are often masked by superficial charm and immunity to stress[4], which create an outward appearance of apparent normalcy.

What springs to mind is that they are two different articulations of the human all too human need to explain — Janus

"Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?'
Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

I don't believe we are aware of all the information that enters our mind. If that is the case what the subconscious processes may indeed inform us - in what seems to be an act of free will. — jgill

Very good point.

We might say that we go with our intuitions in such cases.

Again, the goal will determine the level of accuracy (information) that is needed to accomplish the goal. — Harry Hindu

As much as the marketing department where I work might wish that were so, that isn't how things work as far as I can tell. There seem to be hard limits to what can be done in a great many ways regardless of goals.

You might be surprised at the extent to which practical matters bump into quantum limitations in today's world.
— wonderer1
Examples? — Harry Hindu

There are all sorts of metrological limits, in addition to the ones which affect measurement of voltage.

Modern logic ICs are running up against quantum limits which pose problems for shrinking transistor size.

Then to look at things from a different angle, you can buy a quantum random number generator to plug into your computer.

:up:

Could it be that the biggest problem for indirect realists, is being called indirect realists? — Mww

Might it be an even bigger problem, to label oneself with a philosophical label at all? To me it kind of suggests a closedness to different ways of looking at things.

(Not to say I won't make use of philosophical labels, as succinct ways of attempting to communicate a crude sense of what my perspective is.)

:up:

Moving on to Persian Poetry and Philosophy. — Amity

The analysis of that poem reminded of something by another middleasterner whose poetry I've turned to a lot.

And one of the elders of the city said, Speak to us of Good and Evil.
And he answered:
Of the good in you I can speak, but not of the evil.
For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst?
Verily when good is hungry it seeks food even in dark caves, and when it thirsts it drinks even of dead waters.

You are good when you are one with yourself.
Yet when you are not one with yourself you are not evil.
For a divided house is not a den of thieves; it is only a divided house.
And a ship without rudder may wander aimlessly among perilous isles yet sink not to the bottom.

You are good when you strive to give of yourself.
Yet you are not evil when you seek gain for yourself.
For when you strive for gain you are but a root that clings to the earth and sucks at her breast.
Surely the fruit cannot say to the root, "Be like me, ripe and full and ever giving of your abundance."
For the fruit giving is a need, as receiving is a need to the root.

You are good when you are fully awake in your speech,
Yet you are not evil when you sleep while your tongue staggers without purpose.
And even stumbling speech may strengthen a weak tongue.

You are good when you walk to your goal firmly and with bold steps.
Yet you are not evil when you go thither limping.
Even those who limp go not backward.
But you who are strong and swift, see that you do not limp before the lame, deeming it kindness.

You are good in countless ways, and you are not evil when you are not good,
You are only loitering and sluggard.
Pity that the stags cannot teach swiftness to the turtles.

In your longing for your giant self lies your goodness: and that longing is in all of you.
But in some of you that longing is a torrent rushing with might to the sea, carrying the secrets of the hillsides and the songs of the forest.
And in others it is a flat stream that loses itself in angles and bends and lingers before it reaches the shore.

But let not him who longs much say to him who longs little, "Wherefore are you slow and halting?"
For the truly good ask not the naked, "Where is your garment?" nor the houseless, "What has befallen your house?"

From The Prophet - Kahlil Gibran

I understand that. I'm asking literally how does it exist. I'm referring to the HPoC. Always looking for how such things can exist in a physically deterministic reality. — Patterner

Ok, let's give neuroscience another couple hundred years, and maybe we'll find a better answer.

Correct. We don't know about the exact condition of neural activity of our brain but we know that it is deterministic. There is however a problem in the deterministic worldview so-called doubt. Options are real in the case we have doubts and a deterministic entity cannot deal with a situation when there are doubts. — MoK

Even if we ignore quantum indeterminacy... As you say, we don't know what is going on in our own brains in any detailed way, so how can you rule out subconscious bias as being what amounts to a coin flip in your head?

Also, I don't recall you acknowledging the the sort of indeterminacy that can result from system complexity. IIRC you have a physics background, so perhaps it would be worthwhile for you to consider the relevance of the three body problem to the complex molecular environment of a brain.

I certainly can't explain details of what happened in evolution to result in our propensity to feel guilt. I can only point out that we evolved as a social species, and it is reasonable to think that a capacity for feeling guilt is an aspect of what maintains our ability to function as a social species.

I agree. I'm not sure how guilt even exists in such a scenario. — Patterner

Evolved social instincts, conducive to success as a member of a social group.

My guess at the answer to the question is an evolved cheater detection module.

Attempted gaslighting...it is coming more and more evident that you're feeling like an abused girlfriend. Am I getting close? — NOS4A2

Hmm. Have you had many girlfriends who felt abused by you?

But no. Care to try again?

The artist, those of us who look at it, and posterity are harmed by your actions, which amount to vandalism. It's not up to you to deface someone's work. Imagine the deepfake show "Sassy Justice", from the creators of Southpark, with your ugly watermark on it. — NOS4A2

This is attempted gaslighting.

We can add to that the fact that you see yourself as being in a community of one and show no signs of having empathy for others.

Are you ready to take your best guess yet?

Of course, but there has been an unhealthy trend toward treating expert opinion as no more credible than the opinion of a blogger on the internet- especially among Republicans. — Relativist

I wish I could say it is a rare occurence among 'philosophers'.

