Which of course is arguably the point. There's just another type of "bad faith actor" who is lurking in the shadows with these arguments: Someone who wants to leverage censorship against disfavored viewpoints regardless of their truth value.
Given the choice between "let everyone speak even if someone might be lying" and "let only approved speakers speak even if the approval process may be corrupt", I'll take the former pretty much every time.
While I tend to agree with this sentiment, it's worth noting that it takes orders of magnitude more effort to fight against lies and misinformation than it does to create them. As such, letting everyone say whatever they want and expecting the lies to be exposed/countered by the truthspeakers is destined to fail. We've seen this exact thing play out on every social network.
Alternatively worded, something about sunlight being the best disinfectant.
> It takes less effort to uncover a public lie than to uncover a hidden truth.
> Alternatively worded, something about sunlight being the best disinfectant.
That's a slogan, not a truth. For instance: what is "best"? The fastest? The most thorough? Something guaranteed to work, if given enough time?
Even if "best" means it's the "fastest" disinfectant, that doesn't mean it's fast enough to keep up with the infections the op describes.
There's also the question: if you prove something is a lie, will enough people pay attention? A 140 character lie could take pages to debunk. Given enough lies, that page count is going to build up to the point where no one has time for it. And the actual audience of the debunking is unlikely to be a superset of the audience of the lie.
How could this possibly be true. If that were the case then you could simply lie to a person until they accept a more reasonable position. Instead of using facts and evidence to support your position just lie to them and make stuff up. The fact that you cling to evidence in your arguments (I assume) means you don't really believe lying will sway people to your perspective.
> We've seen this exact thing play out on every social network.
We haven't. It may be true but that data is not available to us. These could be bots, they could be new converts (with the old ones de-converting), they could be paid propagandists, or trolls. It could just be the algorithm promoting people who create engagement. These people could be incredibly rare but incredibly prominent on the platform.
When are you going to be affected by this theory? Are you swayed by lies and misinformation? Do you cling to beliefs in the face of fact and evidence? Are you undeserving of the right to speak because of it? Why should you have been allowed to leave this comment? You have not been vetted to make these statements.
You want to get people to vote for your candidate. So you create social media posts saying the opponent voted against funds that would go to veterans. You don't need to look anything up, you just need to create the post. It's almost certainly true, because EVERY candidate has done this. However, it's extremely misleading...
Your opponent wants to make sure people understand the truth. The truth is that there were several bills that would fund veterans with a small amount of money, but they were all "add-ons" to other bills that did major things that the candidate did not approve of (for example, something like saying no state may provide a drivers license to anyone that is an ex-con). Now, in order make sure people understand the truth, you have to find the cases where the candidate in question voted against money for veterans, explain what the situation behind it was, and why there was "something bigger to consider" in each case.
Vs you, who only had to create a simple post.
The level of effort is in no way balanced.
But I know for a fact that people I know and care about _are_ affected by it, and on a regular basis. Plus it's used to sway people I don't know, and those people vote. And I find it concerning that they will base their vote on incorrect information.
I'm not trying to say someone is voting "wrong", because voting is a matter of opinion. But one should be able to base their opinion on actual truth, not lies. At the end of the day, if their opinion is based on lies they have been told, then it's really no different than secretly switching out the labels on the candidates in the voting machine.
> How could this possibly be true. If that were the case then you could simply lie to a person until they accept a more reasonable position. Instead of using facts and evidence to support your position just lie to them and make stuff up. The fact that you cling to evidence in your arguments (I assume) means you don't really believe lying will sway people to your perspective.
I think you're making the mistake of assuming that everyone is willing to play the same ends-justify-the-means game, where they're OK with shamelessly lying if it can momentarily get someone to align with their faction. What the GP describes is only a dilemma if you have a commitment to the truth.
Also what you describe (counter cheap lies with more cheap lies), would actually play into the hand of a disinformation actor. In many cases they're not looking to persuade anyone of of anything, just increase confusion, cynicism, and disengagement; which reduce their adversary's capacity for making decisions and taking action.
That didn't come off as clever, BTW.
I dunno, that sounds like the sort of thing that might be considered bad faith. I suppose the exact charge might not have survived translation. How do we think about heretics who corrupt people in good faith?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socrates#Trial_of_Socrates
To his eternal credit, Socrates does not argue very well in his defense. But this does not amount to bad faith on his part.
Edit: bad faith is additionally characterized by its intentional stance, meaning that it shouldn't be confused with a state of ego dystonicity (wherein the actor acts compulsively against their self-perceived "true" nature).
To the best of my knowledge, there is no serious interpretation of Socrates in which his recorded expressions are considered to be in bad faith. The absolute closest stretch would be arguing that the Socratic method is in some sense "faithless," which is distinct from the negative nature of bad faith.
A bad-faith heretic! Double the crimes that I initially thought. Maybe we do need to keep his dangerous ilk out of universities, he would no doubt have been harshly judged on HN at the time if they'd had HN back in the good old days.
More seriously, the academics have perfectly fine standards - to be an academic you need to have studied something deeply and make logical arguments. To speak on campus you need to be sponsored by an academic. That really is all that is needed and they're reasonably objective bars to meet. None of this "oh no he's got bad faith!" stuff that is trotted out for politics. Argue about the outcomes of policies, not the unobservable mental state of the people putting the policies.
I don't think you understand the difference in these two concepts. You can "corrupt the youth" without resorting to bad faith arguments. This quote of yours makes no sense.
The worst pattern off rhetoric that is absolutely dominating public discourse is "You've been accused of doing X"; "Well yeah but my opponent did something vaguely similar, ergo it's ok"
Indeed, they seem to be promoting the continuation of the insipid “elitist only” culture. The fact that the most politically divisive of the university cancelled the speaker (which resulted in MIT making this statement) seems to escape the OP
As for Assange, Snowden, or "whiny pacifists" -- yes please keep them out of universities, and also don't forget to exclude any Trumpists, Steve Bannons, nationalists, individual anarchists, and members of communist parties, unless they're reporting about their actual scientific research if they conduct some. I see no reason whatsoever why such people should give political speeches at universities.
That said, the person must be able and willing to discuss a bigger picture than just their personal politics, which is why I specifically picked Snowden but excluded Assange, Trump, and Bannon in the above. That's basically your good faith distinction.
When we talk about these obviously bad actors, are we talking people like Socrates and Galileo? Or are we keeping to strictly political undesirables like Assange, Snowden and the whiny pacifists who nobody likes?
The words you use are dangerously vague and you aren't calling for observable, thoughtful standards.