Yet the gadget works 99% of the time, and when it doesn't we find out the problem and issue a recall or release an updated product. — Harry Hindu

Well, whether the product "works" can be a matter of degree as well. Suppose the gadget is a voltmeter. Whether it works to measure voltage with the accuracy and precision desired can be an important question, and at some level the accuracy can only be a guess because for practical reasons what a volt is, is going to be defined by some metrological body (in the US NIST) which will only provide a limited level of uncertainty. Furthermore, the uncertainty provided by leading national metrology institutes is very much a function of the NMI's ability to account for quantum factors.

The macro world and quantum world have not been sufficiently merged into a consistent whole. — Harry Hindu

You might be surprised at the extent to which practical matters bump into quantum limitations in today's world.

You speak as if you are getting at things as they truly are, or are you saying your statement is only true to a degree? — Harry Hindu

Suppose I design some complicated electronic gadget, and sell it to someone who has a use for what the gadget does. Most commonly the purchaser of the gadget doesn't know the gadget to anything like the degree that I do.

But then my knowledge of the gadget is far from complete, because to make the gadget I bought subgadgets to build the gadget out of, and I don't know everything that the subgadget designer knows about the subgadget. Furthermore, as we descend the gadget/subgadget/... hierarchy we are going to run into the uncertainty principle.

How do we know that we have incomplete knowledge if we didn't already know what was missing? — Harry Hindu

Because the knowledge people have about things (including other people) is not a black and white matter, but a matter of degrees.

If one knows the exact initial condition of the coin when it is tossed and the situation of the environment, such as wind, then one can know the outcome of tossing the coin. — MoK

Which brings us back to the role of ignorance in attributing things to free will.

We don't know anything remotely approaching the exact initial conditions of our brains and all the environmental factors which play a determing role in what happens in our brains. Furthermore, there is lots of good evidence for the powerful role of subconscious processes emerging in our conscious thought.

How is a "mind" a better explanation than subconscious processes?

How often have you seen someone completely change their world views after exposure to a philosopher's ideas? — Tom Storm

I would say, based on contemplating neuroscience and life experience, that dramatic changes in a person's worldview is something that takes a considerable amount of time to occur.

It must happen. — Tom Storm

I'm skeptical.

If we accept that neural mechanisms are deterministic then subconsciousness cannot toss a coin. — MoK

Can coins be tossed in a deterministic world?

If so, then why can't a neural mechanism do something analogous to tossing a coin?

This is what I was getting at, but you presented it much more clearly. :up:

I look forward to MoK's response. — ToothyMaw

@jgill

Good job, both of you, of articulating what I was trying to point towards.

What is the point of your comments, really? — NOS4A2

What's your best guess?

When first confronted with the matter, I do not think that anybody right in his mind agrees on this. It is just too controversial. The first reaction is usually, disgust. It takes quite a while before someone can actually accept this kind of thinking. — Tarskian

Any thoughts on why?

Is it a blow to people's egos to face the limitations of human thought?

It definitely varies, as is typical of social primates.

No, I would say that our freedom allows us to decide when we are ignorant about the outcomes of the options. — MoK

I'm having a hard time seeing what you mean.

If we fail to recognize that we are ignorant in some regard do we lack freedom to the degree that we fail to recognize our ignorance in that area?

:up:

See the interview here, he grew up in my neighbourhood. — Wayfarer

Thanks to reading that, I've realized that Chalmers and I share a philosophical perspective.

...the natural bush environment is gorgeous.

We are lost because we are free, so say the existentialists — Gregory

:up:

I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of uncertainty about different things, but I am not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here. I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell.

So said Richard Feyman. :wink:

We owe a lot to our good teachers. I was lucky to have several outstanding ones. — Vera Mont

:100: :up:

Something a bit like that happened to me on the Gr. 13 English final. They gave us a dozen titles to choose from, one of which perfectly fit a story I was already writing in my head. By the time I finished, there were only a few minutes left for the other questions. I answered less than half of them, and was sure I'd get a lousy mark.
I got 96%. My teacher liked the story so much, she wasn't bothered about the grammar and structure questions. She even invited me to a summer course in creative writing. (Couldn't go; had to get a job. I'm still sorry I missed it.) — Vera Mont

Very cool teacher. :grin:

IIRC, my prof wrote on my exam book, "What happened?", and gave me a B. My prof was an aspiring science fiction writer himself. He personally handed me back my paper on the use of mythology and folklore and thanked me for writing it, and that might have bled into my exam grade. :wink:

...nor have I given any indication of my empathy. — NOS4A2

Yeah, that was kind of my point.

There is. It’s called ‘scientism’. — Wayfarer

:rofl:

As if the practice is uncommon among philosophers in general.

Re sanity: I felt mentally disturbed when writing Red, White and Blue. In that I felt my inner self was being exposed. I was immersed not only in the story but simultaneously discovering...perhaps hidden aspects...who the hell is this writing? It's not me! — Amity

Something along these lines plays a major role in my tendency to avoid writing in isolation. (As compared to riffing off other people's writing on an internet forum, for example.)

Writing in isolation has gotten me into some disturbing states of mind where I have tuned out the world around me to a frightening degree. I suppose that if I made it a habit to write for half an hour every day, and then at the end of the half hour always did something that required me to pay attention to what is going on in the world around me, (repetitive jaywalking perhaps) I might be able to reduce the phobia I have with regard to writing.

I suppose there is an element of autistic hyperfocus for me, that tends to take me down deep rabbit holes. I remember one exam in a college literature class consisting of four essay questions. I don't remember what the first exam question was or what my answer was. But the first question triggered such a flood of stuff I 'had to' write down, that by the time I looked up from answering the first question, three quarters of the exam period had gone by.

It started as a challenge: Here is an opening paragraph; write the next paragraph. The story emerged over several weeks and took some amusing turns. — Vera Mont

That is something I could have a lot of fun with.